Manchester Withington (UK Parliament constituency)
Manchester Withington is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Jeff Smith of Labour. Of the 30 seats with the highest percentage of winning majority in 2017, the seat ranks 25th with a 55.7% margin, and is the only one of the twenty nine of these seats won by the Labour Party in which the second-placed candidate was a Liberal Democrat, rather than Conservative. This is despite being a Conservative seat right up to 1987, then becoming relatively safely Labour, then Liberal Democrat from 2005 to 2015 before they lost on a large swing in 2015, after which Smith substantially increased his majority. History Over the past 35 years Manchester Withington has elected all three major parties. Mostly Conservative before 1987 (with three years of Liberal Party representation near its 1918 inception), it even resisted being gained by Labour in its massive landslide victories in 1945 and 1966. However, in 1987 the seat turned red for the first time and remained so until 2005 when it was gained by Liberal Democrat John Leech. Leech took the seat with an 18% swing – the largest of the 2005 General Election. He held it