please empty your brain below

@RickJC It used to be the case that most front rank politicians represented quite a collection of areas across the country throughout their careers and the MPs who sat for the same seat for decades tended to be local dignitaries with a tight local control but also longstanding backbenchers who might occasionally migrate onto the frontbench in one of the less exciting offices. Small electorates made seats more volatile and also front rank politicians could easily fall out with their patrons and have to look elsewhere to continue their careers.

(Adding the complications with the old law that automatically vacated the seats of newly appointed ministers, forcing them to either refight them in a by-election or move elsewhere - or even serve as a minister outside Parliament as happened with Gladstone for a year when he chose to support Peel over his patron at Newark.)

Amongst Prime Ministers I think the record holder is George Canning, with nine different constituencies in his career (Wendover, Tralee, Newtown - which he actually returned to later on, Hastings, Petersfield, Liverpool, Harwich, Newport (Isle of Wight) and Seaford).

Things started to change with the growth of a mass electorate and media with the likes of Joseph Chamberlain, Henry Campbell Bannerman, David Lloyd George and Stanley Baldwin all representing basically the same seat for their whole careers, give or take boundary changes. They also all benefited from having only a single set of constituency changes during their career (the worst affected was Chamberlain, who initially sat for a three-member seat for the whole of Birmingham and then for West Birmingham, one of seven seats), though some of their contemporaries had more marginal seats/massive political wind changes and comebacks - as well as Law and MacDonald, Balfour, Asquith and Churchill all had defeats and returns elsewhere in their careers, whilst Neville Chamberlain moved across Birmingham after evading defeat by the tightest of margins, and depopulation in east London (plus Communist strength in the area) saw Clement Attlee move from Limhouse to Walthamstow.

This has declined heavily with Prime Ministers from 1955 onwards - Anthony Eden represented the same seat for his whole Commons career, an achievement shared with Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, David Cameron and, presumably, Theresa May. Edward Heath basically represented the same area throughout his career though both the boundaries and names altered over the years, the same was true for James Callaghan, John Major and Gordon Brown.

The exceptions are Harold Macmillan, who initially represented Stockton on & off, but after defeat in 1945 he had a comeback in a by-election in Bromley, Sir Alec Douglas-Home who initially represented Lanark on & off, then went to the Lords and later came back in Kinross and Western Perthshire, and Harold Wilson who was initially elected in Ormskirk but moved to the next door seat of Huyton at the next boundary changes - it seems there was very little if any territory common to the two seats.

Of the two contenders to succeed May, Jeremy Hunt has represented South West Surrey for all of his time in the Commons (initially seeing off a strong Lib Dem challenge), whereas Boris Johnson initially represented Henley, then spent seven years out of the Commons as Mayor of London and then returned in Uxbridge & South Ruislip. If Johnson is the new PM, he will be the first since Douglas-Home to have represented two areas significantly distant from each other.

Returning to Baldwin, he initially seemed to be another in the line of local dignitaries representing a home seat. Between 1880 and 1937 various Baldwins represented Bewdley for all but seven years. But underestimating Baldwin was a mistake many of his political enemies made over the years, hence a sculp list that included Lloyd George, the miners' union, a King and many more.










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