Just 13% of those voting put an X in the Tory box in Aughton!
I made mention before the English local elections of a reasonably well to do community on my doorstep – Aughton, West Lancashire. To me that community has always been Conservative, at least that is until quite recent times. Indeed, I was once told of a tongue in cheek-type remark along the lines of ‘you used to have to show your Conservative membership card to buy a house there’.
Aughton Landscape
You see, I cycle a lot around Aughton and have done so for maybe the past 15 years. When you cycle you notice things. The lack of Conservative posters and stake boards has been an obvious one. I only saw one house with a Tory stake board in this May’s elections.
What I also noticed, in the last election when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader (2019), was Labour posters on expensive Aughton properties. That would just not have ben allowed when Aughton was true blue. But this year I didn’t spot any Labour posters.*
Back in the 1990’s, when I was a Maghull Town Councillor, I went to a Parish Councils conference in London organised by the National Association of Local Councils (NALC). It seemed to be dominated by Conservatives from the Shires and not really the place for a leftie Liberal like me. But what I recall most about it was actually the train ride home where I found myself sitting by what turned out to be a lady who told me she was a Conservative Councillor on West Lancs Council and an Independent member of Aughton Parish Council. That combination of being party political on one council whilst being independent on another, for the same community, struck me as most odd. She was a nice lady but every inch a Conservative and, of course, I expected nothing less from an Aughton councillor. That was around 30 years ago, for context.
Today, I looked at the election result for the ward that covers Aughton Civil Parish and what seems to be the Holborn area of Ormskirk. The Conservative candidate received just 13% of the votes cast and came 4th! The winning candidate was from the ‘Our West Lancashire Party’ with 39% of the votes cast.
Would the last Conservative in Aughton please turn out the lights comes to mind, but seriously, this shows how fundamentally our politics has changed even in wealthy communities that were once rock solid Conservative.
The headlines from this May’s English local elections have pretty much all been about the hammering that our governing Labour Party suffered and it was of catastrophic proportions, but the losses the once formidable Conservative Party also suffered are of great significance too.
* I obviously don’t cycle every road in Aughton so I may have missed some political posters, I might add.
Interesting, Tony. I wonder if that Tory lady all those years ago felt that local politics shouldn't be party political? I've often felt that myself. Alternatively, even then, she might have felt the Tory brand was toxic on Merseyside, which it became in the Thatcher years, though ironically Thatcher's government probably did as much in terms of assistance to Merseyside as any government has.
ReplyDeleteTories have been an endangered species on Merseyside for decades now. I know leafy Aughton feels as if it could/should be Tory but the Merseyside influence has long since spread outside the city. Net you hear a bit of scouse twang even in Town Green... Merseyside really is a place apart!