Labour has traditionally dominated the borough of Dudley and currently holds all four of its parliamentary seats.
The Conservatives have been making some inroads here at local elections recently. They now hold five council seats to Labourís 15 - and one for the Lib Dems, who are a very distant third in parliamentary elections, just ahead of Arthur Scargillís Socialist Labour Party. This seat is one of only three seats outside London where two far-right parties stood at the last General Election.
Dudley is at the western edge of the West Midlands metropolitan conurbation, and is bordered by greenbelt to its west. It has recently tried to develop more areas of greenery within its own confines, and parkland and golf courses are starting to spring up.
A new £80m PFI-funded hospital and two ambulatory care centres (mini hospitals) are to be built in the constituency. This seat contains most of Dudleyís attractions, such as the zoo, castle, town museum and Black Country Museum. The latter is genuinely popular, and receives around one million visitors a year.
Gone now is the heavy industry on which Dudley built itself, but light and service industries and establishing here with some success. In particular, a major leisure redevelopment at Castle Gate is set to generate up to 2,000 new jobs.