The seat covers an area north from the new town, an elegant Georgian district in fine neo-classical style, to Leith - Edinburgh's historic port and centre for the city's engineering, fishing and whisky industries. Leith was once an unashamedly working-class area marked by brooding tenements, but today some bright redevelopments have brought it yuppified housing and arguably the best concentration of bars and restaurants in the city - leading it to be nick-named "Leith-sur-Mer".
Leith was one of the proposed sites for the Scottish Parliament’s permanent building. But despite the decision to situate the parliament elsewhere, Leith docks remain the home of 1,500 civil servants working for the Scottish Executive in the Victoria Quay building, which opened in 1996.
Sitting MP Malcolm Chisholm was first elected for Edinburgh North & Leith in 1992 following the deselection of the maverick Ron Brown, who was infamously suspended from the Commons in 1988 for picking up the mace and throwing to the ground. Mr Chisholm won with a commanding majority of 10,978 votes over the SNP in the 1997 election.