This is very much a constituency of two halves. Leyton gives the visitor something of a feel of the inner-city in an outer London borough, with overcrowded accommodation, a lot of which is council-rented. It also has a substantial ethnic minority population - the ward of Cathall is over 40 per cent non-white. Wanstead, on the other hand, is far more suburban and owner-occupied and sits rather ill at ease with its new partner.
This seat has an interesting electoral history. Several of its wards - in Wanstead - were once part of Winston Churchillís final seat in Parliament. In 1965, after Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walkerís defeat in the allegedly racist election campaign in Smethwick the year before, he was defeated for the second time in a year in Leyton, having been parachuted in to contest a by-election.
Labour currently dominate at a local level here, and in the 1998 London Borough elections the party swept the Conservatives and the Lib Dems out of a ward each, in the process winning 18 of the 24 council seats represented in this constituency.