Islington South and Finsbury (UK Parliament constituency)

Islington South and Finsbury
Borough constituency
for the House of Commons
Boundary of Islington South and Finsbury in Greater London.
County	Greater London
Electorate	67,613 (December 2010)
Current constituency
Created	1974 (1974)
Member of Parliament	Emily Thornberry (Labour)
Number of members	One
Created from	Islington South West, and Shoreditch & Finsbury
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	London

Islington South and Finsbury is a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first-past-the-post system of election.

Boundaries

The seat covers the southern part of the London Borough of Islington, including Barnsbury, Canonbury, parts of Holloway and Kings Cross and the former area of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury, which includes Bunhill, Pentonville and Clerkenwell. Its boundaries remained unchanged for the 2010 general election.

The constituency comprises eight wards:

Barnesbury, Bunhill, Caledonian, Canonbury, Clerkenwell, Holloway, St Mary's and St. Peter's.

Member of Parliament

Election		Member	Party
	Feb 1974	George Cunningham	Labour
	1982		SDP
	1983	Chris Smith	Labour
	2005	Emily Thornberry	Labour

Election results

General Election 2010: Islington South and Finsbury
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labour	Emily Thornberry	18,407	42.3	+2.4
	Liberal Democrat	Bridget Fox	14,838	34.1	-4.2
	Conservative	Antonia Cox	8,449	19.4	+4.6
	Green	James Humphreys	710	1.6	-3.1
	UKIP	Rose-Marie McDonald	701	1.6	+0.1
	English Democrats	John Dodds	301	0.7	+0.7
	Animals Count	Richard Deboo	149	0.3	+0.3
Majority			3,569	8.2
Turnout			43,555	64.4	+10.8
	Labour hold		Swing	+3.3

General Election 2005: Islington South and Finsbury
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labour	Emily Thornberry	12,345	39.9	-14.0
	Liberal Democrat	Bridget Fox	11,861	38.3	+10.2
	Conservative	Melanie McLean	4,594	14.8	+1.1
	Green	James Humphreys	1,471	4.8	N/A
	UKIP	Patricia Theophanides	470	1.5	N/A
	Monster Raving Loony	Andy the Hat Gardner	189	0.6	N/A
	Independent	Chris Gidden	31	0.1	N/A
Majority			484	1.6
Turnout			30,961	53.6	+6.2
	Labour hold		Swing	-12.1

General Election 2001: Islington South & Finsbury
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labour	Chris Smith	15,217	53.9	-8.6
	Liberal Democrat	Keith Sharp	7,937	28.1	+6.8
	Conservative	Nicky Morgan	3,860	13.7	+0.7
	Socialist Alliance	Janine Booth	817	2.9	N/A
	Independent	Thomas McCarthy	276	1.0	+0.5
	Stuckist Party	Charles Thomson	108	0.4	N/A
Majority			7,280	25.8
Turnout			28,215	47.4	-16.3
	Labour hold		Swing

Politics and history of the constituency

Islington was an early stronghold for the Social Democratic Party in which all three sitting Labour MPs defected to the party together with a majority of the Borough Council. However, in the 1983 general election Labour managed to retain the constituency narrowly. The new MP, Chris Smith, was the first MP to come out as gay and was identified with the Labour left, and kept the seat with a slight increase in his majority in 1987. By 1992 the Liberal Democrats had faded and no longer had the former MP as a candidate and Smith managed a five figure majority.

The Liberal Democrat revival in local elections in Islington, which saw them take control of the council in 2000, began to translate to Parliamentary elections in 2001. In 2002, the Liberal Democrats won every council seat in Islington South & Finsbury, and Smith's subsequent retirement and the resultant loss of incumbency made the constituency vulnerable once again in 2005. However Smith's successor, Emily Thornberry, retained the seat with a narrow majority (484 votes) over the Liberal Democrat challenger, Bridget Fox. The seat became one of the ten most marginal in Britain. However, in the local council elections a year later, Labour experienced something of a resurgence and won a majority of the seats in Islington South & Finsbury, defeating both Bridget Fox and the then council leader Steve Hitchins. At the 2010 general election, Thornberry increased her majority over Fox.

The constituency has been described as "a seat sometimes seen as the citadel of constitutional reform."

See also

• List of Parliamentary constituencies in Greater London
• List of Parliamentary constituencies in Islington