Yes, a historically 'blue wall' area. A kind of reverse situation to Hartlepool in May 2021 which by contrast is historically a 'red wall' area.
I reckon the political pendulum is cyclical and seems to come full circle every 25-30 years or so at the very most, especially as I quoted the expression 'what goes around comes around' a couple of posts upthread. Locally it seems a bit like 1996-97 repeating itself as our last by-election was in the spring of 1996 that was won by Labour's Brian Jenkins (eventually defeated in May 2010 by the now-disgraced Tory MP Chris Pincher) who replaced the previous sitting (Tory MP) David Lightbown who passed away at the end of 1995, after serving almost 13 years as our local MP since 1983, whose tenure was almost of the same time-span as our recently fallen-from-grace MP Chris Pincher, and then just over a year later in May 1997, New Labour came to power nationally.