Perth and North Perthshire is a county constituency of the House of Commons of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprem ...

. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the

first past the post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...

system of

election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...

. The constituency was created in 2005. Campaigns in the seat have resulted in a minimum of 30% of votes at each election consistently for the same two parties' choice for candidate, and the next lower-placed party's having fluctuated between 8.1% and 18.7% of the vote since its relatively recent creation. The seat attracted a record seven candidates in 2015 and has seen as few as four, in 2017.

Boundaries

As a result of the Fifth Periodical Review of the Boundary Commission for Scotland, the constituency (seat) was created to cover northern parts of the Perth and Kinross council area, and first used in the 2005 general election.

Ochil and South Perthshire Ochil and South Perthshire is a county constituency of 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. The constituency was created for the 2 ...

was created, at the same time, to cover the rest of that council area and the Clackmannanshire council area. Before the 2005 election, these combined council areas had been covered by Angus, Ochil,

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

and North Tayside seats. The Perth seat lay within the Perth and Kinross council area, North Tayside covered a northern portion of that council area and a northern portion of the Angus council area, Angus covered a small southeastern portion of the Perth and Kinross council area, a southern portion of its associated council area, and northern portions of the Dundee City council area, and Ochil covered another southeastern portion of the Perth and Kinross council area, the whole of the Clackmannanshire council area and a southeastern portion of the Stirling council area.

Constituency profile

The seat's voters stretch across the north of the

Perth and Kinross Perth and Kinross ( sco, Pairth an Kinross; gd, Peairt agus Ceann Rois) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland and a Lieutenancy Area. It borders onto the Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Clackmannanshire, Dundee, Fife, Highland ...

local council area in Scotland. It is an affluent, predominantly rural seat with notable livestock, salmon, fishing, hospitality, tourism and fruit-growing sectors. In its south, around the

River Tay The River Tay ( gd, Tatha, ; probably from the conjectured Brythonic ''Tausa'', possibly meaning 'silent one' or 'strong one' or, simply, 'flowing') is the longest river in Scotland and the seventh-longest in Great Britain. The Tay originates i ...

and its adjacent villages. Perth includes a mix of affluent middle-class suburbs to the south-west and more deprived areas around its north. Notwithstanding the possibility of breakthrough national and local campaigns and developments, campaigns to date have produced a close-run two-candidate contest as to the lion's share of the votes between the Conservative and the Scottish National Parties' candidates. During the main forerunner seat's existence ( Perth and East Perthshire, created in 1950), it returned MPs loyal to the Unionist Party and the Conservative and Unionist Party after the parties amalgamated in 1965. The seat was one of eleven in Scotland to elect an SNP MP to Parliament at the 1974 October general election. With a rearrangement ( redistribution) of seats in 1979 the successor seat of North Tayside went on to return Conservative candidate

Bill Walker Bill Walker may refer to: Australian rules football * Bill A. Walker (1886–1934), Australian rules footballer for Essendon * Bill Walker (Australian footballer, born 1883) (1883–1971), Australian rules footballer for Fitzroy * Bill J. V. Wal ...

to Parliament until he was defeated by

John Swinney John Ramsay Swinney (born 13 April 1964) is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy First Minister of Scotland since 2014 and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery since 2021. He was the Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from ...

of the SNP at the 1997 UK general election - from that point onwards the seat elected successive SNP members as its MP. Conservatives narrowly missed out on gaining the seat at the

2005 UK general election The 2005 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 5 May 2005, to elect 646 members to the House of Commons. The Labour Party, led by Tony Blair, won its third consecutive victory, with Blair becoming the second Labour leader aft ...

: Douglas Taylor coming behind Pete Wishart by 1,521 votes. Wishart increased his majority such as with 9,641 votes clearance in

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...

. The Conservative missed out on gaining the seat by 21 votes at the 2017 general election, the third-closest result in the nation after North East Fife and

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensington Garden ...

, but ahead of Kensington if ranked by percentage of the votes locally cast.

Members of Parliament

Elections

Elections in the 2010s

Perth and North Perthshire was the third most

marginal Marginal may refer to: * ''Marginal'' (album), the third album of the Belgian rock band Dead Man Ray, released in 2001 * ''Marginal'' (manga) * '' El Marginal'', Argentine TV series * Marginal seat or marginal constituency or marginal, in polit ...

result in the United Kingdom and second most marginal result in Scotland at the 2017 general election, with incumbent SNP MP Pete Wishart seeing his majority cut from 9,641 votes (17.8%) to just 21 votes (0.0%) ahead of the Conservatives, although he did receive the highest number of votes for any SNP candidate.

Elections in the 2000s

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Perth And North Perthshire (Uk Parliament Constituency) Westminster Parliamentary constituencies in Scotland Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom established in 2005 Politics of Perth and Kinross