STV for the Black Country

I did a little research before starting this post because I wasn’t sure if the Black Country is still a term used for those parts of the West Midlands conurbation outside Birmingham - and it appears it is and residents of the region take on the name with pride.. so I may continue.

My personal note is that I lived in the area for nearly two years in the 90’s. I have some local knowledge. There’s more to say that on the Shropshire post, so let’s crack on.

Wolverhampton (to elect 3 MPs, covering the current constituencies of  Wolverhampton North East; Wolverhampton South East; Wolverhampton West)

Dudley and South Staffordshire (to elect 4 MPs, covering the current constituencies of  Dudley; Halesowen;  Kingswinford and South Staffordshire; Stourbridge)

Walsall and West Bromwich (to elect 5 MPs, covering the current constituencies of  Aldridge-Brownhills; Smethwick; Tipton and Wednesbury; Walsall and Bloxwich; West Bromwich)

The Geography

Constituency boundaries in this area can change quite a lot because so many places merge with each other. It’s easier for the Boundaries Commission to justify different solutions. The latest arrangement, adhering as it does more strictly to electorate numbers, does seem to play particularly fast and loose with council areas. As with the rest of this project, my building blocks are the current FPTP constituencies

The two big parties are on top here, with the same shift between the two seen in most places. Remain UK are the main challengers. With a 3, a 4 and a 5 MP constituency here, it could be a place to study how number of MPs affects the spread of representation

Wolverhampton used to have 4 constituencies, some rather small. Now it has 3, two of which borrow from Walsall borough. These can be joined together in one STV area.

Dudley used to be named in two constituencies. Also, Stourbridge and Halesowen, both independent towns within the borough, used to be squeezed into one seat. For now it’s ‘one Dudley’ and separate constituencies for the other towns - see what I mean about shifting boundaries?

Now a small part of Dudley is joined with South Staffordshire, which was my reason for including that part of the county in this post. That small part is Kingswinford, which may not have been well known outside the area before its inclusion in a constituency name, but it is familiar to me - the office I worked in for those two years is located here. I know the South Staffordshire parts from my journey to work and the writing group I joined (I lived in Wolverhampton). I rarely went into Dudley town but the Industrial Museum in the town centre is well worth a visit.

Sandwell, the name of a borough, isn’t as well known nationally as its football team, so I use West Bromwich in my naming, as I join it with Walsall to the north. Walsall used to be good for 3 constituencies of it’s own, but as mentioned, two chucks of territory are now included in Wolverhampton.

The Politics.

My short time living in the region didn’t include a general election, and I wasn’t involved in politics then. Wolverhampton traditionally had a sector that stayed blue - the South West - and this was represented in the 1960s and early 1970s by Enoch Powell. The west side of the town is still their stronger area, but in 2019 they would have won North East as well. In 2024, they lost both.

Based on 2024 results, the two larger parties would win one each, with Labour and Reform competing for the third.

The Conservatives held on to South Staffordshire in 2024, but the three urban Dudley borough parts were all lost to Labour. In 2019, on STV, the Tories might just have squeezed 3 wins here, but 1 would have been their limit in 2024. With 4 seats up for grabs, Reform would have been in with a good chance of one. The 4th would be based on vote transfers. It seems improbable that even under STV, there would be enough support for the Greens or Lib Dems.

The Black Country could be considered part of the Red Wall, areas where the Conservatives made sweeping gains in 2019 based on the ‘Get Brexit done’ line, only to loose just about all of them in 2024. 3 of the 5 seats in West Bromwich and Walsall fit this pattern. The exceptions are Smethwick, which has been Labour since the 1970s and Aldridge-Brownhills, always and now a Conservative stronghold In 2019, there is a fair chance the Tories would have had 3 MPs under STV, only to be reduced to 1 in 2024. In an area where only the two big parties and Reform are competitive, I’d guess 2 would be Labour, 1 Reform, and the other one very much up for grabs.

These seats all had very poor turnouts in 2024, even though there were many marginals, which does throw doubt on the idea that competitiveness increases engagement. If STV were to address this problem - and I can’t assert it definitely would - then the 2024 stayaways would have a big part to play in saying where 1, even 2, of these gains would go.

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I do wonder, while writing these notes, if I am crazy to work on this project. I’ll leave it to one of the areas favourite stars to comment on that