Perhaps unsurprisingly for a seat characterised first by the mining industry and latterly by its decline, Labour has won the seat at every election since 1929.
There is actually no town or village called Bassetlaw, and the seat's main centre is Worksop - a light industrial town still struggling to come to terms with the destruction of its symbiotic relationship with the coal industry during the 1980s and 90s. Worksop's population is the largest out of all Bassetlaw's towns.
Nevertheless, unemployment has been kept in relative check, thanks in part to a minor tourist industry, which attracts sailors, fishermen and holiday makers to the lakes and rivers, (of which the Trent is one), and the Chesterfield canal. Clumber Park, sometimes home to international horse trials, is also a minor tourist attraction.
Outgoing MP Joe Ashton will be remembered as the somewhat politically incorrect MP, who came to a less than correct end in his own political career after being found by the police in a massage parlour.
In the past, Mr Ashton resisted the lowering of the homosexual age of consent, objected to quotas for women, whether in candidate selection or election to Labour's NEC and Shadow Cabinet and even demanded that more "Carry On" films be made.