The market town of Boston is an important administrative centre for rural Lincolnshire, and its modernised port, which brings thousands of tonnes of steel, timber and paper into the constituency, a key employer. Light industry and food processing are the other major industries in the town and surrounding villages, but elsewhere agriculture remains dominant.
The resort of Skegness has recovered from a damaging dip in trade caused by pit closures in the East Midlands during the 1980s, and following regeneration through millions of pounds in EU grants, is now one of Britain’s most popular resorts, particularly among the elderly during the winter months.
When this seat was formed by boundary reviews in 1995, the Conservatives had good reason to celebrate. A combination of the lush Holland farmland that surrounds the town of Boston combined with Lincolnshire’s premier tourist resort of Skegness, seemed to provide the party with that rarest of commodities - a true blue seat in the north. This was undermined at the last election when the party was only able to hold on by the narrowest of margins.