209 Responses to “Rochdale”

1. Shaun Bennett

   Indeed, if the Lib Dems carry on as they are, could it be possible that they actually fall into third place in Rochdale behind the Tories? Thus making the seat even safer for Labour over a long period?

   I was fairly surprised that the tories can still actually win seats in Rochdale local electons when the Lib Dems can’t-and that the Tories have become the main opposition on the local council. Perhaps it wouldn’t be entirely impossible to end the Yellow Menace here after all…

   November 28th, 2012 at 10:54 am
2. H.Hemmelig

   Speaking as someone who knows nothing about Rochdale….why are people so sure that the Lib Dems are heading for collapse here, when they held up pretty well next door in Oldham East?

   November 28th, 2012 at 11:09 am
3. Joe James B

   I had wondered the same.
   It could be one of those eventually broken permanently broken seats
   which if Labour held in 2010 suggests it might be.

   Perhaps the local elections in 2012 were spectacularly awful for them
   but I haven’t checked yet.

   Don’t think they were though – bad though.

   November 28th, 2012 at 11:49 am
4. Andrea

   Pete Whitehead’s figures about 2012 locals from another place

   Rochdale constituency

   Lab 14183 52.6%
   Con 7124 26.4%
   LD 4525 16.8%
   Ind 902 3.3%
   ED 215 0.8%

   Oldham East constituency

   Lab 9887 40.6%
   LD 9399 38.6%
   Con 4057 16.7%
   Ind 842 3.5%
   Grn 144 0.6%

   November 28th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
5. Shaun Bennett

   “why are people so sure that the Lib Dems are heading for collapse here, when they held up pretty well next door in Oldham East?”

   Helloooo. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to actual voting in Rochdale?
   Oldham East was never a Lib Dem seat to begin with. They didn’t win it in 2010 as they might have expected because of course the Tories were always a strong element of the mix there and came up quite strongly at the Lib Dem expense even though Labour lost a bit of support to the Lib Dems.

   Rochdale is quite different. This was a Lib Dem SEAT until 2010. It was an area that they should have had no trouble whatsoever in strengthening their position.
   They lost it to the Labour Party at a time when they were at their most unpopular in government.

   Local election results since then have shown Lib Dem collapses in Rochdale and to a lesser extent Oldham East-although still big heavy Lib Dem losses.

   So when you say that the Lib Dems held up fairly well in Oldham East, you are really basing that on the good result of the by-election in the opening year of the coalition. The results since then have been somewhat different-and especially most marked in Rochdale.

   I shouldn’t have thought the Cyril Smith scandal will do too much to help the Lib Dems reputation with the voters in Rochdale either-although as I have said previously, to try to make a political issue out of it would be a disgrace for anyone who tried it (Mr Danczuk, I’m looking at you!)

   November 28th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
6. THE RESULTS

   This is probably quite speculative but I suspect that but for Cyril Smith this would have become a very safe Labour seat.

   November 28th, 2012 at 5:25 pm
7. Barnaby Marder

   Well it wasn’t just Smith’s popularity itself. The Liberals already had a substantial vote in Rochdale after Ludovic Kennedy’s near-miss in the 1958 by-election (which was a Labour gain from Conservative), and when the Labour MP John McCann died they had the opportunity of a by-election at a particularly heady time for them – they were also able to win several others seats at roughly the same time, Sutton & Cheam in that particular year. Had McCann not died, the Liberals would have been much less likely to break through, though they might well have been pretty close in February 1974. They took their chance, as with numerous other postwar by-elections. The Conservative presence isn’t all that surprising given the rural & fairly prosperous nature of the east of the constituency, but in the town itself Tory voters are still few & far between.

   November 28th, 2012 at 9:14 pm
8. THE RESULTS

   But for a time after Kennedy departed as candidate, the Liberals’ results here were very disappointing-

   1964- TL Hobday (14, 212, 28.94%, -7.29%)
   1966- BN Seeaer (9, 004, 19.27%, -9.67%)

   But then, surprise surprise along comes Mr. Rochdale himself to turn the tide back towards his party against the national trend-

   1970- Cyril Smith (14, 076, 30.40%, +11.13%)

   I think that if it had been any other candidate in 1970, the Liberals’ vote probably would have been about 14-15%.

   And yes Barnaby I agree the Liberal chance was first established by Sir Ludovic and that never really went away-The effect of the 1958 by-election may well have meant 64 and 66 seeing completely different fortunes for the Liberals to what was happening nationally here but they made up for it in 1970 by choosing who was seen at the time as being the best candidate- Obviously if we knew now what we knew then Smith would never had got anywhere near Westminster and so the last four MPs for Rochdale would probably have been completely different.

   November 28th, 2012 at 9:34 pm
9. richard

   I would imagine that Oldham E, or rather the Saddleworth half of it, is more naturally liberal (or more accurately anti-Labour) than Rochdale is.

   Whereas in Rochdale the LibDems always depended upon tactical voting from natural Conservatives and personal votes for their local candidates.

   November 28th, 2012 at 10:27 pm