The constituency was created in 1983 from the safe Conservative seat of
Hornsey and the more Labour-inclined
Wood Green. In those boundary changes the Wood Green seat was broadly divided into two, with half being merged with Hornsey and the rest being transferred to the neighbouring constituency of
Tottenham, to the east — a very small part of the Hornsey seat was also transferred to Tottenham at the same time. This was a
Conservative Party seat until 1992 but by 1997
swung so heavily it suggested a
Labour Party safe seat — Barbara Roche enjoyed a majority of over 20,000. The Liberal Democrats, however, supplanted those parties in the area, both at Parliamentary level where they won the seat in 2005 and held it until 2015; and in local terms. At the 2015 election this seat had the lowest combined Conservative and UKIP percentage in England (11.45%). The seat had a large swing to Labour of over 15% in the 2017 general election, similar to that of two years earlier, meaning it had a history of political volatility; in five out of seven general elections, there were swings to Labour or the Liberal Democrats of between 13 and 16%. == Members of Parliament ==