Yahoo News Bristol North East constituency General Election 2024 guide -candidates and all you need to know
Ahead of the 2024 General Election, we’re running through all the constituencies in our area, with the ultimate guide to who’s standing, what they say, what the constituency is like and how people have voted there before.
Bristol North East is a little different to all the others this time around - it is an entirely new constituency, drawn up as part of the huge Boundary Commission changes ahead of the 2024 General Election, and it will be the first time ever that people in this area have come together like this to vote for an MP.
There has been a constituency called Bristol North East before - from 1950 to 1983. But it covered a much smaller area of east Bristol, from Eastville to Stapleton. It swung back and forwards between Tories and Labour, but 41 years on, the new Bristol North East is much bigger, and covers tens of thousands more people.
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The General Election takes place on July 4, 2024 and the full list of candidates in every constituency has now been released.
In our guides you will find all the candidates standing for election plus information on the area covered by the constituency. Here is our guide to Bristol North East.
Bristol North East boundaries
Bristol North East will only exist as a constituency the moment polls open on July 4. It has been created because there were too many people in Bristol’s four constituencies. The Boundary Commission aims to get around 70,000 people for every MP, but all the Bristol constituencies had more than that. It was time for a fifth one, but in fact, Bristol is getting half an MP.
That’s because it will be the first time in a generation that a parliamentary constituency crosses the city boundary. Around half of Bristol North East is in Bristol, and the other half is in South Gloucestershire.
Bristol North East takes most of its area from the Bristol East constituency, some from Bristol North West, and around 40 per cent of what was Kingswood in South Gloucestershire.
In Bristol, it covers an area from Lockleaze in the west, across the M32 to Eastville, Frome Vale and Hillfields, which includes Fishponds and the Bristol bit of Downend. Then it crosses the South Gloucestershire boundary to include the Staple Hill and Mangotsfield wards, as well as Kingswood, New Cheltenham and Woodstock areas. The rest of the old Kingswood seat, the southern half, is going to be in the new North East Somerset and Hanham constituency.
Previous voting
Since there hasn’t been a ‘Bristol North East’ seat for 41 years, this is impossible. All we can point to is recent election results involving the areas that make up the new seat.
The Bristol areas of Bristol North East have consistently had a Labour MP. Most of the Bristol North East constituency has been taken from Bristol East, which has been Labour for 32 years. But the South Gloucestershire half of this new seat had a Conservative MP up until the start of this year, in Kingswood.
That was Chris Skidmore, and he resigned in January, prompting a February by-election for a seat that had months left to exist. The by-election was won by Labour’s Damien Egan, and he spent four months as the last Kingswood MP. He’s standing for Labour now in Bristol North East - which he was selected for last year following a fierce contest to be Labour's pick against the now former Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees.
Chris Skidmore, the last Conservative MP for Kingswood, announced last week that not only was he quitting politics, he was going to be supporting Labour instead, so furious is he about the Conservative Party ’s actions over the environment.
In terms of local election results, Bristol North East’s council seats are pretty solidly Labour on both sides of the Bristol-South Glos border, however, most recently, the Green Party have started to make gains, winning and then holding Lockleaze, and winning council seats in Eastville too. Frome Vale and Hillfields remain Labour locally, as do all the parts of Bristol North East that are in Kingswood. So it would be a huge surprise if Bristol North East wasn’t a Labour win, with the Conservatives in second place, but it could be closer than other Bristol seats.
Candidates for Bristol North East in 2024
There are eight candidates in Bristol North East - they are:
Asif Ali (Independent)
Damien Egan (Labour)
Lorraine Francis (Green)
Louise Harris (Lib Dem)
Rose Hulse (Conservative)
Anthony New (Reform UK)
Dan Smart (TUSC)
Tommy Truman (SDP)
Analysis of the ward
Bristol North East is a sprawling mix and match of a constituency, with some very different communities all now lumped together to elect and MP.
Its main spine is the A432 Fishponds Road, branching off right along Staple Hill High Street. The ward includes large social housing estates like Lockleaze on the other side of the M32, Hillfields and New Cheltenham, along with the more affluent leafy suburbia of Stapleton, Broomhill and Frome Vale. The area extends down Stapleton Road into Easton almost to the station, and then includes more traditional Bristol Victorian terraced streets of Eastville, Mayfield Park and Speedwell, as well as the separate town of Kingswood out as far as the A4174 ring road.
Whoever is elected will have to overcome that divide - people in South Gloucestershire, particularly in Kingswood, do not regard themselves as being part of Bristol. And they will be the only MP in the city to have to deal with two local councils for a start.
