Richmond Park is an outer London seat consisting, as its name might suggest, a series of districts bordering on the largest of the London Royal Parks. The main centre of the seat is Richmond, a pleasant and prosperous town - it is ungenerous to call it a suburb - by the Thames. North lies Kew and the highly favoured residential suburbs of Palewell and Barnes, which are surprisingly close to central London. The new accessions to the seat in 1997 consisted of the northern half of the abolished Kingston seat, which had been represented by Norman Lamont for 25 years (see Harrogate & Knaresborough) comprising the wealthy Tudor Drive, Kingston Hill and New Malden areas and the central wards of Canbury and Cambridge. The seat has two Millionaire's Rows, at Richmond Hill and Coombe, and other than the depressing Ham estate little of it is shabby. It is the fifth most 'professional/ managerial' seat in the country.

That Richmond Park was lost by the Conservatives in 1997 may seem bizarre, but many observers were surprised that Jeremy Hanley, the jovial Tory MP for Richmond and Barnes 1983-97, held on for so long. The Lib Dems have been practising pavement politics in Richmond for a quarter of a century now and took a firm grip of the borough council in 1986. The wards transplanted from Kingston were supposed to have made the seat safer for the Tories, but they were swamped. The Lib Dem lead in the 1998 borough elections was 3%, less than in 1997. The result in the 1999 Euro election was an unconvincing Conservative win, with 39% compared to about 20% each for Lib Dem and Labour (Labour's vote was considerably up on 1997 reflecting the lack of tactical voting). In the 2000 GLA elections the Lib Dems seem to have been ahead by a similar margin to 1997 when Jenny Tonge, a doctor, won the seat by 5.2%. She faces opposition from Tory Tom Harris, and starts as the favourite.

Parliamentary Statistics pre-Election 2001

Liberal Democrat majority 2,951 (5.2%)  Conservative target 34
MP Jenny Tonge
1997 (Turnout 77.3%)
Liberal Democrat	25,393	44.7%
Conservative	22,442	39.5%
Labour	7,172	12.6%
Referendum	1,467	2.6%
Others	379	0.7%

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For Richmond Park 2001 Election result - click here.