South East Constituency Target Seats
Party target seats » Con Lab Lib Dem 1 Milton Keynes North East - Read 2 Gillingham - Read 3 Sittingbourne and Sheppey - Read 4 Hastings and Rye - Read 5 Chatham and Aylesford - Read 6 Reading West - Read 7 Thanet South - Read 8 Hemel Hempstead - Read 9 Reading East - Read 10 Brighton Kemptown - Read 11 Hove - Read 12 Dartford - Read 13 St Albans - Read 14 Portsmouth North - Read 15 Watford - Read 16 Welwyn Hatfield - Read 17 Gravesham - Read 18 Medway - Read 19 Bedford - Read 20 Milton Keynes South West - Read 21 Luton North - Read 22 Dover - Read 23 Stevenage - Read		Party seats pre-Election 2001 Party target seats » Con Lab Lib Dem 24 Crawley - Read 25 Luton South - Read 26 Winchester - Read 27 Eastleigh - Read 28 Lewes - Read 29 Portsmouth South - Read 30 Isle of Wight - Read 31 Oxford West and Abingdon - Read 32 Newbury - Read 33 Bedfordshire South West - Read 34 Witney - Read 35 Romsey - Read

Even in the reduced circumstances of 1997, the south east of England was still the Conservative party's heartland, electing 63 Tories to 30 Labour MPs and 7 Liberal Democrats. 15% of all constituencies are in the south east, but it returned 38% of the Conservative parliamentary delegation in 1997 and it was the only region in which they registered over 40% of the vote. The long-term growth in the parliamentary representation of the area has been a boon to the Conservatives.

The south east has a majority of the remaining safe Conservative seats; eight seats (New Forest West, Hampshire North East, Wokingham, Chesham and Amersham, Surrey East, Surrey Heath, Arundel and South Downs, and Horsham) had a Tory vote exceeding 50% in 1997. Only five other seats in the entire country (two in London, two in the West Midlands and John Major's Huntingdon) were this strong in support for Major's government if voting for John Redwood in Wokingham can be interpreted in that way.

In the landslide victory of 1987 the Conservatives managed 92 of the 93 seats, and were hardly worse off in 1992 (92 out of 94). Labour's showing in the region in the 1980s was exceptionally poor. Labour were wiped out in 1983 but managed to gain Oxford East in 1987. Labour strength seemed confined to local elections; the party was in control of Oxford, Southampton, Stevenage, Crawley and Slough for most of the time, and gained Brighton and Reading a bit later, but could not break through at parliamentary level. While the Alliance and Liberal Democrats could manage a respectable showing in many places, and win local elections, they were truly competitive only in a few seats.

All this changed in 1997. Seat after seat tumbled to Labour and some cherished Liberal Democrat ambitions were also fulfilled. Despite the wipe-out in 1983 the general swing and a few advantageous boundary revisions in 1997 produced a few Labour seats which now seem pretty safe: both the Southampton seats have five figure Labour majorities, and Brighton Pavilion gave Labour a two to one majority over an incumbent Tory MP. Oxford East and Slough are also no longer marginals according to our definition (Labour leads exceed 25%) and the Conservatives would be doing exceptionally well if they won any of them, or even came close.

However, most Labour seats in the south east do come within our rather generous definition of a marginal seat and are included in the detailed analysis. Many of them centre around the post-war New Towns circling London: Stevenage, Welwyn Hatfield, Crawley, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, and the Essex New Towns covered by our East Anglia and Essex region all of which were Labour gains in 1997 and all except Crawley have been Labour before. Only Bracknell of the New Towns stayed Tory in 1997.

Another group of Labour seats in the south east are towns with substantial manufacturing industry, but tend to be rather unglamorous, workaday places: Slough, Dartford, Gravesham, Bedford, Watford, Dover, Medway (Rochester); Portsmouth North, and the larger and more varied towns of Luton and Reading which have two seats each. Labour have won them before, and mostly not just in years of national triumph although Dartford is the only one that has ever seemed safe. All these form familiar Labour territory, but Labour also revived in areas where the party had been presumed long extinct such as St Albans (last won in 1945), Sittingbourne (1966), Gillingham (1945) and Brighton Kemptown (1966). In Bedfordshire South West, and Wycombe, however, previously Labour seats stayed with the Conservatives.

Some Labour gains in 1997 were unprecedented. The common factor of these (except Crawley) was that they were seaside constituencies: Hastings & Rye, Thanet South, Brighton Pavilion. Many of these seats in all regions swung violently against their traditional Conservative allegiance in 1992 and 1997, but have since shown signs of rejecting Labour government almost as decisively, unlike the New Towns.

Liberal Democrat seats in the south east are a scattered collection. There is a clump around Southampton (Eastleigh, Romsey, Winchester) and the outposts of Isle of Wight, Portsmouth South, Oxford West & Abingdon, Newbury and Lewes. Most of these, with the possible exceptions of Newbury and Oxford, were won by thin margins in 1997 and are at risk from a Conservative revival. There is no common factor other than local activity or a fortuitous by-election in the recent past. The Liberal Democrats missed Eastbourne, scene of a by-election victory in 1990, by 3.8% and slightly more surprisingly came within 4.8% of a sensational win in Surrey South West against Cabinet minister Virginia Bottomley. There were more distant prospects in Guildford (8.4%) and Worthing East & Shoreham (9.9%) that did not come off. In all of these the Conservatives were miles ahead in the 1999 Euro election and, except in Guildford, the Liberal Democrats have fallen back in local elections. Labour won some previous Liberal Democrat prospects like Gillingham, Hastings & Rye and St. Albans.

The creeping advance of the Liberal Democrats into previously safe Labour wards in the inner cities and even in peripheral council estate areas has continued, and spread beyond Liverpool and Sheffield into the south east. Bizarrely, the Liberal Democrats would have won both Southampton Itchen and Southampton Test in May 2000, two seats traditionally hard fought between Labour and the Conservatives but with five figure Labour majorities in 1997. The result in Oxford East in the 2000 local election was also rather strange. Labour would have held the seat on 35% of the vote thanks to a three way split between Liberal Democrats on 25% and Conservatives and Greens on about 19% each. The Greens are also a significant factor in cosmopolitan Brighton, with 19% of the Euro election vote in the Pavilion constituency.

If history is any guide, Labour's gains in the south east and those of the Liberal Democrats should melt away. The only time the Conservatives have ever lost the region was in 1906 to the Liberals, and this was promptly reversed in January 1910. Even in 1945, 42 Conservatives opposed 22 Labour MPs. Labour's toehold proved impossible to sustain in the 1950 and 1951 elections. The pattern was repeated in 1970 when Labour was wiped out in Kent for the first time since 1935. Will it happen again in 2001 or 2002, or does New Labour offer a different enough political formula to hold on? The south east has always been relatively Conservative because of its high income and private sector driven economic dynamism, but can Labour now gain credit for these?

The prospects in each marginal are analysed below, but there are a few other seats worthy of a mention. The Conservatives held Wycombe, Folkestone and Hythe, and Canterbury with under 40% of the vote against split opposition, and Labour also ran them pretty close in Basingstoke (4.2% lead). If Labour recovers particularly strongly from mid-term blues, these seats would be vulnerable, particularly the boom town of Basingstoke in north Hampshire where the party suffered no losses in 1999 and only one in 2000 in the local elections. The swing there was 6.6% in the Euro elections, resulting in a Conservative lead (17.3%) lower than in some currently Labour-held seats.

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