Dundee was once famed as a city of "jute, jam and journalism", but it is being successfully remodelled as the "city of discovery", increasing tourism and inward investment. The jute mills are now all gone but Dundee West remains a hive of industrial and academic activity with a mixture of light engineering and cutting edge research technology.
The Dundee West parliamentary constituency contains most of Dundee city centre. The headquarters of the celebrated publishers DC Thomson (publications include Sunday Post, The Beano) are also in this constituency, while its printing works are to be found in Dundee East.
Residents of the area are still by and large staunchly working-class. Dundee West is still dominated by large housing estates but there are also middle-class areas around Dundee Law (a hill in Dundee’s city centre) and the West End, for example. The seat also contains the bulk of the student quarter serving the city’s two universities.
This seat has been held by Labour since 1950 and at the last election sitting Westminster MP Ernie Ross extended his majority over the SNP to over 11,000.