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Harrow West

Harrow West
Borough constituency
for the House of Commons
Outline map
Boundary of Harrow West in Greater London.
County Greater London
Electorate 69,135 (December 2010)
Current constituency
Created 1945
Member of parliament Gareth Thomas (Labour Co-op)
Number of members One
Created from Harrow and Hendon
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency London

Harrow West is a constituency created in 1945 represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament and which has returned the Labour Co-operative MP Gareth Thomas in the five General Elections from 1997 having previously returned Conservative MPs.

The Labour Party have held the seat since 1997 with the Conservative Party second-placed in each election. The 2015 result makes the seat the 215th safest of the party's 232 seats (by majority percentage) thus 16th most marginal seat. Similarly the incumbent's majority has not exceeded 13.2% but has been lower at 2.3% in 1997.

The constituency was created for the 1945 General Election when the Harrow constituency was split into new seats of Harrow East and Harrow West. It was reduced in size for the 1950 General Election when a third Harrow seat, Harrow Central, was created. The Boundary Commission review before the 1983 General Election saw the London Borough of Harrow contained in two seats, resulting in Harrow West gaining parts of the abolished Harrow Central.

Unlike Harrow East, it had always been won by the Conservative Party until Labour's landslide in 1997 when a swing of 17.5% was the eighth highest swing in that election, and it was the safest Conservative seat to be lost to Labour. The constituency produced another better than average result for Labour in 2001 with a swing from Conservative to Labour of 5.4% or 5.5%, a pro-Labour swing bettered in only four seats and in 2005 a challenge by Mike Freer produced a pro-Conservative swing of 4.5%.


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