East Midlands Constituency Target Seats
No Constituency Con   Lab   Lib Dem 1 Kettering - Read   2 Wellingborough - Read   3 Northampton South - Read   4 Newark - Read   5 Gedling - Read 6 Broxtowe - Read 7 Loughborough - Read   8 Erewash - Read   9 High Peak - Read   10 Derby North - Read 11 Northampton North - Read   12 Amber Valley - Read   13 Corby - Read 14 Derbyshire South - Read   15 Lincoln - Read   16 Boston and Skegness - Read   17 Bosworth - Read 18 Chesterfield - Read		Party seats pre-Election 2001

The East Midlands (Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire) is a region which has always had its fair share of Labour and Conservative marginals, and at the last general election over a third of seats here changed hands. Labour's success was particularly dramatic in Northamptonshire, where they gained five of the county's six constituencies. Their performance was almost as impressive in Derbyshire (five gains) and Nottinghamshire (three gains); indeed there is a belt containing seven neighbouring constituencies either side of the M1 motorway through Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire which all turned from blue to red in 1997.

The Conservatives performed particularly well in the East Midlands in 1983, when they increased their number of seats from 20 to 34 and reduced Labour to single figures, comfortably their worst showing since the war. The political behaviour of the East Midlands appeared similar to the south in that the Labour vote steadily disappeared from 1945 onwards; a pattern some put down to the building of the M1 and resulting growth in numbers of London-bound commuters. By 1983, the Conservative lead in the region was 20% and the SDP-Liberal Alliance were just 4% behind Labour. Labour had been reduced to just six seats in the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire coalfield area plus one each in Derby and Leicester. It is worth remembering that the Conservative triumph of 1983 was so great that they gained all three constituencies in the city of Nottingham, along with two in Leicester; Labour had managed to hold all seats in both cities even in 1979.

After the meltdown of 1983, Labour's recovery in the East Midlands was painfully slow. In 1987 they regained three of the lost seats in Leicester and Nottingham, then the other two in 1992, together with just one solitary gain outside of the main cities: Sherwood, a new seat based on traditional mining areas which should never have gone Conservative in the first place. Before 1997 Labour had failed to make any sort of breakthrough in the smaller towns of the region, many of which they had held until the 1970s. This was all to change of course, with Northampton, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Newark, Loughborough and Lincoln among the towns of 'middle England' to fall to the charms of 'New' Labour on 1st May, 1997. Many of these seats will now form the battleground at the next election, and the Conservatives will certainly need to regain at least some of them if they are to make any sort of national recovery.

Outside of the seats profiled below, it is difficult to see any surprises. Labour now appear rock solid in Leicester and Nottingham, and (the odd by-election apart) always have been in the old coalfield areas further north. The only exception is the town of Chesterfield, where the Liberal Democrats have been slowly reducing the majority of Tony Benn, in a strikingly contrary pattern to their continuing weakness almost everywhere else in the region. Now that Benn is standing down, it is unclear whether Labour will recover in Chesterfield or if the Lib Dems will make a rare parliamentary breakthrough in a traditional Labour seat. Elsewhere the Conservatives should hold what they were left with in 1997, primarily a number of rural constituencies centred on Lincolnshire and Leicestershire outside of the main towns. Some of the majorities here last time must have given sitting Conservative MPs a fright (for example under 6,000 for Stephen Dorrell in Charnwood, assumed to be a super-safe new seat) but it will be a major shock if Labour gain anywhere which proved beyond them in 1997.

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