County Greater London European Parliament constituency London Number of members 1 Party Labour Party | Electorate 65,936 (December 2010) Member of parliament Karen Buck Replaced by Marylebone | |
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Major settlements Maida Vale, St John's Wood, Queen's Park, London Created from Regent's Park and Kensington North | ||
Westminster North is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its 2010 recreation by Karen Buck, a member of the Labour Party. Its previous 1983 to 1997 existence is also covered by this article.
Contents
1983–1997
The seat was created under the Third Periodic Review of constituencies in 1983, which followed the first Boundary Commission Review in 1945, which in turn directly followed the Representation of the People Act 1918 review. It was based largely on Paddington but also took in the abolished St Marylebone constituency.
The seat was held with modest majorities for the first creation, made up of three terms, by John Wheeler, a Conservative. Paddington constituency, its main predecessor was often marginal: by length of a single party's representation and by majorities achieved. The far less contributory precursor, St Marylebone, was a Conservative safe seat.
The 1997 boundary changes expanded the constituency to the west, taking in Labour-voting areas of north Kensington and tilting the seat towards Labour. Wheeler decided that he did not wish to contest such unfavourable territory and sought selection elsewhere. However he was unsuccessful in finding a new safe seat and thus retired at the 1997 general election.
2010 to date
The seat was tipped in mainstream newspapers to be likely to achieve the necessary notional swing based on the same areas votes in the previous election, in 2005, to fall to the Conservative candidate; however the seat fell short of the national average swing and was accordingly won by Karen Buck. The 2015 result gave the seat the 21st most marginal majority of Labour's 232 seats by percentage of majority.
Boundaries
The seat has electoral wards:
History of boundaries
From 1983–1997 the constituency had the wards:
Parliament accepted the Boundary Commission's Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies which called for the recreation of this constituency for the General Election 2010. This was achieved from parts of two seats: the eastern three quarters of Regent's Park and Kensington North and northern parts of "Cities of London and Westminster":
Population expansion across the former main seat was a factor, including Maida Vale, West Kilburn and to a lesser degree in St John's Wood which are retained as well as in Notting Hill and North Kensington which were therefore removed.
Constituency profile
Comprising the northwestern part of the City of Westminster, this seat and its main forerunner have been a Conservative hope since they effectively lost it in the 1997 General Election, but Labour have stubbornly held on to it following local council embezzlement under Shirley Porter, even though the constituency contains some affluent residential areas that have historically voted Conservative in large numbers such as Bayswater and the area on the western and northwestern sides of Regent's Park.
Lord's Cricket Ground and the famous Abbey Road Studios are in the seat, while the Queen's Park, Church Street, Westbourne Park and Harrow Road areas, further from central London are more of mixed income brackets and have since 1997 often elected Labour councillors, though most parts of the seat have Conservative councillors in local elections.
Reflective of the excellent transport links to the selective professional industries of the City of London and long-standing desirable housing in this area, workless claimants who were registered jobseekers were in November 2012 lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 2.9% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian.