| Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven | |
| Parliament: | uk |
| Year: | 1950 |
| Original Name: | Brighton Kemptown |
| Type: | Borough |
| Population: | 91,567 (2011 census)[1] |
| Electorate: | 69,865 (2023)[2] |
| Region: | England |
| County: | East Sussex |
Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since the 2024 general election by Chris Ward of the Labour Party.
Before the 2024 general election[3] the constituency was called Brighton Kemptown, though local political parties referred to it by its current name.[4] [5]
1950–1955: The County Borough of Brighton wards of Elm Grove, Hanover, King's Cliff, Lewes Road, Moulsecoomb, Pier, Queen's Park, Rottingdean, and St John's.[6]
1955–1983: The County Borough of Brighton wards of Elm Grove, Falmer, Hanover, King's Cliff, Lewes Road, Moulsecoomb, Pier, Queen's Park, Rottingdean, and Warren.[7]
1983–1997: The Borough of Brighton wards of Hanover, King's Cliff, Marine, Moulsecoomb, Queen's Park, Rottingdean, Tenantry, and Woodingdean.
1997–2010: The Borough of Brighton wards of King's Cliff, Marine, Moulsecoomb, Queen's Park, Rottingdean, Tenantry, and Woodingdean, and the District of Lewes wards of East Saltdean, Peacehaven East, Peacehaven North, Peacehaven West, and Telscombe Cliffs.
2010–2024: The City of Brighton and Hove wards of East Brighton, Moulsecoomb and Bevendean, Queen's Park, Rottingdean Coastal, and Woodingdean, and the District of Lewes wards of East Saltdean and Telscombe Cliffs, Peacehaven East, Peacehaven North, and Peacehaven West.
2024–present: The composition of the renamed constituency from the 2024 general election will be expanded slightly in order to bring the electorate within the permitted range by adding part of the City of Brighton and Hove ward of Hanover and Elm Grove – namely polling district PHEA, and that part of polling district PHEF to the east of Queen's Park Road – to be transferred from Brighton Pavilion.[8]
Following a local government boundary review in Brighton and Hove which came into effect in May 2023,[9] [10] the constituency will now comprise the following from the 2024 general election:
The constituency takes in the eastern part of Brighton and semi-rural suburbs and villages stretching out to the east.
The seat has a large student population, from those that attend the University of Brighton and University of Sussex.
From west to east it includes Queen's Park; Kemptown, the centre of Brighton's LGBTQ+ community; the council estates of Whitehawk and Moulsecoomb; and beyond the racecourse affluent and genteel coastal villages like Rottingdean, Woodingdean, Saltdean and the town of Peacehaven.
Boundary changes for the 1997 general election moved Peacehaven, a semi-rural area, into the constituency. This added a ward where the Conservatives had been favoured, but Labour gained the seat at its landslide victory. Des Turner held it until 2010, when Simon Kirby of the Conservative Party won it.
For a total of 48 years since the seat's creation, it has been Conservative-controlled (1950–1964; 1970–1997; 2010–2017). The only other party to hold the seat since its creation has been the Labour Party.
Labour first won Kemptown in 1964, with a narrow majority of just seven votes. Dennis Hobden, the first Labour MP to ever be elected in Sussex, increased his majority in 1966, but lost the seat in 1970, and another Labour MP was not returned until 1997. The seat was a national bellwether constituency from 1979 to 2015, but in 2017 elected a Labour MP when the country as a whole returned a hung parliament with the Conservatives being the largest party by a margin of 56 MPs.
Liberal Democrats and their two predecessor parties following national trends formed the third-largest party in the constituency, 1950–2010 inclusive. The 2010 general election result for the party can be seen as 0.6% behind "its" highest, at 18.6%, if including its SDP forerunner. The Liberal Democrat vote share collapsed to 3% in 2015 (behind UKIP and Green Party candidates) and remained at the 3% level in 2017 despite the absence of UKIP and Green candidates for the seat at that election.
The Green Party candidate finished in fourth place at the 2005, 2010 and 2015 elections, retaining their deposit each time, with vote shares ranging from 5.5% to 7.0%. The Greens did not field a candidate in 2017[12] and endorsed Labour, who subsequently gained the seat with a majority of just under 10,000 votes.
The 2015 general election result had made the seat the tenth-most marginal majority of the Conservative Party's 331 seats by percentage of majority.[13]
On 29 May 2024, Russell-Moyle announced that he had received a letter that he had been suspended from membership of the Labour Party, because of what he believed was a vexatious complaint, which made him ineligible to be their candidate at the 2024 United Kingdom general election.[14]
Brighton prior to 1950
| Election | Member[15] | Party | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | Howard Johnson | Conservative | ||
| 1959 | David James | Conservative | ||
| 1964 | Dennis Hobden | Labour | ||
| 1970 | Andrew Bowden | Conservative | ||
| 1997 | Des Turner | Labour | ||
| 2010 | Simon Kirby | Conservative | ||
| 2017 | Lloyd Russell-Moyle † | Labour Co-op[16] | ||
| 2024 | Chris Ward | Labour | ||
†: Lloyd Russell-Moyle was suspended from the Labour Party after Parliament had prorogued on 24 May 2024[17] and a day before the dissolution of Parliament on 30 May 2024.[18]
As part of an electoral pact between the SDP and Reform UK, Reform did not stand a candidate.[19]
| 2019 notional result[20] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Vote | % | |
| 25,299 | 51.2 | ||
| 17,019 | 34.4 | ||
| 2,964 | 6.0 | ||
| 2,813 | 5.7 | ||
| 1,335 | 2.7 | ||
| Turnout | 49,430 | 70.8 | |
| Electorate | 69,865 | ||