Wallasey
2010 Results:
Conservative: 13071 (31.38%)
Labour: 21578 (51.8%)
Liberal Democrat: 5693 (13.67%)
UKIP: 1205 (2.89%)
Independent: 107 (0.26%)
Majority: 8507 (20.42%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 20085 (54.8%)
Conservative: 10976 (29.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 4770 (13%)
Other: 840 (2.3%)
Majority: 9109 (24.8%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 10976 (29.9%)
Labour: 20085 (54.8%)
Liberal Democrat: 4770 (13%)
UKIP: 840 (2.3%)
Majority: 9109 (24.8%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 10442 (28%)
Labour: 22718 (60.8%)
Liberal Democrat: 4186 (11.2%)
Majority: 12276 (32.9%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 11190 (23.9%)
Labour: 30264 (64.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 3899 (8.3%)
Referendum: 1490 (3.2%)
Majority: 19074 (40.7%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Angela Eagle(Labour) Born 1961, Bridlington. Educated at Formby High School and Oxford University. Prior to her election worked for the COHSE. MP for Wallasey since 1992. Opposition whip 1996-1997. Under secretary of state at DETR 1997-1998, social security 1998-2001, Home Office 2001-2002. Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury 2007-2009. Minister of State for Work and Pensions since 2009. She is the first openly lesbian Member of Parliament, coming out in September 1997. Her twin sister Maria is MP for Liverpool Garston (more information at They work for you)
Leah Fraser (Conservative) born 1959. Educated at Weatherhead School for Girls. Worked for Roy Castle Lung Foundation. Wirral councillor since 2005. Contested Wallasey 2005.Angela Eagle(Labour) Born 1961, Bridlington. Educated at Formby High School and Oxford University. Prior to her election worked for the COHSE. MP for Wallasey since 1992. Opposition whip 1996-1997. Under secretary of state at DETR 1997-1998, social security 1998-2001, Home Office 2001-2002. Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury 2007-2009. Minister of State for Work and Pensions since 2009. She is the first openly lesbian Member of Parliament, coming out in September 1997. Her twin sister Maria is MP for Liverpool Garston (more information at They work for you)
Steve Pitt (Liberal Democrat) Born 1956, Wallasey. Former soldier in the Kings (Liverpool) Regiment. 
Derek Snowden (UKIP) Emmanuel Mwaba (Independent)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 87186
Male: 47.2%
Female: 52.8%
Under 18: 24.4%
Over 60: 21.5%
Born outside UK: 3.1%
White: 98.4%
Black: 0.2%
Asian: 0.4%
Mixed: 0.6%
Other: 0.5%
Christian: 79.3%
Full time students: 2.7%
Graduates 16-74: 13%
No Qualifications 16-74: 31.9%
Owner-Occupied: 71%
Social Housing: 16.1% (Council: 9.5%, Housing Ass.: 6.6%)
Privately Rented: 10.4%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 18.9%
I’ve just argued elsewhere that council by-elections must be treated with a lot of caution.
Nevertheless, the Conservative success here each May has been substantial.
I wonder whether they can go the whole way.
You can get 7/2 from William Hill on a Conservative win here.
Better odds than you will get anywhere on Conservative wins in similar seats such as Morley, Worsley, Sunderland C and Bury S.
They deserve to win here but Labour will probably hold on by about 3-4,000.
But perhaps it’s not out of the question it could change.
Joe James – I would recommend anyone who doubts the effectiveness of the Conservatives in Wallasey to check out Leah Fraser’s blog. It is also worth noting they hold 14 of the 18 council seats here and in 2008, polled nearly 54% of the vote, with over 12668 votes (more than they have managed at any GE since 1992)
Councillors dont win General Elections – but I agree the success at local level is encouraging. It is always dangerous though to extrapolate GE wins from local election results.
I agree that the two don’t always marry up eg Lib Dem success in Liverpool/Newcastle. However its more the sort of intense campaigning that they seem to be doing day in day out over a long period, that makes me think this seat could be one to watch
My impression is that the Tories are well organized in Wallasey, but less so in Wirral West. I still believe that Wirral West is a better bet than Wallasey for a Tory win.
That perhaps because the activists in Wallasey have had history and experience of defending this seat as a tight Tory marginal whereas activists in Wirral West had the long term luxuary of defending a safe seat.
This is perhaps the reason why the Conservatives have managed to get back the former marginals of Ayr and Edinburgh Pentlands in the Scottish Parliament while still losing out in the former Tory stronghold of Eastwood.
I could see the Conservatives regaining Wirral West by 2000 and coming within 3500 in Wallasey – which would mean that the relative gap between the two seats would be greatly reduced.
The difference is that the Tories will “gain” Wirral West because of boundary changes (the benefical effect I think is heavily underestimated) as well as the unpopularity of the Government while in Wallasey, the same unpopularity factor will exist but the hard campainging work by Wallasey Conservatives throughout the five years of this Parliament, building up a strong local government base will have had the effect of adding some two to three percentage points on thw swing. I suspect there may well be a hidden effect of this work in that Wallasey Labour Party is thoroughly demoralised not only by losing Liscard and New Brighton Wards in every election and then seing Leasowe fall in 2008 but also seeing a Seacombe Ward Councillor cross the floor last year. They are down to four Councillors in the Constituency and it is noticable in the lack of Labour newsletters over the past six months
Never underestimate the tactics of a Labour Party on the ropes. In Wallasey, they seem to be concentrating their fire on our candidate, our constituency organiser and myself. Fine! Bring it on. Sadly, they are not communicating with the electorate in any meaningful way….
Therer’s a new anti-Conservative web-blog in Wallasey called “Sister Mary” concentrating on Moreton and Leasowe Wards. Now the Labour Party are strongly denying its anything to do with them but then again Mike Russell MSP denied the the web blog “The Universality of Cheese” had anything to do with the SNP but until it emerged that the man behind the site was Mike Russell’s office manager
Isn’t “blog” simply an abbreviation for “weblog” anyway?
With some weeks to go. I have thought long and hard on the likely result in this constituency. The last five years have seen an excellent record of strong campainging by the local Tories which has brought in a near domination of local elections in the Constituency with Labour only winning one ward out of six in 2008.
Now events in the next door constituency have conspired to reinforce the Tories campaining, in that the effort of the ruling Lab/Lib Dem coalition on Wirral Council to close Libraries and Sports facilities in Wallsey having being rejected by the adjudicator and then withdrawn have seen an F.O.I. request show the shabby correspondence between the Council and Whitehall and that in next door Wirral West, the Labour Party have chosen the Deputy Leader of the Labour Group, Cllr Phil Davies as their candidate- a man who was heavily involved in promoting the closure programme. I am sure that the headline “Davies the Destroyer rewarded by the Labour Party for devasting Wallasey” is already being prepared
So the efforts of the Labour Party to tippex their attempts to withdraw some 21 leisure facilities will be back on the front page of the local news.
Taking the advance of the local Conservatives, a significant amount of new build in the constituency, the demolition of areas of housing in strong Labour Polling Districts, the failure of the Labour Party to campaign here, the abortive attempt to withdraw Library and sports facilities, the non-existence of any Liberal presence in the constituency for 32 years, the attempted withdrawal of several school crossings all into account makes Wallasey although seeing a strong swing to the Tories difficult to call -and that’s even before we take account of swings determined by national factors
As it stands in every election the swing shows itself in a normal distrubution through the UK with the majority of seats clustered around the national average swing but there are seats which have a greater swing either way for instance in 1997 there was a swing in one Bradford Seat from Labour to the Tories while Labour enhanced its Parliamentary numbers by significantly higher than average swings in some Tory “safe seats”
Taking the factors in my fourth paragraph into account, I believe Wallasey will see a above average swing to the Tories and that its is certainly to close to call but I can see the Tories getting in here by some 400-500 votes
Wirral Herald (ex Observer)
Tory Cllr Denis Knowles suspended by the Wirral Conservative Group for making ‘homophobic comments’ on Facebook. Angela Eagle was featured on BBC Northwest Tonight stating that David Cameron should take action.
Labour 17500
Conservative 13500
LD 4000
UKIP 1800
Green 1000
Lab Hold= 3,000 maj
Lab Hold
Maj 5000
Lab maj 2,000
Labour, it seems, are rattled. Frank Field and his councillors are helping out in Wallasey almost daily and teams are coming in from Manchester and, from this weekend, London.
That’s interesting. I’d heard from former colleagues in Lpool that this could be a better Tory prospect than other Merseyside seats, as the Lib Dems are on the rise in Southport, Sefton C and Wirral S.
Which seats have included New Brighton?
LAB HOLD. possibly above-average swing to Con
After all that – a swing of 1.8%
I haven’t commented on this site for a good while but I felt I had to comment on the result here.
It seems clear that the Wallasey Tories have been victims of a massive surge in Labour support in the urban constituencies.
That appears to be trend accross England as many of the city areas fell to labour with reasonable to moderate swings.
In Wallasey the Tory Parliamentary candidate not only failed to take the seat but lost her council seat in the process. Indeed their Moreton West canndidate won with only a 340 majority. A significant shift on previous results.
A LIB CON coalition in Westminster will almost certainly force the Conservatives to adopt a more social democratic agenda.
We’ve not done well in Lancashire or Merseyside – Wirral South was particularly disappointing.
Another example of a largely urban seat
where the contest is Lab-Con
where strong local election performances by the latter hasn’t come off.
Tynemouth is another, and several in London.
Perhaps people have a view that Labour councils are likely to be badly run, but not the government.
In my opinion, a disappointing Tory result – they deserved to do better,
although there was a swing.
Quite agree on the fact that the Tories did not do well in Merseyside. The one seat they won had a majority of far less than most people thought. Now Lancashire, I’m not so sure of. To win Rossendale and Pendle (seats they lost in 1992) was quite an achievement as well as Blackpool North and Morecambe must be satisfactory though there must be disappinrment in Blackpool South, Chorley and West Lancashire. In many ways the Tories’ Merseyside performance is on a par with theirs’ in Scotland
The Con vote has actually increased 7.5% since 1997 (having dropped around 18% then).
Nevertheless,
it is clearly too small to compete with Labour on a General Election turnout.
Even so, the amount of difference between local and national was a bit of a shock, as it sounds like the Tories had worked hard and deserved a better result, in my view.
Labour’s absolute vote increased quite significantly..
Looking back 1992 was a pretty amazing result for the Tories polling 22,722 votes compared to 22,791 in 1987.
The LD vote halved in 1992 and went to Labour,
as Linda Chalker re-iterated at the count.
In 2008, there was a discussion on this thread, at a tangent, about seats with the fewest posts on them.
” JOE JAMES B
I’m trying to get a bit of interest in Redcar.
7 comments so far.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:43 pm ”
Well, I didn’t know what was to come.
I typed in the share of the votes from the 1931 general election into Electoral Caculus last night, and Wallasey was still a Labour hold.
It’s a shame Lynda Chalker didn’t return to the Commons in 1997 – but she had already been given a peerage and had continued to serve as a minister until then.
I’ve had a go at trying to work out what will happen to this seat through the boundary review. It looks as if Labour are likely to retain any successor to ths seat, and the Chalker years really were an aberation:
http://www.allthatsleft.co.uk/2011/04/labour-lose-seat-on-the-wirral/
2011 local election results (rounded to the nearest % point)
Leasowe and Moreton East
2010 L 52 C 30 LD 13 UKIP 3
2011 L 55 C 35 UKIP 3 GREEN 3
Liscard
2010 L 47 C 36 LD 10 UKIP 3 GREEN 3
2011 L 54 C 36 UKIP 4 GREEN 3
Moreton West and Saughall Massie
2010 C 41 L 37 LD 14 UKIP 3 BNP 3
2011 C 50 L 40 UKIP 4 LD 3
New Brighton
2010 L 44 C 31 LD 17 GREEN 5 UKIP 3
2011 L 50 C 35 GREEN 6 UKIP 6 LD 4
Seacombe
2010 L 63 C 17 LD 14 UKIP 4
2011 L 64 C 21 UKIP 9 GREEN 3 LD 3
Wallasey
2010 C 43 L 36 LD 15 UKIP 3
2011 C 49 L 37 LD 5 UKIP 4 GREEN 4