Islington South and Finsbury (UK Parliament constituency)
Islington South and Finsbury in Central London is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Emily Thornberry of the Labour Party who served as Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2016 until 2020 and is currently Shadow International Trade Secretary. The constituency elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election at least every five years.
Islington South and Finsbury | |
---|---|
Borough constituency for the House of Commons | |
Boundary of Islington South and Finsbury in Greater London | |
County | Greater London |
Electorate | 70,489 (December 2019)[1] |
Current constituency | |
Created | 1974 |
Member of Parliament | Emily Thornberry (Labour) |
Number of members | One |
Created from | Islington South West, and Shoreditch and Finsbury |
Boundaries
1974–1983: The London Borough of Islington wards of Barnsbury, Bunhill, Clerkenwell, Pentonville, St Mary, St Peter, and Thornhill.
1983–2010: As above, save that Pentonville was abolished and Canonbury East, Canonbury West, Hillmarton, Holloway were created or added to the seat.
2010–present: The London Borough of Islington wards of Barnsbury, Bunhill, Caledonian, Canonbury, Clerkenwell, Holloway, St Mary's and St Peter's.
The seat covers the southern part of the London Borough of Islington, including Barnsbury, Canonbury, major parts of Holloway, Kings Cross and the former area of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury, which includes Bunhill, Pentonville and Clerkenwell.
History
Islington South and Finsbury was created in 1974 from part of the former Islington South West and Shoreditch and Finsbury constituencies. In 1983, its boundaries changed when the Islington Central constituency was abolished and its area split between Islington South and Finsbury and Islington North.
Islington was an early stronghold for the SDP. All three sitting Labour MPs defected to the party together with a majority of the Borough Council.[n 1] However, in spite of their less radical position than the Labour Party, they won only one seat to Labour's 59 in the 1982 Islington Council elections[2] and at the 1983 general election, Labour managed to narrowly retain the seat. The new MP, Chris Smith was the first MP to come out as gay and was aligned with the Labour left, and retained the seat with a slight increase in his majority in 1987. By 1992, the post-merged SDP, the Liberal Democrats, had faded locally, and no longer had the former MP as a candidate, and Smith managed to win a majority exceeding 10,000 votes.
The Liberal Democrat revival in local elections in Islington, which saw them take control of the council in 2000, began to cross over to Parliamentary elections in 2001. In 2002, the Liberal Democrats won every council seat in Islington South and Finsbury, and Smith's subsequent retirement and the resultant loss of incumbency made the constituency vulnerable once again in 2005. However Smith's successor, Emily Thornberry, retained the seat with a narrow majority of 484 votes over the Liberal Democrat challenger, Barnsbury councillor Bridget Fox.[3] — the seat therefore became one of the ten most marginal in Britain. However, in the local council elections a year later, Labour made an almost full recovery locally and won a majority of the seats in Islington South and Finsbury, defeating both Bridget Fox and the-then council leader Steve Hitchins.[4] At the 2010 general election, Thornberry increased her majority over Fox. In 2014 the Liberal Democrats lost all their remaining seats on the Council. The 2015 general election result made the seat the 93rd safest of Labour's 232 seats by percentage of majority.[5]
Constituency profile
The area is wholly urban but features a few small public green spaces which are family-friendly. The proximity and connectedness to the City of London mean the seat has a relatively high proportion of its electorate who are young workers in the city and contains many complementary-course or white-painted brickwork— very rarely stucco-clad—apartments and townhouses typically with attractive railings frequently lived in by higher earners in the central or flagship operations of the public sector, critics, entertainers and writers. It contains a small minority of residences that are Victorian and early-twentieth century rehousing developments to replace poor housing closer to the city itself and in the East End of London or late-twentieth century (largely former) social housing.
The constituency has been described as:
'A part-grand, part-poor metaphor for New Labour; Tony Blair lived here prior to his election as prime minister. Its dinner tables are routinely maligned as the natural habitat of the hypocritical, well-off, ostensibly liberal "chattering classes".'
The constituency was marginal
'...a seat sometimes seen as the citadel of constitutional reform.'
