Phil Rodgers: Election leaves Cambridge as the Labour jam in a Lib Dem doughnut
Our political correspondent, Phil Rodgers, considers the new political situation in the county and the General Election.
During an election count, I am normally to be found watching from the balcony of the University Sports Centre as the verdict of the voters of Cambridge gradually emerges in the hall below.
This time, however, things were a bit different. Long before the polls opened it was already pretty clear what the verdict of the voters of Cambridge was likely to be, so instead I headed for the imposing surroundings of the Imperial War Museum’s Conservation Hall at Duxford, to see what the electorate of two somewhat less predictable seats had come up with. As representatives of the media watched from the balcony, a small army of council staff worked steadily to count the votes for South Cambridgeshire and St Neots & Mid Cambridgeshire, with a Handley Page Victor bomber parked nonchalantly at the back of the vast hall.
When the results eventually came, they brought delight for the Liberal Democrats, who won both seats comfortably. The Cambridge count had finished some time earlier, and several of the city’s Lib Dem activists had whizzed down the M11 to share the joy of their party comrades at the declaration. That joy was increased even further when the news reached the hall that Ely & East Cambridgeshire had also fallen to the yellow team, leaving Cambridge as the Labour jam in a Lib Dem doughnut. Daniel Zeichner is now unable to leave his constituency without passing through Lib Dem-held territory.
It wasn’t just these Lib Dem gains that transformed the local political landscape. In the north of the county, as was widely expected, Peterborough fell to Labour – but by a much narrower margin than many commentators, including myself, had predicted. The knife-edge 39-vote majority for Labour’s Sam Carling in North West Cambridgeshire was also a surprise. The Conservatives were left with just two seats in the county – a narrow win in Huntingdon, and a more comfortable hold in the county’s deepest blue constituency, North East Cambridgeshire.
The diagram shows which party finished first, second, third and fourth in each of the Cambridgeshire seats, and gives you an idea of the new political situation in the county. Despite their large losses, the Conservatives were still second almost everywhere they didn’t win, and three of their defeats were by extremely narrow margins in seats where a good chunk of the vote went to Reform. If they can avoid collapsing into squabbling factions nationally, and successfully fend off the challenge of Nigel Farage, then they have a good chance of retaking some of these seats at future elections.
Labour’s election campaign strategy for Cambridgeshire was a relentless focus on campaigning in Peterborough. With Cambridge looking very safe, and the county’s other seats declared ‘non-battleground’, Parliamentary candidates were required to spend a minimum amount of time in battleground seats instead of their own constituencies. In the final days of the campaign, Cambridge Labour activists found themselves cut off from ‘Contact Creator’, the party’s national canvassing system, unless they went to a battleground area. However, all this party discipline turned out to be well worthwhile for Labour, as they took the Peterborough seat with a nail-biting 118 vote majority.
While things went about as well for the Lib Dems as they could have hoped, this does leave them with the problem of where they go next in Cambridgeshire. Apart from Cambridge, their highest position where they didn’t win was fourth, and it’s difficult to see where their next gain is coming from. In the Cambridge constituency they held on to second place, but their vote share fell, and they now have the Greens nipping at their heels. Nevertheless, the Lib Dems will be extremely happy with their three gains – in each case, they won the tactical argument by leafleting the electorate into submission, and now that they hold the seats they will have even better bar charts to batter the voters with next time.
Reform racked up a fair number of votes almost everywhere, though in several constituencies they did little more than submit their nomination papers. However, they only managed one fairly distant second place in the county, in North East Cambridgeshire, and their main impact on the election was to take votes away from the Conservatives and make it easier for Labour and the Lib Dems to make gains. This was partly because their campaign was much more ‘air war’ than ‘ground war’ – if they can start to build effective local party organisations and get feet on the streets in future elections, they could well make progress.
There is only one speck of green on the seat diagram, showing the Green party’s third place in Cambridge, and it will probably be some time before the party can mount a serious challenge for a Cambridgeshire seat. Like Labour and the Lib Dems, the Greens benefitted from targeting at this election, picking four seats nationally to focus on, and winning all four. They are now in second place in 40 other seats, so it may be some time before Cambridge is on their target list – but that could change if they can overhaul the Lib Dems in the city.
What does this new situation mean for the future politics of Cambridgeshire? Next May we have two very important county-wide elections coming up. Every seat on the county council will be up for grabs, as well as the mayoralty of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined authority.
The graph shows the overall share of the general election vote across the eight constituencies in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Despite their spectacular drubbing nationwide, the Conservatives still managed to poll most votes across the county as a whole. If they can repeat this in the mayoral contest, then as things stand Nik Johnson would lose to a Conservative challenger. A key question, then, is whether the government will restore the ‘second choice’ vote in mayoral elections which helped Nik Johnson win in 2021 and was subsequently abolished by the Conservatives. However, having just won a stonking great majority at Westminster on 34 per cent of the vote, Labour may decide that they quite like first past the post after all.
What will the new government’s policies mean for Cambridge? Time will tell. A key question is what the government will decide to do about the plans it inherited for growth in the Greater Cambridge area. Angela Rayner has replaced Michael Gove, and one of her first acts in office was to change the name of her department to once again include the words ‘local government’. Let’s hope the local government of Cambridge, and the city’s other elected representatives, will have more of a say in the plans for the city’s future than seemed to be envisaged by the previous administration.