Post by BossMan on Apr 25, 2020 11:44:14 GMT
LEEDS EAST
The Labour Party’s association with the Leeds East constituency goes back a long way. From its original creation in 1885, it was represented by Liberals and Conservatives, but in 1906 Labour candidate James O’Grady won in a 33% swing from the Tory MP Henry Cautley. Since then it has never looked back. O’Grady served until 1918 when the seat was abolished, and he transferred to Leeds South East. South East was where Denis Healey began his parliamentary career in a 1952 by-election. In 1955, the Leeds East constituency was revived, and Denis Healey went onto represent it until 1992, serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1970s and Deputy Labour leader in the early 1980s. He was considered by many as unlucky never to quite reach the leadership itself.
Nowadays, three of the constituency’s four wards are safely Labour. These are Cross Gates and Whinmoor, Killingbeck and Seacroft, and Gipton and Harehills. Seacroft has the highest proportion of council housing in the city, and includes a series of vast, almost all white working class estates, built in the 1930s and 1950s to house the expanding population of Leeds city centre. Harehills consists of much old terraced housing, and has a significant Asian and black population. Gipton and Harehills used to elect Liberal Democrat councillors, but this stopped in 2012, presumably due to the fallout after their association with the Coalition government which was formed in 2010. In 2019, the Lib Dems came fourth in that ward.
The best ward for the Conservatives is the more middle class Temple Newsam, named after the Tudor-Jacobean house and park. The ward is the successor to the old Halton ward. The Tories have not actually won there since 2011 – being in government has clearly made it more tricky - but they remain competitive with Labour there.
Overall this all makes up a safe Labour seat. Richard Burgon, on the left of the party, became its MP in 2015 and served on Jeremy Corbyn’s front bench team before standing unsuccessfully for the deputy leadership of the party in 2020. In the 2016 referendum, the seat voted 61% to leave the European Union, and in the 2019 general election, Labour’s majority was reduced to 5,531 over the Conservatives, the closest result since 1983. But it would take something much greater, which seems highly unlikely, to threaten Labour’s long standing position here in the long term.
The Labour Party’s association with the Leeds East constituency goes back a long way. From its original creation in 1885, it was represented by Liberals and Conservatives, but in 1906 Labour candidate James O’Grady won in a 33% swing from the Tory MP Henry Cautley. Since then it has never looked back. O’Grady served until 1918 when the seat was abolished, and he transferred to Leeds South East. South East was where Denis Healey began his parliamentary career in a 1952 by-election. In 1955, the Leeds East constituency was revived, and Denis Healey went onto represent it until 1992, serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1970s and Deputy Labour leader in the early 1980s. He was considered by many as unlucky never to quite reach the leadership itself.
Nowadays, three of the constituency’s four wards are safely Labour. These are Cross Gates and Whinmoor, Killingbeck and Seacroft, and Gipton and Harehills. Seacroft has the highest proportion of council housing in the city, and includes a series of vast, almost all white working class estates, built in the 1930s and 1950s to house the expanding population of Leeds city centre. Harehills consists of much old terraced housing, and has a significant Asian and black population. Gipton and Harehills used to elect Liberal Democrat councillors, but this stopped in 2012, presumably due to the fallout after their association with the Coalition government which was formed in 2010. In 2019, the Lib Dems came fourth in that ward.
The best ward for the Conservatives is the more middle class Temple Newsam, named after the Tudor-Jacobean house and park. The ward is the successor to the old Halton ward. The Tories have not actually won there since 2011 – being in government has clearly made it more tricky - but they remain competitive with Labour there.
Overall this all makes up a safe Labour seat. Richard Burgon, on the left of the party, became its MP in 2015 and served on Jeremy Corbyn’s front bench team before standing unsuccessfully for the deputy leadership of the party in 2020. In the 2016 referendum, the seat voted 61% to leave the European Union, and in the 2019 general election, Labour’s majority was reduced to 5,531 over the Conservatives, the closest result since 1983. But it would take something much greater, which seems highly unlikely, to threaten Labour’s long standing position here in the long term.
