County East Sussex Created 1950 European Parliament constituency South East England Number of members 1 | Electorate 71,181 (December 2010) Created from Brighton Member of parliament Peter Kyle Replaced by Brighton | |
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Hove is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Labour's Peter Kyle.
Contents
Boundaries
1950-1983: The County Borough of Hove, and the Urban District of Portslade-by-Sea.
1983-2010: The Borough of Hove.
2010-present: The City of Brighton and Hove wards of Brunswick and Adelaide, Central Hove, Goldsmid, Hangleton and Knoll, North Portslade, South Portslade, Stanford, Westbourne, and Wish.
The constituency covers Hove and Portslade in the city of Brighton and Hove.
Constituency profile
The settlement of Hove is an economically active seaside resort which is both a commuter town and centred in an area of high local employment, stretching from Portsmouth to London Gatwick Airport. The seat acted as a bellwether of the national result between 1979 and 2010.
History
It was not until the 1950 general election, when major boundary changes occurred in Brighton, that Hove acquired a parliamentary seat of its own, having previously been in the former two-seat Brighton constituency. Hove was a Conservative stronghold or marginal seat until the 1997 general election, when the Labour Party saw a landslide parliamentary victory and with it, like in Greater London, wide success on the developed East Sussex coast.
Labour retained the seat, though with narrow majorities, at the 2001 and 2005 general elections. The Liberal Democrats including their two predecessor parties amassed their largest share of the vote in 2010 at 22.6% of the vote. A Conservative regained the seat at the 2010 general election. A swing saw it fall back into Labour hands five years later.