County Essex Created 1945 Member of parliament Jackie Doyle-Price | Electorate 77,667 (December 2010) European Parliament constituency East of England Number of members 1 | |
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Major settlements Grays, Tilbury, South Ockendon, Chafford Hundred | ||
Thurrock is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Jackie Doyle-Price, a Conservative.
Contents
Boundaries
1945-1983: The Urban District of Thurrock.
1983-2010: The Borough of Thurrock wards of Aveley, Belhus, Chadwell St Mary, East Tilbury, Grays Thurrock North, Grays Thurrock Town, Little Thurrock, Ockendon, Stifford, Tilbury, and West Thurrock.
2010–present: The Borough of Thurrock wards of Aveley and Uplands, Belhus, Chadwell St Mary, Chafford and North Stifford, Grays Riverside, Grays Thurrock, Little Thurrock Blackshots, Little Thurrock Rectory, Ockendon, South Chafford, Stifford Clays, Tilbury Riverside and Thurrock Park, Tilbury St Chads, West Thurrock, and South Stifford.
History
The loss of the area to the east was of a similar landscape and built environment, except for Canvey Island which demographically has a high retired proportion of its population. Its scant social housing contrasts with its modest incomes and fewer than average large gardens and large houses as is common in coastal communities.
Thurrock was for 38 years from and including 1945 a large-majority Labour seat in parliamentary elections. The post-Falklands War election in 1983 gave majority of less than 4% of the vote to a recently-split Labour Party — for which see SDP. A Conservative gained the Thurrock seat in 1987 with a small majority. In 1992 the division was regained by a Labour candidate, namely Andrew MacKinlay, who was during his tenure as MP criticised for his questioning technique used of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly.
In the 2010 general election, a Conservative gained the seat, with Jackie Doyle-Price being elected as the MP with a majority of 92 votes, the third most marginal in that election. The 2015 result gave the seat the 8th most marginal majority of the Conservative Party's 331 seats by percentage of majority.
The seat has bellwether outcome status since 1997.
Dr Oonagh McDonald was Opposition Spokesman on Defence from 1981–1983, and then Opposition Spokesman on Treasury and Economic Affairs from 1983–1987.
Constituency profile
The seat has seen considerable settlement growth since 1989 when housing projects marking the start of a phase of development, dovetailing with the Thames Gateway initiative, began – see Chafford Hundred in the seat, for example. Retail and distribution are major areas of West Thurrock which contains Lakeside Shopping Centre.
Workless claimants, registered jobseekers, were in November 2012 higher than the national average of 3.8%, at 4.8% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian. The regional average for the Eastern England region was considerably lower, at 3.2% of the population.
Elections in the 2010s
Thurrock is a unique 3-way ultra-marginal seat, the Conservatives will need to defend against UKIP and Labour to hold it. It is number 1 on UKIP's 2020 target list, the party only needs a 0.98% swing to win the seat from third place. The constituency is also at number 7 on Labour's target list, with a 0.54% swing needed for their candidate to gain.
At the 2015 general election the already-marginal seat became a 3-way contest, less than 1,000 votes separated the top three candidates. The fourth-placed Liberal Democrats returned less than 1,000 votes and lost their deposit.