Stalybridge and Hyde

Stalybridge and Hyde
County constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of Stalybridge and Hyde in Greater Manchester.
Location of Greater Manchester within England.
County	Greater Manchester
Electorate	70,691 (December 2010)
Major settlements	Hyde, Mossley, Stalybridge
Current constituency
Created	1918
Member of parliament	Jonathan Reynolds (Labour Co-op)
Number of members	One
Created from	Stalybridge, Hyde and Mossley
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	North West England

Stalybridge and Hyde is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Jonathan Reynolds, a member of the Labour Party and the Cooperative Party.

The seat was created under the Representation of the People Act 1918. During its first 37 years it was held by Conservatives for 34 of these, and for the other three years by the other two main parties, the Liberal Party and the Labour Party. In 1945 the seat was won by Rev. Gordon Lang who was honorary secretary of the United Europe Movement and a leading member of the Proportional Representation Society but who retired on ill health in 1951.

The area is a safe seat for Labour, which has held it since the 1945 general election. James Purnell, a former 10 Downing Street special advisor, who was first elected at the 2001 general election resigned his cabinet position as Work and Pensions Secretary on 4 June 2009, citing concerns over Prime Minister Gordon Brown's leadership. On 19 February 2010, he announced that he would not contest the 2010 election. Senior Labour Party officials were concerned that Unite was strategically attempting to have Peter Wheeler, a senior Unite official, selected as the Labour candidate, as one of a series of seats, leading to the National Executive Committee putting forward Jonathan Reynolds on the selection shortlist who, as widely expected, won the election.