St Ives (UK Parliament constituency)

St. Ives
County constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of St. Ives in Cornwall.
Location of Cornwall within England.
County	Cornwall
Electorate	66,696 (December 2010)
Major settlements	St Ives
Current constituency
Created	1885
Member of parliament	Derek Thomas (Conservative)
Number of members	One
Created from	Helston, St Ives and West Cornwall
1558–1885
Number of members	1558–1832: Two 1832–1885: One
Type of constituency	Borough constituency
Replaced by	St Ives, Penzance and Helston
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	South West England

St. Ives is a parliamentary constituency in west Cornwall; it includes the Isles of Scilly . The constituency has been represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Derek Thomas, a Conservative MP.

St Ives has elected MPs to every Parliament since 1558, except for a brief period during the Protectorate. It was originally a mere parliamentary borough that returned two MPs until the Great Reform Act of 1832, when its representation was cut to a single member. In 1885 the borough was abolished, but the St Ives name was transferred to the surrounding county constituency.

The borough established under Queen Mary consisted of the parish of St Ives in western Cornwall, a seaport and market town in which the main economic interests were fishing and the export of ores mined nearby. In 1831, the population of the borough was 4,776, and contained 1,002 houses.

The franchise was initially restricted to the town corporation, but after a judgment in a disputed election in 1702 the right to vote was given to all inhabitants paying scot and lot; in the early 19th century this amounted to a little over 300 voters. This was a wide franchise for the period, and its reasonable size meant that St Ives was one of the few Cornish boroughs that could claim not to be rotten.

Elections were usually contested and although local wealthiest families were able to exercise considerable influence on the outcome, none was entirely predominant; the result could rarely be taken for granted and it was necessary to court the voters assiduously. From the 17th century, three vied for control - the Hobart family, the Praeds (at the time of Treventhoe manor), and the Dukes of Bolton - and by the mid 18th century the Stephens family had considerable sway. In 1751, however, John Stephens, who had previously allied himself with the Earl of Buckinghamshire and managed the borough's elections on the Earl's behalf, "struck out on his own account" (for his own interests) and secured the election of his son. Later in the decade Stephens and the Earl once more began to work together, but were unable to prevent Humphrey Mackworth Praed from establishing sufficient influence to sway one of the two seats.