The fragility of many Conservative MPs' majorities should be a cause for concern

By Matthew Barrett
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Reading Dewi at Slugger O'Toole's analysis of the Scottish election results - and the fact the SNP were only a few thousand votes short of an even more stunning victory, such was the small size of the Lab/Con/Lib majority in a number of Holyrood seats - I was reminded of the fragility of a number of Conservative Westminster seats.

When examining our performance in last year's general election, an often over-looked fact is that many, almost certainly the majority, of Conservative MPs who won their seats last year from Labour, have smaller majorities than their Labour predecessors had in 1997.

This should be a cause for concern. If there was an election in a month's time, and even if the parties were level, at, say, 37%/37% and the Lib Dems on 10%, electoral calculators show Labour would win back tens of seats we gained last year.

As an example (critera: a seat created before 1997, which Labour gained from us in 1997, and we gained from them in 2010), examine the difference in majorities of these seats (there are countless examples, and these are just random ones):

• Waveney: Labour in 1997 overturned a 6,702 Tory majority to record a 12,093 majority. Our majority last year when we won it back was 769
• Stevenage: Labour in 1997 overturned a 4,888 Tory majority to record an 11,582 majority. Our majority last year when we won it back was 3,578
• Stockton South: Labour in 1997 overturned a 3,369 Tory majority to record an 11,585 majority. Our majority last year when we won it back was 332
• Northampton North: Labour in 1997 overturned a 3,908 Tory majority to record a 10,000 majority. Our majority last year when we won it back was 1,936
• Cardiff North: Labour in 1997 overturned a 2,969 Tory majority to record an 8,126 majority. Our majority last year when we won it back was 194

This isn't, of course, a universal situation. Some seats beat the Labour 1997 majority (for example, Battersea: 1997: 5,360, 2010: 5,977), some seats we won had been Labour since 1992. Some seats like Crewe and Nantwich, Carlisle and Dewsbury had been Labour for longer (1974, 1964 and 1987, respectively). But the fact remains that in many of the marginal seats we won last year, our majority is weaker than the Labour majority of 1997, which suggests we will need to be just as many points ahead of Labour as we were last year - 7% - just to hold on to them, let alone make gains towards a majority.