Wednesday 22 April 2015

Football representation

Inspired by a thread on Facebook, I tested the assertion that the Conservatives were not represented in the 2010-2015 parliament in respect of Premier League clubs except at the top of the table: Chelsea. A distant memory of a claim by a dyed-in-the-wool Fulham supporter caused me to doubt this, and sure enough a search on the postcode of Stamford Bridge (SW6 1HS) confirmed that the club is in the Fulham Road in Hammersmith and Fulham, held until last month by Andy Slaughter for Labour. The only exception to the Labour monopoly of the Premier League is Burnley who I hope will hang on to both their top-level status and to their Liberal Democrat representative, Gordon Birtwistle.

In fact, you have to drop to the Championship to find many Conservative-held seats. Watford is currently favourite for automatic promotion, but I see that this is a three-way marginal so it is anyone's guess who will be MP for Vicarage Road after May 7th. The next team, Bournemouth, was also Conservative-represented, then sixth-placed Ipswich, seventh-placed Brentford, eighth Wolves, eleventh Nottingham (never Notts!) Forest, nineteenth Reading, and twentieth Brighton. The rest are Labour-held, apart from LibDem Norwich, presently in fourth position. Note that these are the constituencies where the grounds are situated, which is why Caroline Lucas and the Greens do not get a look in. The AMEX Stadium is in the Conservative-held half of Brighton.

To follow this up in the remainder of the Football League and the Scottish Leagues, I recommend http://www.footballgroundguide.com and http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/cgi-bin/seatdetails.pl.



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