Forerunners and boundaries The Morley and Outwood constituency was
first contested in 2010. It consisted of the town of
Morley, in the
City of Leeds metropolitan district, and around
Outwood in the
City of Wakefield district. It was largely a successor to the previous
Morley and Rothwell seat, which existed from 1997 until 2010;
Rothwell was transferred to a new
Elmet and Rothwell seat, while Outwood was previously part of the abolished
Normanton constituency. At the same time, the Leeds suburb of
Middleton was transferred to
Leeds Central. The remainder of the former Normanton constituency was divided between the
Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford constituency and the
Wakefield constituency.
Political history At the
2010 general election, Morley and Outwood was won by
Ed Balls of the
Labour Party, who had been MP for Normanton since 2005, and served as Labour's
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2011 to 2015. Balls narrowly lost the seat at the
2015 general election to the Conservative Party candidate Andrea Jenkyns which was described by
Larry Elliott of
The Guardian as a "
Portillo moment". The 2015 general election result gave the Conservatives that year their sixth-most marginal majority of their 331 seats won, by percentage of majority. Third parties had not polled strongly in the seat to date — the combined votes of the two largest UK parties' candidates exceeded 72.9% of the total in 2010 and 2015, 97.4% in 2017, and 91.7% in 2019. ==Boundaries==