Predecessor seats Electors of the area, since five years before the
Model Parliament of 1295 until 1826 had entitlement to vote for the two representatives for
Yorkshire, the largest county in the country. Parliament legislated for, from an unusual disfranchisement in 1826 of a Cornish
rotten borough, two additional MPs. From April 1784 until September 1812, one of the two members elected was
William Wilberforce, internationally recognised as a leading figure in
abolitionism (the anti-slavery movement). The large county was given far greater representation by the
Reform Act 1832: Belle Vue's electors until 1885, alongside other
Forty Shilling Freeholders non-resident in the
Parliamentary Borough of Wakefield itself but owning such property in any part of the county division could elect the two members for that division: this became the
West Riding of Yorkshire from 1832 until 1865 (which had its polling place in this city), after which, the relevant county subdivision became the
Southern West Riding until 1885.
Creation Wakefield became a county division under the
Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, drawing in, as an extension, the Belle Vue area of the parish of
Sandal Magna.
Results Wakefield returned
Labour MPs from 1932 to 2017. The size of majority had fluctuated between absolute and
marginal. The 2015 result gave the seat the 27th-smallest majority of Labour's 232 seats by percentage of majority. In 2019, Wakefield lost the Labour majority and returned the first Conservative MP in 87 years. The seat was represented from 2019 to 2022 by
Imran Ahmad Khan, who was elected as a member of the
Conservative Party. Ahmad Khan was found guilty in 2022 of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008 serving an 18 month jail term resulting in his resignation as an MP. This triggered a
by-election. His resignation became effective on 3 May 2022, when he was appointed
Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. A by-election was held on 23 June to replace him. Looked on as a key "
Red Wall" seat, Labour regained the constituency with a substantial 12.7% swing.
Opposition parties From 1923 until 2019 the runner-up candidate was a
Conservative. Six non-Labour candidates stood in 2015 of whom two, those which were Conservative and from
UKIP won more than 5% of the vote, keeping their
deposits.
Prominent frontbenchers Rt Hon Arthur Greenwood was succeeded by
Clement Attlee as leader of the
Opposition in 1945, a few months before the party's landslide election victory. He had been from 1929 to 1931 the
Minister of Health in the
Second MacDonald ministry. In this role he successfully steered the
Housing Act 1930 through both Houses of Parliament under the
minority government, which expended more significant subsidies for
slum clearance, allowing more affordable, spacious housing to be built for residents of slums. When the wartime coalition government was formed,
Winston Churchill appointed him to the
British War Cabinet as
Minister without Portfolio in 1940. He was generally seen in such a role as of little wartime legislative effect, but in May 1940 he emerged as Churchill's strongest and most vocal supporter in the lengthy War Cabinet debates on whether to accept or reject a peace offer from Germany. Without the vote in favour of fighting on by Greenwood and Clement Attlee, Churchill would not have had the slim majority he needed to do so. Rt Hon
Arthur Creech Jones was
Secretary of State for the Colonies from October 1946 until February 1950, appropriately given that in June 1936 he pressed the Government, who were encouraging Colonies to set up memorials to
King George V, to follow the example of
Uganda and set up a technical educational institution. The Labour Party nominated him to the Colonial Office's Educational Advisory Committee in 1936, on which he served for nine years. In 1937, he was a founding member of the
Trades Union Congress Colonial Affairs Committee, and in 1940 he founded the
Fabian Colonial Bureau.
Mary Creagh held various shadow cabinet posts between 2010 and 2015. She resigned her post following the election of
Jeremy Corbyn as Labour party leader.
Abolition Further to the completion of the
2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, the seat was abolished prior to the
2024 general election, with its contents split in two: • The urban areas of
Wakefield itself (Wakefield East, Wakefield North and Wakefield West wards) to be included in the newly created constituency of
Wakefield and Rothwell • The majority of the electorate, comprising the outlying towns and rural areas (
Horbury and South Ossett,
Ossett and Wakefield Rural wards) will be part of the new constituency of
Ossett and Denby Dale ==Constituency profile==