All you need to know about the South Ribble count - live - video Dailymotion

What to watch out for in the South Ribble constituency.

Transcript

00:00Welcome to the tennis centre in Bamber Bridge, the scene of the South Ribble

00:04constituency count tonight. South Ribble, very much a bellwether seat, meaning that

00:08it usually tracks the national result at general elections. I say usually, in the

00:13case of South Ribble, it's actually mirrored the national result at every

00:16election since this seat was formed back in 1983, which means of course that

00:21currently it's held by the Conservatives. Catherine Fletcher securing a

00:26comfortable majority here back in 2019, but the boundaries of the constituency

00:30have changed somewhat since then, so some very clever number crunchers have

00:35estimated what the 2019 results would have been had the 2024 borders been in

00:40place back then, and on the basis of that assessment they also suggest that Labour

00:45would need an 8.65% swing towards the party in order to take this seat from

00:51the Conservatives. That puts it 95th on Labour's target list nationally, but it

00:56is of course exactly the kind of seat therefore the Labour does need to take

01:00in order to secure a majority in Parliament. Don't be fooled by the name

01:05of the constituency by the way, it doesn't exactly mirror the South Ribble

01:08council area because there are large parts of Chorley that were already part

01:12of this constituency, Croston, Maudsley, Eccleston, and because of those boundary

01:17changes that I've mentioned they've now been joined by the likes of Heskin and

01:20Charnock Richard. Meanwhile there are bits of the South Ribble borough council

01:24area that aren't in this constituency, they're over in Ribble Valley, so

01:28Walton-le-Dale, Bamber Bridge, and also Lostock Hall aren't part of this seat in

01:34spite of very much being South Ribble borough council areas. When might we

01:38expect a result? Well the Press Association is predicting a three o'clock

01:42declaration, but I was here back in 2019 and the result came through just a

01:47little after four and there's no particular reason that it's going to be

01:50any quicker this time around, so potentially a long night ahead, plenty

01:55more from here as we go on.