Like all
UK Parliament constituencies, Boston and Skegness elects one
Member of Parliament (MP) using the
first-past-the-post voting system.
1997–2001: Marginal seat between Conservatives and Labour The constituency was created in 1997 from parts of the former constituencies of
Holland with Boston and
East Lindsey. The in part predecessor area's veteran MP
Richard Body, who had been MP for Holland with Boston between 1966 and 1997, held the seat at the 1997 general election with a 1.4% majority (647 votes). The seat had been formed from two constituencies held by the Conservatives with large majorities, and a Conservative victory was seen as very likely. However, the election result nationally was a landslide victory for the
Labour Party, and Body only narrowly remained in Parliament; the seat was the tenth most marginal Conservative-held seat at the election by percentage majority and the ninth most marginal by absolute majority (number of votes). The academics
Robert Waller and
Byron Criddle attributed his victory to the
Referendum Party's decision not to stand, which they did because of Body's
Eurosceptic views. After retiring from Parliament, Body left the Conservatives and joined the
UK Independence Party (UKIP), a party that supported British withdrawal from the European Union (EU), though he encouraged people to vote Conservative at the
2005 general election. His membership later lapsed and he defected to the
English Democrats, a small
far-right party. Body's successor, the Conservative
Mark Simmonds, won an even smaller majority of 1.3% over Labour in the
2001 general election (515 votes). The seat was described by Waller and Criddle as "an exceptionally tight two-way marginal". The seat was the fourth most marginal Conservative seat at that election (by both percentage and absolute majority) and the most marginal Conservative seat with Labour in second place.
2001–2010: Labour support falls, UKIP perform strongly In the 2005 general election, Simmonds increased his majority over Labour to 14.1%. The seat had the 139th largest absolute majority and the 131st largest percentage majority out of the 198 Conservative seats. Richard Horsnell, the candidate for the anti-European Union party
UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) came third with 9.6%. This was UKIP's highest vote share in any seat in the 2005 general election, with the exception of
South Staffordshire, where UKIP won 10.4% after the election was delayed due to the death of a candidate. UKIP also performed strongly in several local council elections in Boston on the same day, winning more than 20% of the vote in some wards. Overall, UKIP won 2.2% of the national vote and won an average of 2.8% in the seats they stood candidates in. Meanwhile, the
Liberal Democrats fell from third to fourth place with just 8.7% of the vote; this was the party's seventh-lowest vote share in any seat, and third-lowest vote share in a constituency in England, in the election. Waller and Criddle said that the constituency "now looks like a fairly safe Tory [Conservative] seat", though Labour had hoped to win the seat in the election. After his re-election, Simmonds was appointed Shadow Minister for International Development in May 2005, before being moved to be a Shadow Health Minister in July 2007. In the 2010 general election, Simmonds increased his majority over Labour further, winning almost half the vote compared to Labour's 20.6%. The Liberal Democrats came third, while UKIP achieved fourth place; their candidate Christopher Pain won 9.5% of the vote. This share of the vote was similar to the result in the previous election, and was UKIP's second-highest in 2010, after the special case of
Buckingham. The far-right
British National Party (BNP) also performed strongly in the constituency, winning 5.3% of the vote; since this was more than 5%, the party saved their
deposit.
2010–2015: Conservatives challenged by UKIP Following the 2010 general election, Simmonds became
Parliamentary Private Secretary to
Caroline Spelman, the
Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. Following the
2012 cabinet reshuffle, he became the
Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs a junior role in the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The polling company
Survation analysed the results of the
2013 local elections and estimated that if UKIP were to perform equally well in a general election, then they would gain the constituency with an 11% majority. Of the ten constituencies that Survation predicted UKIP would win, Boston and Skegness had the largest predicted UKIP majority. UKIP performed strongly in and near the town of Boston, which was historically a safe Conservative area; this was seen as a surprise and was attributed to voters being concerned about immigration and feeling ignored by politicians. Afterwards, there was some media speculation that
Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP, might stand in the constituency at the next general election; Simmonds said he "would be delighted" if Farage did, as it would give issues in the constituency more attention. In the
2014 European Parliament election, which UKIP won ahead of Labour and the Conservatives, the Borough of Boston had the highest UKIP vote share in the country. The party gained 52% of votes in the borough, followed by the Conservatives and then Labour. Explaining his decision, he said that his salary and expenses of over £100,000 were not enough to maintain a home in London, which he said caused "intolerable" pressure in his family life. There was also media speculation that he stood down due to the threat of UKIP gaining the seat. Interviews were used to narrow down the number of applicants to four, with the winner then being chosen at a public meeting that all voters in the constituency could attend and vote in. Several rounds of voting were used; the first two rounds, with 81 votes cast in each, both eliminated one candidate; the first candidate eliminated was
Paul Bristow, who later won the seat of
Peterborough in 2019. The third round saw 80 votes cast with a tie between the journalist
Matt Warman and the headteacher Tim Clark. The seat had been one of UKIP's top target seats in that election. The journalist and commentator
Iain Dale predicted in February 2015 that UKIP would gain the seat, writing "[if] UKIP are to make a breakthrough, it might well be here"; overall, Dale predicted that UKIP would make five gains at the election.
