As we enter the home straight for the 4 July general election, it’s worth remembering that the election is really a series of 635 mini-elections, as each individual parliamentary seat has its own contest.
In the first of a series of stories looking at how those elections can affect trade, the Daily Update takes a look at the seats of the current ministers at the Department for Business and Trade (DBT).
Kemi Badenoch – North West Essex
The incumbent business and trade secretary sits in in one of the safer Conservative seats - formerly named Saffron Waldon – in the Tory heartlands of rural Essex. She shares boundaries with other big names in the party James Cleverly and Priti Patel, who represent the adjoining constituencies of Braintree and Witham respectively.
Badenoch has been the trade minister since 2022, having first been appointed as head of the then-Department of International Trade before the trade and business departments were merged. She also served as a minister for equalities and levelling up before joining the cabinet under then-prime minister Boris Johnson.
North West Essex is largely similar to the old Saffron Walden. It sits on the outskirts of Chelmsford and across the town of Saffron Waldon, which got its name partly from the spice once grown in the area.
The seat has elected Conservatives since 1922. Past holders of the seat include Conservative titan Rab Butler and former speaker Alan Haselhurst, and a loss in the deep blue seat for Badenoch would be seen as a major upset.
Greg Hands – Chelsea and Fulham
A possible high-profile casualty, Hands faces the fight of his life in his West London seat.
Having previously represented the seat of Hammersmith and Fulham, before it was abolished and he swapped ‘Hammersmith’ for ‘Chelsea’, Hands walked over his opposition from 2010 to 2019.
In only one of those elections did he achieve less than 50% of the vote, the most recent election in 2019. Interestingly, this was also the only race in which he didn’t face a Labour candidate whose first name began with an ‘A’: his Labour opponents were called Alan, Alexandra and Alex in 2017, 2015 and 2010, respectively.
Both the Chelsea and Fulham football stadiums are based in the constituency, making Hands one of few MPs who sit for two Premier League teams.
Now, the four-time trade minister is facing tough odds as central London continues a red-ward trend, despite his relatively healthy majority of 11,241. If he does hold on, he could be the only inner-city Tory left standing, as the nearby Cities of London and Westminster seat is thought to be much more vulnerable.
Kevin Hollinrake – Thirsk and Malton
A junior minister at DBT since 2023, Hollinrake previously served in a similar position at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
His seat, Thirsk and Malton, sits in the Conservative stronghold of North Yorkshire and has seen minor changes as a result of the boundary review. It’s been in Conservative hands since its creation in 1885, and Hollinrake currently enjoys a sizeable majority of over 25,000.
A slight worry for the Tories is that the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority was won by Labour in this year’s local elections, with Labour pulling even with the Conservatives in their rural heartlands.
The town of Thirsk is thought to get its name from the old Scandinavian word thresk, meaning marsh.
Alan Mak – Havant
Mak is a more recent addition to DBT’s roster of ministers, having taken over from Nusrat Ghani as undersecretary for economic security in March this year.
The first ever MP of East Asian descent, Mak first entered the commons in 2015 as MP for Havant in Hampshire. He also became the first minister of Chinese descent in 2021, when he was made a government whip for the treasury, later taking on another treasury role in 2022 under Johnson.
Havant is a fairly safe seat for the Conservatives, with a current majority of over 21,000, only seriously being contested in 1997. However, the local council fell into no overall control earlier this year, with gains by Labour, the Lib Dems and Reform.
Maria Caulfield – Lewes
Another member of the 2015 intake, Caulfield serves as women’s minister under Badenoch, who also holds the equalities brief as well as that of business and trade. A former cancer nurse, she mainly leads on health policy.
Since taking the seat of Lewes from Liberal Democrat’s Norman Baker in 2015, Caulfield has survived with only very modest majorities in 2015 and 2019.
She now faces a stiff challenge from the Liberal Democrats in the seat, which sits right at the foot of the country and plays host to the annual Lewes Bonfire for Guy Fawkes Night.
Given possible Tory struggles in the South East, Lewes is a seat that the Lib Dems will be targeting heavily.
Stuart Andrews – Pudsey
Another equalities minister under Badenoch, Andrews has already said he will not be standing for his old seat of Pudsey, following its abolition in the boundary review.
For fans of the Children in Need programme, there is indeed a relationship between the town and the mascot. Creator of Pudsey the Bear Joanna Lane hails from the area – her grandfather was town mayor in 1950 – and told the BBC that she named the mascot after her hometown.
Andrews told the Yorkshire Evening Post that he wasn’t standing in either the newly-created seats of Leeds North West or Leeds West and Pudsey.
Following a surprisingly narrow victory in 2017 and a slightly more comfortable victory in 2019, the under-secretary at DBT announced he would retire this year.
After the election was announced, he said on Twitter:
“I am genuinely sorry that the constituency will no longer exist – it’s been a blast!”