Electoral History in North East Cambridgeshire

Dutch engineers drained the flatlands and this part of the country was turned into the most productive farmland in the UK.  Agriculture, including horticulture and market gardening, is important but this accounts for about 11% of the working population.  A large proportion of the population is employed in food processing and other light industry.  For a Tory seat the social mix is unusual - the percentage of white collar employees is very low while 52.5% of the population can be classified as skilled manual or partly skilled.

Before the boundary changes in 1983 Cambridgeshire North East was known as the Isle of Ely but in that year the town was removed from the constituency, forcing a change of name.  After 1945 Ely became a safe Tory seat but in 1973 the Liberals gained it in a sensational by-election victory.  The Liberals had not even bothered to field a candidate here in 1970 but Clement Freud took over 38% of the vote at the by-election and went on to win another four general election campaigns only losing in 1987 by 1,428.  Freud did not stand in 1992 and support for the Liberal Democrats dropped by 14.2% as they lost support to both the Conservatives and Labour.  The Tories now have a healthy majority of over 6,000 and the current MP, local man Malcolm Moss, appears to have a safe seat, having won both 1997 and 2001.

Source: BBC Political Research Unit - February 1997 and House of Commons Library, Elections Database Britain Votes 6, Rallings & Thrasher 1997

The following is taken from Robert Waller and Byron Criddle's 
"Almanac of British Politics" (fifth edition 1996) 
-the was published before the 1997 General Election- 

For 14 years the MP for the heart of the Fens was one of the best-known personalities in the Commons.  Clement Freud was elected for the Isle of Ely in a 'surprise' by-election gain in 1973, and subsequently returned for North East Cambridgeshire after the cathedral city of Ely was transferred out of the constituency in 1983.  Freud has been a Liberal, a chef, a gourmet, a TV and radio personality, a sometime director of the Playboy Club, and a class winner in the Daily Mail London/New York air race of 1969.  Despite his often spiky individualism few seriously expected him to lose his seat in 1987 - it was widely believed that the Fenland people felt they had benefited from having a distinctive representative, one of the few recognised far beyond the confines of the House of Commons itself.  Yet the Conservatives' new candidate, Malcolm Moss, himself based in Wisbech, secured a 6 per cent swing from the Alliance (Liberal/SDP), which was enough to unseat Freud by nearly 1,500 votes.

In 1992, with Moss's incumbency and Freud's absence, NE Cambridgeshire reverted to its original status of a safe Tory seat, as a further swing of over 10 per cent increased the numerical majority to 15,093.  Although the bleak scenery of Fenland, its altitude hovering around zero, doesn't look very prosperous to the untrained eye, this is long-term Tory country, with relatively little Liberal Democrat activity in local politics and no Labour tradition, even in the towns of Wisbech, March, Whittlesey and Chatteris.  In minor boundary changes the seat loses some 5,000 voters to SE Cambridgeshire.  The recent electoral history of this constituency demonstrates the potentially disruptive effect of a by-election, especially when won by a powerful 'character'.  North East Cambridgeshire has now abandoned the experiment, and returned to a pre-Freudian way of thinking.

The Tories now have a healthy majority of nearly 9000, and the current MP, local man Malcolm Moss, appears to have a safe seat, having won in 1997, 2001 and 2005.

 Sources: House of Commons Library, Elections Database Britain Votes 6, Rallings & Thrasher