Two opinion polls of the constituency were carried out prior to the 2015 general election. A poll in September 2014 predicted a UKIP majority of 19%, while a 2015 poll forecast a narrow Conservative majority of 3%. However, an internal poll conducted by UKIP (not released to the public) close to the election found a Conservative lead of seven points. On the day of the election, 8 May 2015, Warman was duly elected as the Member of Parliament; the Conservative majority shrunk to 10% with the UKIP candidate
Robin Hunter-Clarke, a councillor on the
Lincolnshire County Council, coming in second place. Warman won 43.8% of the vote in the seat, while Hunter-Clarke achieved 33.8%, which was UKIP's second-highest vote share in any constituency in that election (after
Clacton, the only constituency the party won). UKIP increased their vote share by 24.3% compared to the previous general election, while the Conservative share of the vote fell by 5.7%; this was the seventh-largest increase in vote share achieved by UKIP at the election. Out of the 650 constituencies in the United Kingdom, the seat was the 126th most marginal in terms of percentage majority and 115th most marginal when measured by number of votes.
2015–2019: Brexit vote, becoming a safe Conservative seat Warman's
maiden speech discussed the positive and negative effects of immigration on Boston and Skegness, saying that the pressures on public services "allowed divisive, single-issue political campaigns to flourish". Warman supported remaining in the European Union in the
2016 EU membership referendum. Nevertheless, the constituency is estimated to have had the highest vote share in favour of leaving the
European Union (EU) in the EU referendum, at 75.6%. On 29 April 2017,
Paul Nuttall, the leader of UKIP at the time, announced that he was standing in Boston and Skegness, noting that the constituency had the highest Leave vote in the country. Shortly before the election, the BBC described Boston as "Britain's unofficial Brexit capital". Liberal Democrats and Labour also planned to contest the seat, with the
Green Party intending to if they could find the funds for a
deposit. (The Green Party did stand a candidate, as did a minor party called
Blue Revolution that only had one parliamentary candidate in the election.) Nutall came in third place (with Labour second), winning just 7.7% of the vote; this was a decrease of 26.1% compared to 2015, and the third-largest percentage fall in UKIP vote share in that election. UKIP's share of the vote fell nationally in that election, and the result was still their seventh-highest vote share of any seat. The election saw UKIP achieve their worst result in the constituency since the 2001 general election. The Conservative majority increased to an all-time high in the seat, while Labour had their best result since 2005, achieving 25% of the votes cast. The Green Party and Liberal Democrats lost their deposits, mirroring the 2015 election results for both parties. Of the 46 constituencies in the
East Midlands region, Boston and Skegness had the third lowest turnout at the election, at 62.7%. Based on estimates produced by Professor
Chris Hanretty of
Royal Holloway, University of London, Boston and Skegness had the third-highest vote share for the
Brexit Party in the
2019 European Parliament election. According to Hanretty, 56.4% of votes cast in the constituency were for the new anti-EU party, which was led by Farage, behind only
Castle Point and Clacton. Hanretty also estimated that the Conservatives came second in the seat, with 12.5% of the vote, followed by UKIP, who won 7.7%, their tenth strongest performance of the election. UKIP were closely followed by the Liberal Democrats and Labour, who came fourth and fifth with 7.5% and 7.4% of the vote respectively. The seat was discussed in 2019 as a potential target for the Brexit Party in the next general election, due to the high level of support for leaving the European Union in the constituency. The Brexit Party achieved high levels of support in
general election polls in June and July, and one estimate, by the website
Electoral Calculus, suggested that the Brexit Party would gain Boston and Skegness. However, the Brexit Party support decreased over time, and in the run-up to the
2019 general election, which took place in December, some analysts thought that the large Conservative majority made victory there unlikely.
Nigel Farage later announced that the Brexit Party would not stand in any constituency won by the Conservatives in 2017 and the Brexit Party candidate
Jonathan Bullock was therefore obliged to stand down just a week after formally launching his general election campaign for the seat. Mr Bullock was also a
Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the
East Midlands constituency. UKIP did not stand in the constituency. They stood in only 44 out of 650 British seats at the election. In the election, held on 12 December, the Conservatives further increased their majority, winning 76.7% of the vote. This was the Conservatives' second-highest vote share in the election (after Castle Point). The seat was also the fifteenth safest seat in the election (measured by percentage majority) and the second-safest Conservative seat after neighbouring South Holland and the Deepings.
2019–2024: Reform UK's ascendancy Leading up to the
2024 United Kingdom general election, analysts considered this constituency of interest for
Reform UK due to its high Euroscepticism. For this reason,
Richard Tice, the party's deputy leader, decided to run in it, reflective of previous major UKIP politicians targeting it for the same reason. Tice ultimately succeeded, managing to overturn the previous Tory MP's majority of 27,402. Based on the party swings, it can be assumed that Tice managed to take many voters who had primarily voted for the Tories in 2019, but did not want to again, demonstrating a nationwide trend against the party. == Members of Parliament ==