The Middlesborough constituency does not take in the whole of the working-class and deprived city nestled between the Tees and the Cleveland Hills, which is too large for one seat and too small for two.
Like many other major northern towns and cities, the population in central Middlesbrough has dwindled over the past decade. The massive and massively deprived council estates found to the east of the town’s centre are the source of most of the seat’s social-economic problems, and in the past also provided the majority of Labour support. At the time of the last census, 76% of residents in the Thorntree ward were council tenants, 77% had no car and 14.5% of children aged 16 or under were from single parent families.
It is not only Middlesbrough’s population that has shrunk in recent times. Many of the industries it built its economic base upon are now also in decline, most notably British Steel and ICI. Scores of redundancies contributed to rates of male unemployment of almost 20% at the time of the last census.