— 2010, The Guardian[7]
Members of Parliament
Election | Member[8] | Party | |
---|---|---|---|
Feb 1974 | George Cunningham | Labour | |
Oct 1974 | |||
1979 | |||
1982 | SDP | ||
1983 | Chris Smith | Labour | |
1987 | |||
1992 | |||
1997 | |||
2001 | |||
2005 | Emily Thornberry | ||
2010 | |||
2015 | |||
2017 | |||
2019 |
Election results
Elections in the 2010s
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Emily Thornberry | 26,897 | 56.3 | −6.5 | |
Liberal Democrats | Kate Pothalingam | 9,569 | 20.0 | +7.9 | |
Conservative | Jason Charalambous | 8,045 | 16.8 | −3.9 | |
Green | Talia Hussain | 1,987 | 4.2 | +1.7 | |
Brexit Party | Paddy Hannam | 1,136 | 2.4 | New | |
Monster Raving Loony | Sandys of Bunhill | 182 | 0.4 | New | |
Majority | 17,328 | 36.3 | −5.8 | ||
Turnout | 47,816 | 67.8 | −1.3 | ||
Registered electors | 70,489 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing | -7.2 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Emily Thornberry | 30,188 | 62.8 | +11.9 | |
Conservative | Jason Charalambous | 9,925 | 20.7 | −1.6 | |
Liberal Democrats | Alain Desmier | 5,809 | 12.1 | +1.2 | |
Green | Benali Hamdache | 1,198 | 2.5 | −5.1 | |
UKIP | Pete Muswell | 929 | 1.9 | −5.7 | |
Majority | 20,263 | 42.1 | +13.4 | ||
Turnout | 48,049 | 69.1 | +4.1 | ||
Registered electors | 69,536 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing | +6.7 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Emily Thornberry | 22,547 | 50.9 | +8.7 | |
Conservative | Mark Lim | 9,839 | 22.2 | +2.8 | |
Liberal Democrats | Terry Stacy | 4,829 | 10.9 | −23.2 | |
UKIP | Pete Muswell | 3,375 | 7.6 | +6.0 | |
Green | Charlie Kiss | 3,371 | 7.6 | +6.0 | |
CISTA | Jay Kirton | 309 | 0.7 | New | |
Majority | 12,708 | 28.7 | +20.5 | ||
Turnout | 44,270 | 65.0 | +0.6 | ||
Registered electors | 68,127 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing | +3.0 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Emily Thornberry | 18,407 | 42.3 | +2.4 | |
Liberal Democrats | Bridget Fox | 14,838 | 34.1 | −4.2 | |
Conservative | Antonia Cox | 8,449 | 19.4 | +4.6 | |
Green | James Humphreys | 710 | 1.6 | −3.2 | |
UKIP | Rose-Marie McDonald | 701 | 1.6 | +0.1 | |
English Democrat | John Dodds | 301 | 0.7 | New | |
Animals Count | Richard Deboo | 149 | 0.3 | New | |
Majority | 3,569 | 8.2 | +6.6 | ||
Turnout | 43,555 | 64.4 | +10.8 | ||
Registered electors | 67,650 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing | +3.3 |
Elections in the 2000s
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Emily Thornberry | 12,345 | 39.9 | −14.0 | |
Liberal Democrats | Bridget Fox | 11,861 | 38.3 | +10.2 | |
Conservative | Melanie McLean | 4,594 | 14.8 | +1.1 | |
Green | James Humphreys | 1,471 | 4.8 | New | |
UKIP | Patricia Theophanides | 470 | 1.5 | New | |
Monster Raving Loony | Andy "the Hat" Gardner | 189 | 0.6 | New | |
Independent | Chris Gidden | 31 | 0.1 | New | |
Majority | 484 | 1.6 | -24.2 | ||
Turnout | 30,961 | 53.6 | +6.2 | ||
Registered electors | 57,748 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing | −12.1 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Chris Smith | 15,217 | 53.9 | −8.6 | |
Liberal Democrats | Keith Sharp | 7,937 | 28.1 | +6.8 | |
Conservative | Nicky Morgan | 3,860 | 13.7 | +0.7 | |
Socialist Alliance | Janine Booth | 817 | 2.9 | New | |
Independent | Thomas McCarthy | 276 | 1.0 | +0.5 | |
Stuckist Party | Charles Thomson | 108 | 0.4 | New | |
Majority | 7,280 | 25.8 | -15.4 | ||
Turnout | 28,215 | 47.4 | −16.3 | ||
Registered electors | 59,516 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing | -7.7 |
Elections in the 1990s
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Chris Smith | 22,079 | 62.5 | +11.4 | |
Liberal Democrats | Sarah Ludford | 7,516 | 21.3 | -2.0 | |
Conservative | David Berens | 4,587 | 13.0 | -11.7 | |
Referendum | Jane Bryett | 741 | 2.10 | New | |
Independent | Alan Laws | 171 | 0.5 | New | |
Natural Law | Martin Creese | 121 | 0.3 | +0.09 | |
Independent | Erol Basarik | 101 | 0.3 | New | |
Majority | 14,563 | 41.2 | +14.76 | ||
Turnout | 35,316 | 63.7 | -8.82 | ||
Registered electors | 55,468 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing | +6.6 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Chris Smith | 20,586 | 51.1 | +11.04 | |
Conservative | Mark Jones | 9,934 | 24.7 | +4.12 | |
Liberal Democrats | Christopher Pryce | 9,387 | 23.3 | New | |
Justice From British Rail | Rhona Hersey | 149 | 0.37 | New | |
Monster Raving Loony | Marie Avino | 142 | 0.35 | New | |
Natural Law | Michael Avino | 83 | 0.21 | New | |
Majority | 10,652 | 26.4 | +24.45 | ||
Turnout | 40,281 | 72.5 | +1.32 | ||
Registered electors | 55,541 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing |
Elections in the 1980s
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Chris Smith | 16,511 | 40.1 | +3.8 | |
SDP | George Cunningham | 15,706 | 38.10 | +2.8 | |
Conservative | Andrew Mitchell | 8,482 | 20.58 | −6.1 | |
Green | Peter Powell | 382 | 0.93 | New | |
Socialist (GB) | Stephen Dowsett | 81 | 0.20 | 0.0 | |
Humanist | Judith Early | 56 | 0.1 | New | |
Majority | 805 | 1.95 | +0.9 | ||
Turnout | 41,218 | 71.2 | +9.2 | ||
