Well, here we are; the last diary in the series. The West Country is culturally similar but subtly different from the rest of Southern England. It has a fairly conservative culture, but less militant than that of the home counties. It values relative moderation in its leaders, but has a fairly intense dislike of socialism outside of a few pockets of red. That means that the two largest parties in the region are the Tories and and the LibDems. By 2015, the LibDems had managed to capture a very good share of the seats in the region after decades of hard work. That all got wiped away in an instant as the Tories took every LibDem seat in the West Country.
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Dorset:
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Dorset is probably the most conservative part of the region, with big retirement and tourist sectors and very few non-white people. The population growth here is okay, but not blowing the doors off. Therefore, it loses most of a seat, taking its total from eight seats to seven so that Wiltshire doesn’t lose one (Bournemouth West is the seat that gets axed). All seven seats are Safe Conservative, as was the seat that was eliminated.
Wiltshire:
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Wiltshire is hair less conservative than Dorset, but all seven constituencies here are also Safe Conservative. The LibDems used to compete for South Swindon, but no longer.
Gloucestershire:
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Gloucestershire actually had some competitive seats, but no longer. Stroud expands a bit and moves from Likely Conservative to Safe Conservative. Thornbury and Yate should theoretically be a target for recapture for the LibDems. However, its successor of Dursley, Thornbury and Yate is now Safe Conservative as well. All seven other seats keep that same rating.
Somerset and Bristol:
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There’s a similar story in Somerset. The LibDems used to have several seats here, but lost them all in 2015. Bath would still be competitive, except that it added some rural territory and moved to Safe Conservative. All eight other seats are playing the same tune.
For a change of pace, Bristol is an island of red in a sea of blue. Bristol East and Bristol South are Safe Labour. Bristol North West is Safe Conservative. Bristol West is somewhat competitive between Labour and the Greens, so we’ll call it Likely Labour.
Devon and Cornwall:
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And here we come to Devon. Fun fact: Devon is the home of the protagonist Arthur Dent in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. As with Somerset and Gloucestershire, the LibDems used to perform well here. With their current poll numbers, though, they’re only really competing to take back Torbay, and that’s Likely Conservative. The two Plymouth seats, though Tory-held, are competitive. The Plymouth seats repeat the pattern the we’ve seen with other two-seat cities; the more conservative seat takes some leftist or swingy territory from the more leftist seat, while the more leftist seat takes in some very conservative surrounding territory. To accomplish that, Plymouth Moor View takes in more of Plymouth and moves from Tossup to Likely Conservative, becoming Plymouth North. Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport also moves from Lean Conservative to Likely Conservative and becomes Plymouth South (Labour is the second party in both seats). Exeter remains Safe Labour. The other six seats are Safe Conservative.
Cornwall is a land all it’s own. It’s part of the Celtic Fringe, and the locals recently managed to save their native language from dying out. Unlike Wales, though, it’s historically had a privileged position; before the Great Reform Bill, Cornwall had forty-four MPs because The Crown heavily valued the local tin mining industry. These days, Cornwall has six constituencies (in the new map one seat has part of Devon). Five of them were already Safe Conservative. St. Ives was Likely Conservative, but it had to expand and becomes Safe Conservative as well.
And there you have; That’s the last in the series, as I won’t be doing a full piece on Scotland (though I may include a few notes on it in the future). The final totals (sans Scotland) are: 290 Safe Conservative, 157 Safe Labour, 19 Likely Conservative, 17 Likely Labour, 2 Likely Liberal Democrat, 2 Likely Plaid Cymru, 12 Lean Conservative, 6 Lean Labour, 1 Lean Liberal Democrat, 1 Lean Plaid Cymru, 21 Tossup. You read that right, folks. The Tories could lose every Tossup and still have a comfortable majority of 321. Remember, these ratings assume a movement to the Tories of four points or less, which is pretty modest given their current poll numbers. The flip side of that is that a few of the Tossups don’t involve Team Blue and Labour has relatively few Likely seats that can be poached in a big Tory win. May should have a fairly comfortable majority, but she’d probably need the supposed breakthrough in Scotland to materialize in good seat gains to get a very large majority.
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