Kensington (UK Parliament constituency)

Kensington
Borough constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of Kensington in Greater London.
County	Greater London
Electorate	62,784 (December 2010)
Current constituency
Created	2010
Member of parliament	Victoria Borwick (Conservative)
Created from	Kensington and Chelsea
1974–1997
Replaced by	Kensington and Chelsea
Created from	Kensington North & Kensington South
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	London

Kensington is a constituency in Greater London created in 2010 represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Victoria Borwick, a Conservative. An earlier version of the seat existed between 1974 and 1997 covered by this article.

The constituency formed for the 2010 election comprises the northern and central parts of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in and around Kensington and has electoral wards:

From 1974 to 1983 the constituency comprised electoral wards:

From 1983 to 1997 the constituency comprised electoral wards:

The first incarnation of a Kensington seat in Westminster was for the February 1974 general election and which was abolished for the 1997 general election. The seat was mostly replaced by Regent's Park and Kensington North which was until its 2010 abolition served by Labour MPs, specifically, won three times during the Blair Ministry, and partially replaced by Kensington and Chelsea which was held by Malcolm Rifkind (Conservative) until his resignation at the 2015 general election.

The old seat returned Conservative MPs from 1974 up to and including its last general election in 1992. At its sole by-election in 1988 the seat was won by its smallest majority, a highly marginal 3.4% — a by-election which saw a majority turnout and a Labour splinter party candidate, for the Social Democratic Party (UK, 1988) achieve fourth place attracting 5% of the vote yet standing in the year of the formal amalgamation of the main SDP splinter group with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats who stood as the Social and Liberal Democrats and seven years after the formation of the official SDP-Liberal Alliance.