Conservative vote rose in seats receiving extra government money

The Conservative party won a bigger vote swing last week in areas where they had spent significant amounts of government money, an analysis has found.

Before the election, the Financial Times identified 30 constituencies where the coalition had poured in money for new projects, triggering accusations of "pork barrel" politics.

According to the Social Market Foundation, that extra money may have paid off, with the Tories increasing their vote share in 21 of those seats.

Both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were criticised regularly during the last parliament for using public money to shore up their own vulnerable seats.

Several of these schemes were announced in George Osborne's final Budget before the general election, with Treasury officials saying there had been an effort to "fund things that will be helpful in certain places".

At the time, the Labour party called the moves "pork barrel politics at its worst".

Schemes that helped constituencies in seats held by Conservative MPs included £97m for the regeneration of Brent Cross shopping centre in Hendon; £7m for a growth zone in Croydon; and £60m for a technology centre in Warwick.

The Conservatives won the marginal seat of Hendon with a 7 per cent swing, Croydon central with a 4 per cent swing, North Warwickshire with a 2 per cent swing and South Warwickshire with a 5 per cent swing.

Watford, the beneficiary of an added £34m of future rail investment, saw the biggest shift, with an increase in the Conservative vote of 8.6 per cent.

Of the 26 seats highlighted by the research and held by the Conservatives, there was a 3 per cent average swing to their party. That compares with an average swing across the country of 0.8 per cent, and across tight Labour-Tory marginals of 1.7 per cent.

Ben Richards, a researcher at the SMF, said: "We found a striking difference in the Conservative vote share between seats that had spending targeted at them from the 2015 Budget, compared to both the national swing and results in other Labour-Conservative marginals.

"The fact that the Tory vote increase in the seats promised spending is even higher than in other marginals suggests the budget measures may have had some impact."

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They included Bath, where the Treasury this year announced it would spend £250,000 researching aggressive urban seagulls at the behest of Lib Dem MP Don Foster. Mr Foster lost the seat by nearly 4,000 votes.

And one of the biggest beneficiaries was Danny Alexander, who used his own position as Treasury chief secretary to help fund several schemes in his Inverness constituency. They included a bailout for the London-Inverness sleeper train and extra money for ski lifts up the Cairngorm Mountains.

Mr Alexander lost his seat last week, another victim of the landslide victory achieved by the Scottish National party, which beat him with a 31 per cent swing.

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