Political Feature: What happened last time and what’s going to happen this time?

While the 1992 General Election was run with very different constituencies to those that are being used this time round, their results are presented here for comparative purposes. The main change is that the ‘Kensington’ constituency has been broken up, the majority of which has been added to Sir Nicholas Scott’s old ‘Chelsea’ seat to become ‘Kensington and Chelsea’. The remainder, five northern wards which had predominantly supported Labour, is being added to the majority of the old ‘Westminster North’ constituency to become the new ‘Regents Park and Kensington North’ seat. The final change is that the Bayswater and Lancaster Gate wards, both Conservative minded areas, have been added to Sir Peter Brooke’s old seat to become the new ‘Cities of London and Westminster’ constituency.

The above changes mean that Alan Clark should have little trouble winning the new ‘Kensington and Chelsea’ constituency for the Conservatives. Considering the votes cast in the last General Election his party has a 51.5% majority over the Labour Party’s contender, Robert Atkinson. Robert Woodthorpe Browne from the Liberal Democrats is also contesting the seat .

Sir Peter should have an equally easy ride in the new ‘Cities of London and Westminster’ seat as the redrawn boundaries give him a spectacular 35.2% lead over Labour. Michael Dumigan is contesting the constituency for the Liberal Democrats, Sir Alan Walters for the Referendum Party and Kate Green for the Labour Party.

Regent’s Park and Kensington North is very different since using the 1992 votes Labour have a ‘notional majority’ of 7.3% over the Conservatives in this newly created seat. In Brentford and Isleworth, which includes Clayponds, the high profile Conservative MP, Nirj Deva has a majority of 2.8% over Labour. Their candidate is Ms Ann Keen, while the Liberal Democrats are putting up Gareth Hartwell and the Green Party is fielding John Bradley.

The situation in other areas can be found by using Onlinemagic’s General Election website