As we approach the UK General Election, one quirk is the naming of constituencies themselves.
Countries with electoral districts from which members are elected have a range of ways of naming them. The United States tends simply to number them: “California District 15”, “Virginia District 3” and so on. Australia tends to name them after famous Australian politicians, such as “Fraser”, though it makes an exception for major city centres (so “Melbourne” means specifically central Melbourne). Germany uses geographical identifiers but then often simply numbers them if a particular area has more than one, such as “Dortmund II” or “Köln III”; larger cities may, as in the UK, use a direction indicator (“München-Nord”) or a district name (“Berlin-Pankow”). Canada and the UK (and actually Ireland, though it has multi-member constituencies which are a little different) use geographical identifiers but then separate them where necessary with further geographical information (such as, in Canada, “Brampton South”, “Calgary Rocky Ridge”, etc.).
In the case of Great Britain, however, there are still curiosities. While some towns and cities tend to use compass points as further identifiers (such as “Bradford East” or “Leeds North West”) and others use further geographic information (such as general areas of the city, e.g. “Sheffield Hallam”; or local identifiers such as rivers, e.g. “Southampton Test”), rural constituency names tend to be either county names with geographical identifiers (“South West Devon”, “Mid Buckinghamshire” or “East Surrey”), or single or double town names. The single town names (e.g. “St Ives”, “Southport” or “Lewes”) are usually the curiosity – what is so special about these places that they get to appear alone in constituency names, while other constituencies are simply named for the county they are in (or linked to more than one town for fairly obvious reasons, such as the prime minister’s own constituency of “Richmond and Northallerton”)? That, like so many things about Britain, is a quirk of history.
Originally, constituency names were by county or “borough”. Historically, “boroughs” were significant urban settlements, and these tended to be towards the coast or near other points of geographic interest (such as castles). Counties (i.e. the county area without boroughs included) and boroughs elected their own members of parliament (sometimes more than one). After industrialisation, such “boroughs” often declined in comparative size, as cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool or Glasgow far outgrew them in population and significance – it was this which led to the “rotten boroughs”, where an entire electorate in some declining “boroughs” could essentially be bought for one seat in the Commons, whereas elsewhere a single member could represent tens of thousands of people in a growing industrial settlement. Originally, however, some of these growing urban centres were not even officially “boroughs”, far less “cities”, leading them still to considered very much part of the county they were in, rather than half-separate areas.
As the move towards single-member constituencies grew (though it was not in fact completed until the removal of “university seats” just post-War), the notion of now tiny “boroughs” having their own representation became laughable, while it also became obvious that large cities needed lots of members. To create single-member constituencies, counties had to be split up into “divisions” (a now archaic term in the UK which came at one stage to be in very common use, and which remains the preferred term in Australia, to refer to what is now generally called a “constituency” in the UK, a “riding” in Canada” or an “electoral district” in the United States).
Therefore, constituency names initially always started with the name of the county; typically this was followed by a comma, and then the name of the division. In some cases, that division took the name of an old borough to reflect its electoral heritage, hence “Sussex, Lewes”; sometimes, it took a straightforward geographical identifier, hence “Surrey, East Surrey”; sometimes, it took the name of a significant industrial settlement which then had to be further divided into geographical units, hence “West Yorkshire, Bradford East”; and sometimes it took the name of a significant settlement divided by a different geographical identifier, hence “Hampshire, Southampton Test”.
This explains why, officially, geographical identifiers when they refer to counties tend to appear first in the constituency name in common reference, but more often second when it is of a city or major town. Nowadays, the county name is not referenced as part of the constituency name (indeed, some constituency boundaries now violate county boundaries, regardless of whether you are referring to current or traditional counties) but the rest of it is as was – hence, “Surrey, East Surrey” is now “East Surrey” but “South Yorkshire, Bradford East” is now “Bradford East”. This then may leave a constituency name still referring to what is now a relatively insignificant (by population, at least) settlement: so “Sussex, Lewes” gives us “Lewes” to refer to a constituency of which Lewes itself is only a very small part. There was also a period where a constituency could be referred to either way: you could have “South West Cornwall” or “St Ives” to refer to the constituency division whose long title was “Cornwall, South West Cornwall or St Ives”; typically, the shorter title has won out in such cases. In fact, some new constituency names give the nod to this by including both, e.g. “Frome and East Somerset” (which could in fact be named simply “Frome” or alternatively simply “East Somerset”).
As constituency boundaries are now so focused on urban areas (given the density of England’s population), names have become more complicated: hence “Houghton and Sunderland South”, “Filton and Bradley Stoke”, even “Mid Dorset and North Poole” and so on; there was even a distinction at the last election, for example, between simply “Middlesbrough” for one constituency (now subsumed into “Middlesbrough and Thornaby East”) and “Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland” (“Cleveland” itself being an interesting reference to a county of brief existence which is neither current nor traditional) for another. This tendency has led in Scotland (where urban centres, at least away from the Central Belt, are much smaller, and where counties have long ceased to have any administrative function) to constituency names with as many as three or even on occasions four elements (though “Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey” has now been abolished), which is rather unwieldy.
For all that, the division between a “borough” and “county” constituency is still legally relevant across all parts of the UK. The former takes up a smaller geographical area, and thus candidate spending limits are lower. There is no immediate way of knowing from the name which is which, but if the reference contains a compass direction first that will usually be a county constituency (“East Surrey”) whereas if it is last that will usually be a borough (“Bradford East”). This distinction is also relevant to alphabetical constituency lists – “Bradford East” appears a long way above “East Surrey”, which in turn appears nowhere near “St Ives”.
As a final side note, during General Election results programmes the net gain/loss for each party is against the previous General Election; thus a constituency which was lost at a by-election or through defection to another party during the parliament since the last election is still viewed as per the party which won it, in this case, in December 2019. If the same party wins the constituency at the General Election in July 2024 as at the General Election in December 2019 (or, more precisely, if the same party as would have won it in 2019 on 2024’s boundaries, known as the “notional” result), that constituency is a “hold”; if it does not, that constituency is a “gain”. You may see two other terms in use: a “regain” means the party which won in 2019 but lost it since has regained it (but this is still counted overall as a “hold”); a “win” means the party which gained the constituency seat since 2019 has held on it (but this is still counted overall as a “gain”). Between 1am and 3am on election night, typically (particularly in a year when local elections are not held on the same day and so there are no ballot papers to separate), results begin to come through quickly and this will be the terminology.
Ian James Parsley 