General Election 2024: Campaign parties call for reforms as Bristol MP seat hasn’t changed hands in 89 years

A Bristol MP seat has been held by the same party for 89 years, research shows. Democracy activists are calling for major changes to the system and say millions of voters across the country are effectively being ignored.

Bristol South has been a safe Labor constituency since the party won it from the Tories in 1935. North Somerset has been in Tory hands for 74 years since it was created in 1950.

Labor took Bristol East from the Tories in 1992 and have now held the seat for 32 years. The Conservatives have held Weston-super-Mare since winning it 19 years ago from the Liberal Democrats in 2005.

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Two other seats in the West of England have been held by the same party for over a decade. Fourteen years ago the Tories took Filton and Bradley Stoke when it was created and also ousted Labor in North East Somerset, Wansdyke’s successor, and have held it ever since.

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North East Somerset has now been abolished due to boundary changes ahead of next month’s general election, with the creation of a new constituency called North East Somerset & Hanham. The Electoral Reform Society (ERS), which campaigns for the introduction of proportional representation and crunched the numbers, says more than 100 seats in the country have not changed hands for over a century.

It says eight million voters live in “one-party feuds” and calls for reforms to give voters a say in who runs the government. ERS chief executive Darren Hughes said: “Our research shows that hundreds of seats across the country have not changed hands for decades, meaning millions of people have seen no change in their representation of throughout their lives.

“Huge parts of the country are effectively no-contest zones, with ‘safe’ seats leaving voters feeling ignored and left behind by politics. Elections should be for the whole country. But under the rotten first-past-the-post system, the focus boils down to just a few “rocking chairs” changing hands between parties.

“With trust in politics at rock bottom, it is imperative that we tackle the distrust and alienation caused by the current unfair voting system at Westminster. The next government must introduce a fairer proportional voting system that ensures every vote counts and Parliament accurately represents how the whole country voted.”

The ERS says that taking predecessor seats into account, 111 – 17% of all constituencies – have been held by the same party since at least 1924, with 8.1 million potential voters living in these seats. More than a quarter of the seats in Parliament – ​​179, or 28 per cent – ​​are said to have been held by a party since the end of the Second World War, while 247 (38 per cent) have not and -changed hands in at least half a century. .

The Conservatives hold 94 of the constituencies that have not changed hands for 100 years or more, with Labor holding 17. Across all 650 UK constituencies, the average length of time since a seat last changed is 45 years. ERS has released a tool to find out when you last changed your place here.