Phil Rodgers: Exploring what might happen in the new St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire constituency at the General Election

The next General Election, which is currently hurtling towards us, will be the first one fought on new boundaries since 2010. This won’t make very much difference to Cambridge, where the only change is that Cherry Hinton is nibbled off by the South Cambridgeshire constituency, but in the neighbouring seats there are more significant changes.

The biggest change of all is the entirely new constituency of St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, which may well turn out to be the least predictable of all Cambridgeshire’s seats. Here’s a look at its prospects.

SNMC, as the new seat has quickly become known, is made up of pieces of three former constituencies. The largest chunk, 44 per cent, comes from the old Huntingdon seat, most of this being St Neots. Nearly as much, 38 per cent, comes from the old South Cambs seat, including Cambourne, Papworth, Swavesey, Longstanton, and Girton. The remaining 18 per cent comes from South East Cambs, and covers Over, Willingham, Histon, and Impington.

The result is quite a diverse constituency, with its western end more concerned about traditional election issues like health and education, while issues of housing, transport, and growth resonate more strongly with voters closer to Cambridge. Other local issues include East West Rail, and suspicions amongst some voters about the possible return of congestion charge plans.

Let's take a look at the candidates, so far as we know who they are.

Anthony Browne is currently the MP for South Cambridgeshire, as well as being a minister in the Department of Transport, with responsibilities ranging from aviation to e-scooters. Like many other Conservative MPs, his current position rather resembles that of someone standing on a hillside watching rising floodwaters, and wondering how high they are going to get. He has already moved to higher ground by choosing to stand in SNMC rather than the significantly more vulnerable new South Cambridgeshire seat.

Anthony’s Lib Dem opponent will once again be Ian Sollom, who came within 3,000 votes of snatching the South Cambridgeshire seat from him in 2019. Ian’s most dramatic recent contribution to Cambridgeshire politics was as one of the Lib Dem opponents of the Cambridge congestion charge, signing the statement that helped bring the plans to a halt last year. In terms of swing required to win, SNMC is 38th on the Lib Dems’ target seat list, but the party will have even higher hopes in the neighbouring South Cambridgeshire seat, which is 5th.

As I write, Labour has not yet announced its candidate for SNMC, though I expect they’ll do so fairly soon. While Labour doesn’t have much history of electoral success in the area - they don’t currently have any county or district councillors in the constituency - they will be hoping that national swing will put them in contention.

However, in a somewhat surprising move in December, Labour published a list of 211 “non-battleground” seats, including SNMC and five other Cambridgeshire constituencies. I can almost sense certain Labour activists about to zing off an email to the letters page saying that just because a seat is “non-battleground” doesn’t mean they can’t win it (and indeed Labour won plenty of such seats in 1997), but this does suggest that more Labour resources will be going elsewhere.

There isn’t yet a declared Green candidate for the seat, but the Reform Party, formerly known as the Brexit Party, are fielding Guy Lachlan, a small business owner from Caxton. Reform are currently at around 10 per cent in the national polls, roughly the same level as the Lib Dems, and they may have a significant impact on the Conservative vote.

In some parts of SNMC, particularly St Neots, Independents have been successful in local elections. However, there isn’t yet a declared Independent candidate for the parliamentary seat. While it’s possible that one may stand, it’s extremely unusual for Independents to be elected as MPs.

What do we know about voting patterns in SNMC? Some useful insight comes from the renowned election experts Professors Rallings and Thrasher, who have produced estimates of the 2019 General Election vote for each of the new seat boundaries. The graph below shows the notional result for SNMC in 2019 - a comfortable Conservative majority over the Lib Dems, with Labour a little further back in third place.

Of course, the national political situation has changed a great deal since the last election. Back in those turbulent days of Brexit gridlock, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives romped home to victory with a 12 per cent lead over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. Now, in contrast, the polls are regularly showing Keir Starmer’s party around 20 per cent ahead of Rishi Sunak’s.

On the face of it, this would suggest we can expect a landslide Labour victory at the next election, but detailed polling data indicates a more complex picture. There are three main groups of voters, of roughly similar size, moving away from the Conservatives - some are going straight to Labour, some to Reform, and some to Don’t Know. Meanwhile, the increase in Labour support is coming from two main sources - as well as those voters switching from the Conservatives, an even larger group is coming from those who didn’t vote last time.

While the direct blue-to-red switchers may well stay with Labour, it’s possible that some of those switching from the Conservatives to Reform or Don’t Know may have second thoughts during the campaign, and decide that the devil they know is a better option after all. And Labour may find that the problem with relying on the support of people who didn’t vote last time is that it often turns out that they won’t vote next time either. It is possible for parties to identify and motivate former non-voters to turn out and support them - Daniel Zeichner did it in spectacular style in Cambridge in 2017 - but making it work needs both the right political circumstances, and also some really effective campaigning. So the fall in the Conservative vote, and the rise in Labour’s, might end up being smaller than the polls suggest.

What do the polls currently suggest for SNMC? A large YouGov poll last month produced the result shown in the graph above for the SNMC constituency, putting the three main parties nearly within the margin of error of each other. It’s important to remember that this is just a snapshot of opinion - the polls will almost certainly shift one way or another by polling day. But it does look like SNMC could be a genuine three-horse race.

Thanks to Anthony Browne and Ian Sollom who took time out of their busy schedules to talk to me for this article. St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire will be a fascinating contest when the General Election finally arrives.