Hove and Portslade (UK Parliament constituency)

Hove and Portslade is a borough constituency in East Sussex represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Peter Kyle of the Labour Party, who currently serves as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in the government of Keir Starmer.

It was previously called Hove. Further to the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, enacted by the Parliamentary Constituencies Order 2023, there were no changes to the constituency boundaries, but it was renamed from the 2024 general election. Before it was renamed, it had the joint shortest name of any constituency of the UK Parliament, with 4 letters, the same as Bath.

Boundaries
1950–1983: The County Borough of Hove, and the Urban District of Portslade-by-Sea.

1983–2010: The Borough of Hove.

2010–present: The City of Brighton and Hove wards of Brunswick and Adelaide, Central Hove, Goldsmid, Hangleton and Knoll, Hove Park, North Portslade, South Portslade, Westbourne, and Wish.

As a result of 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, the constituency remained unchanged, but the name was changed from Hove to Hove and Portslade.

The constituency covers Hove and Portslade in the city of Brighton and Hove.

Constituency profile
The settlement of Hove is an economically active seaside resort which is both a commuter town and centred in an area of high local employment, stretching from Portsmouth to London Gatwick Airport. The seat acted as a barometer of the national result between 1979 and 2015.

History
It was not until the 1950 general election, when major boundary changes occurred in Brighton, that Hove acquired a parliamentary seat of its own, having previously been in the former two-seat Brighton constituency. Hove was a Conservative stronghold until the 1997 general election, when the Labour Party saw a landslide parliamentary victory and with it, as in Greater London, wide success on the developed East Sussex coast.

Labour retained the seat, though with narrow majorities, at the 2001 and 2005 general elections. The Liberal Democrats including their two predecessor parties amassed their largest share of the vote in 2010 at 22.6% of the vote. Mike Weatherley, a Conservative, regained the seat at the 2010 general election. Weatherley stood down after one term, and the 2015 election saw Peter Kyle regain the seat for Labour on a 3.1% swing. The 2015 result gave the seat the 14th-smallest majority of Labour's 232 seats by percentage of majority. Kyle was reelected in 2017 by a margin of 32.6%, a 15.1% swing to Labour; this was not only the biggest margin Labour had ever won Hove by, but the largest margin any MP for Hove had won since 1987. The Conservative Party polled its lowest number of votes since 2005 and recorded their lowest percentage of the vote (31.6%) in the constituency since its creation. Turnout at the 2017 general election was 77.6%, the highest turnout in the constituency at a general election since its creation in 1950.

Members of Parliament
Brighton and Lewes prior to 1950

Elections in the 2010s
Peter Kyle's 21.8% vote share increase was the 5th largest for any Labour Party candidate at the 2017 election.