X-Nico

unusual facts about safe seat



Alexander Browne

His death triggered a by-election in February 1943, when the formerly safe Unionist seat was won by the Northern Ireland Labour Party candidate Jack Beattie.


see also

1983 in LGBT rights

In the 1983 by-election for the Bermondsey constituency in South London, Labour candidate Peter Tatchell loses a previously safe seat after a campaign dominated by attacks on his left-wing politics and homosexuality.

David Howell, Baron Howell of Guildford

Two years later, in 1966, he was elected MP for the safe seat of Guildford in Surrey, for the Conservative Party, a position he retained until retiring at the 1997 general election, on 6 June 1997 he was made a life peer as Baron Howell of Guildford, of Penton Mewsey, in the County of Hampshire.

Division of Braddon

Following the election of the Whitlam government and the period following the Franklin Dam controversy, Braddon became a relatively safe seat for the Liberal Party.

Don Nardella

In that year he transferred to the lower house, winning the safe seat of Melton.

Leyton by-election, 1965

An MP for over thirty years, his elevation to the peerage was intended to create a vacancy in a safe seat for the Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, who had been defeated in a shock result in the 1964 general election in his Smethwick constituency.

Liz Constable

She left the Liberal Party when it became clear that the favoured candidate of power-broker Noel Crichton-Browne would be given preselection for the safe seat of Floreat in 1991 at her expense.

Roy Thomason

He was selected to follow Sir Hal Miller as candidate for the safe seat of Bromsgrove, and won the seat with a 13,702 majority in the 1992 election.