Registered electors | 57,910 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | Chris Smith | 13,460 | 36.31 | -15.73 | |
SDP | George Cunningham | 13,097 | 35.33 | New | |
Conservative | Arthur Johnston | 9,894 | 26.69 | -7.38 | |
National Front | John Donegan | 341 | 0.92 | -2.49 | |
Islington and Finsbury Party | J. Murphy | 102 | 0.28 | New | |
BNP | D. Stentiford | 94 | 0.25 | New | |
Socialist (GB) | Clifford Slapper | 85 | 0.23 | -0.09 | |
Majority | 363 | 0.98 | -16.99 | ||
Turnout | 37,073 | 62.0 | -0.92 | ||
Registered electors | 59,795 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing |
Elections in the 1970s
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | George Cunningham | 12,581 | 52.04 | -9.41 | |
Conservative | Nigel Waterson | 8,237 | 34.07 | +13.15 | |
Liberal | Antony Dean | 1,991 | 8.24 | -7.23 | |
National Front | Paul Kavanagh | 824 | 3.41 | New | |
Communist | Marie Betteridge | 330 | 1.36 | -0.80 | |
New Britain | Dennis Delderfield | 136 | 0.56 | New | |
Socialist (GB) | Ralph Critchfield | 78 | 0.32 | New | |
Majority | 4,344 | 17.97 | -22.56 | ||
Turnout | 24,177 | 62.92 | +6.9 | ||
Registered electors | 38,427 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | George Cunningham | 14,544 | 61.45 | +7.1 | |
Conservative | P. Hodgson | 3,951 | 20.92 | −2.4 | |
Liberal | R. Adams | 3,661 | 15.47 | −4.1 | |
Communist | Marie Betteridge | 512 | 2.2 | +0.4 | |
Majority | 9,593 | 40.5 | +9.6 | ||
Turnout | 22,668 | 56.0 | −10.1 | ||
Registered electors | 42,251 | ||||
Labour hold | Swing |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | George Cunningham | 15,064 | 54.31 | ||
Conservative | J. Szemerey | 6,473 | 23.34 | ||
Liberal | R. Adams | 5,415 | 19.52 | ||
Communist | Marie Betteridge | 492 | 1.77 | ||
Independent | A. Lomas | 293 | 1.06 | ||
Majority | 8,591 | 30.97 | |||
Turnout | 27,737 | 66.06 | |||
Registered electors | 41,988 | ||||
Labour win (new seat) |
See also
Notes and references
Notes
- This was at the time when the Labour Party voted for in Conference leaving the EEC (Common Market) and abolishing nuclear weapons during the Cold War which largely triggered the split.
References
- "Electorate Figures – Boundary Commission for England". 2011 Electorate Figures. Boundary Commission for England. 4 March 2011. Archived from the original on 6 November 2010. Retrieved 13 March 2011.
- "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-08-22. Retrieved 2014-02-02.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) pp. 40–41.
- Bridget Fox Archived 2009-06-06 at the Wayback Machine
- LDA website document 488 Archived 2006-09-28 at the Wayback Machine
- List of Labour MPs elected in 2015 by % majority UK Political.info. Retrieved 2017-01-29.
- "Constituency Profile" 2005, The Guardian.
- Wintour, Patrick (25 November 2010). "Labour big beasts say no to voting reform". The Guardian.
- Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "I"
- https://www.islington.gov.uk/~/media/sharepoint-lists/public-records/democracy/information/adviceandinformation/20192020/20191114statementofpersonsnominatedislingtonsouthandfinsbury1.pdf
- "Islington South & Finsbury parliamentary constituency". BBC News.
- http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7979/CBP-7979.pdf
- "Election Data 2015". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
- "General Elections Results 2015". London Borough of Islington. 8 May 2015. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
- "Statement of Persons Nominated, Notice of Poll and Situation of Polling Stations" (PDF). London Borough of Islington. 9 April 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 April 2015. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
- "Election Data 2010". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 26 July 2013. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
- "Statement as to persons nominated and notice of poll for Parliamentary Election, Thursday 6 May 2010: Islington South and Finsbury constituency" (PDF). London Borough of Islington. 20 April 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 May 2010. Retrieved 28 April 2010.
- "Islington South & Finsbury — Election 2010". BBC News Online. 7 May 2010.
- "Election Data 2005". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 15 October 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
- "Election Data 2001". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 15 October 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
- "Election Data 1997". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 15 October 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
- "Election Data 1992". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 15 October 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
- "Election Data 1987". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 15 October 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
- "Election Data 1983". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 15 October 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
External links
- Politics Resources (election results from 1922 onwards)
- Electoral Calculus (election results from 1955 onwards)