Stalybridge and Hyde
2010 Results:
Conservative: 13445 (32.89%)
Labour: 16189 (39.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 6965 (17.04%)
BNP: 2259 (5.53%)
UKIP: 1342 (3.28%)
Green: 679 (1.66%)
Majority: 2744 (6.71%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 17794 (49.7%)
Conservative: 9294 (26%)
Liberal Democrat: 5602 (15.7%)
Other: 3090 (8.6%)
Majority: 8500 (23.8%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 9187 (26%)
Labour: 17535 (49.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 5532 (15.7%)
BNP: 1399 (4%)
Green: 1088 (3.1%)
UKIP: 573 (1.6%)
Majority: 8348 (23.6%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 8922 (27.8%)
Labour: 17781 (55.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 4327 (13.5%)
UKIP: 1016 (3.2%)
Majority: 8859 (27.6%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 10557 (24.5%)
Labour: 25363 (58.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 5169 (12%)
Referendum: 1992 (4.6%)
Majority: 14806 (34.4%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour)
Rob Ablard (Conservative)Jonathan Reynolds (Labour)John Potter (Liberal Democrat)Ruth Bergan (Green)John Cooke (UKIP)Anthony Jones (BNP) 2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 87345
Male: 48.5%
Female: 51.5%
Under 18: 24%
Over 60: 19.1%
Born outside UK: 4.3%
White: 95.5%
Black: 0.2%
Asian: 3.2%
Mixed: 0.8%
Other: 0.3%
Christian: 75%
Muslim: 2.6%
Full time students: 2.2%
Graduates 16-74: 13.1%
No Qualifications 16-74: 33.6%
Owner-Occupied: 68%
Social Housing: 22.8% (Council: 13.4%, Housing Ass.: 9.5%)
Privately Rented: 5.8%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 9.1%
Jonny Reynolds won Labour nomination
Labour 16500
Conservative 12000
LD 4500
BNP 1700
Green 600
UKIP 400
Lab Hold= 3,000 maj
Lab Hold
Maj 6100
Anthony Jones standing for BNP
Lab maj 4,000
What are the current bookies odds for this seat?
From Ladbrokes:- “”Seat Winner – Stalybridge and Hyde
06 May. 17:00 Next General Election Constituency Betting
This constituency is a largely working-class residential area on the western fringes of Greater Manchester. It is a safe seat for Labour which has held it since 1945. At the last election, Labour retained the seat with a majority approaching 8,500 over the Conservatives. The current MP is James Purnell, a former Downing Street special advisor, who was first elected at the 2001 general election. He resigned his cabinet position as Work and Pensions Secretary in June 2009, over concerns about Gordon Brown\’s leadership.
Labour 1.10 +648
Conservatives 6.00
Liberal Democrats 101.00
Green 101.00
UKIP 101.00 “”
‘Eastern fringes’ not ‘western fringes’.
I AM aware of that – that was pulled DIRECTLY off the Ladbrokes site, hence the quotation marks!
You should have written (sic) after ‘western’ to indicate that you knew it was wrong.
I was waiting for someone else to notice. It worked!
Ray – well, I am a Mancunian. I have also played cricket on the very lovely Stalybridge ground.
LAB HOLD – by the way!
LAB HOLD
I live here and have done so for over a decade. I daresay I’m one of Laour’s much-despised middle-class, middle-income workers. It would be *fantastic* to see the back of them here. But, for some reason, locals seem to think that Labour will make their lives better, judging by last years 49.72% Lab win. I can’t think why. Locally, there is no difference or improvement to our small town by Labour. Nationally, saddling even the poorest most working class person with their share of the current national deficit/debt disaster is hardly what I would call enriching. And this town has the least sources of employment of pretty much anywhere.
Still.
Congratulations whoever-you-are that’s been flown in from Purnell’s office on your undoubted win tonight. I’m not sure what you have done for Stalybridge to have earned it, but I recognise a win is a win nevertheless.
Good effort in the Mottram evangelical church hosted by hustings by Rob Adlard, though. Got my vote. Shame it most likely will not amount to change.
Contrary to all the predictions here, we pushed Labour hard to prove that with hard work this seat will turn. A Lab majority of 2744 and swing of 8.5% shows a far bigger move to the Conservatives than many other seats in the region.
An 8.5% Lab to Con swing here, cutting the Lab majority to 2,744
I knew there must be one or two results I hadn’t looked at in detail and this is one of them. I thought my prediction of a Labour majority of 4,500 might be a bit on the small side but in fact it was a lot smaller than that. Quite surprised.
At some point several months ago, Labour recovered nationally a bit, and I think enough to prevent a Tory overall majority.
The LD surge after the 1st debate disguised the picture, until it more or less went back to what it was going to be since around Christmas.
But I do think – although we’ll never know – that if there had been a General Election called a year or so ago, that this could have been Tory gain.
“But I do think – although we’ll never know – that if there had been a General Election called a year or so ago, that this could have been Tory gain.”
The Conservatives were ahead here at the 2009 Euro elections.
Having considered the failure of the Conservatives to win an overall majority I think the June 2009 elections had an dangerous effect on the Conservatives.
The Conservative performance in those elections wasn’t actually very good. That they produced excellent and better than expected results was due to the collapse in the Labour vote.
It must have been likely that Labour would recover to and extent from their disasterous performance and indeed they did do. What didn’t happen though was a corresponding increase in the Conservative vote back to the levels of 2006 to 2008.
In short the Conservatives didn’t ‘seal the deal’.
Alongside the strategic error of targetting urban voters and not the WWC the Conservative leadership made a number of tactical mistakes in the year before the election:
An incoherant economic policy
An incoherant European policy together with the loss of trust it caused
Failure to consider Afghanistan
Osborne and Grayling on public dispplay
Wasting time on irrelevancies like the EU parliamentary group and Northern Ireland alliances
Not dealing with Ashcroft much sooner
‘A List’ numpties in target seats
Airbrushed posters
Supporting the debates
I’d agree with some of that Richard.
(some of it I’m less sure of).
I think you have been proved right in what you’ve argued about WWC seats – but are you also saying that even the increases we got in those areas are entirely despite the national party? That seems a little harsh.
I would add another thing to your list – expenses, and this blew up just before the 2009 elections, although we had plenty of warnings dribbling out from summer 2008.
Some commentators argued this would damage Labour more (perhaps unfairly because people would just tend to pile the blame on the incumbent establishment).
I don’t entirely agree – I think it led to a kind of cynicism which made it harder for the main opposition party to enthuse people about politics and present something fresh.
Joe
The more I think about it the more I believe the Conservative successes came despite their leadership.
Cameron and Osborne had bought into the notion that the economy was fundamentally sound and that the country as a whole was doing okay but that they could lead it better – the ‘heir to Blair’ idea.
The whole ‘Cameron Project’ was based on an evergrowing economy allowing a Conservative government to do ‘nice’ things.
Tax cuts on inheritance and marriage on one hand and increased spending on the environment and overseas aid on the other. Issues aimed at the urban middle classes who the Conservatives expected to be the swing voters at the next general election rather than the people who would suffer most if a recession did occur – the skilled working class and lower middle class in the midlands and north.
That’s why the Conservative leadership looked so shambolic in the autumn of 2008 – it wasn’t just Labour’s economic record that was being publicly demolished it was the Conservative strategy as well.
Now looking at my own situation and from the annecdotals I heard from people I know, I strongly believe that the Labour vote among WWC voters in the private sector and particularly manufacturing industry collapsed but that the main beneficiaries in many areas wasn’t the Conservatives but the minor rightist parties. Where the Labour vote did hold up was among ‘fear factor’ voters especially those whose income comes directly or indirectly from the state.
I’m speculating here but perhaps Cameron and Osborne with their posh backgrounds and trendy urban living and with no personal experience of WWC areas simply never realised the Conservative potential in places like Stalybridge. Did they fall for the BBC’s line that the north consists of Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle? The consequence being a strategy aimed at the urban middle classes ‘vote blue go green’ etc ie aimed at the sort of people they were themselves familiar with and believed they could win over.
The whole ‘detox’ the party idea wasn’t a bad one, the error was in the people it was aimed at and the manner in which it was carried out.
One thing that I think Cameron needs to do as much as possible is to stay out of London. Notting Hill is not a good representation of the country as a whole.
its ironic that the urban middle classes are probably the one group the conservatives have had least success in winning over
they didn’t have these problems in the 1980s but there are currently a string of middle class seats in urban areas that have yet to return to the tories
despite the upper middle class credentials of the cameron team they’ve had more success in white working class seats such as this one – where they have generally outperformed their 92 levels of support
we’re not there yet but there are definite connatations with the US – where Republican success has been based on working class (or what in America they call middle class) support
Likewise the majority intelligentsia and middle class professionals living in urban areas in the US have put their lot in with the Democrats for the last 10-15 years
The last election suggests the tories are suffering from the same phenomenon this side of the atlantic
also for the last 30 years in political terms new york city has been decisively against the grain compared to the rest of the US. Gulliani might have got elected mayor, and patika won the governorship in 94 – at the height of bill clinton’s unpopularity – but when it comes to most elections the republicans just aren’t in the running
there are parallels with london here – and the last election was the first since the war in which the party that won the most seats in london (labour) ended up losing
I think there is a lot of sense in what James says upthread as to explanations for the Conservatives failing to secure an overall majority.
I’ve said on here before that Ashcroft should have been told to get stuffed at least a year before the election, as his tax status was an embarrassment; it’s not even as if the party needed the money by that stage.
The idea of “A list” candidates to me substantially failed, and the experiment should not be repeated. There should only be one class of potential Conservative PPC, and the party should not bend over backwards to shoehorn into seats those with superficially impressive CVs who may very well under closer scrutiny lack some of the very specific skills that make a good Conservative PPC and MP, and may have limited commitment to the ideals and values of the party.
Where I cannot agree with him is that the Conservatives’ “incoherent economic policy” was a problem. The economic policy of all the parties could conceivably be characterized in this way, as they all (probably rightly) assumed that telling the electorate the truth about the extent of the cuts necessary to restore the nation’s public finances to good health would have seen their level of support suffer. Few successful election campaigns are built upon telling voters things they don’t want to hear.
I also believe he is wrong in asserting that policy on Europe, Afghanistan, the alliance with the UUP, Chris Grayling’s gaff and the airbrushed posters shifted more than a handful of votes across the entire country (although the Tory-UUP link up clearly repelled voters in NI). In particular the issue of who the Tories sit with in the European Parliament seems to be primarily of concern only to regular contributers to Comment is Free over on the Guardian site. I also have yet to see any polling evidence to suggest that George Osborne has ever had a significant negative effect on the party’s level of support.
In the by-election in Longdendale caused by the resignation of Jonny Reynolds consequent to his being elected to Parliament, Labour held the seat but by only 192 votes, with a swing of less than one per cent from the Tories since May. Something of a disappointment to Labour locally I imagine but the ward wasn’t safe & at least it was held.
The byelection was actually caused by the death of Roy Oldham – Johnny Reynolds is still a councillor there and presumably intends to remain until the end of his term next May.
beg your pardon – shows it’s often wrong to make assumptions.