Stafford is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2024 by Leigh Ingham from the Labour Party.
The seat since its resurrection in 1983 has been of a bellwether being held always by the incumbent government.
Stafford is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2024 by Leigh Ingham from the Labour Party.
The seat since its resurrection in 1983 has been of a bellwether being held always by the incumbent government.
___List_of_United_Kingdom_Parliament_constituencies_q.jpg)
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (30 October 1751 – 7 July 1816) was an Anglo-Irish playwright, writer and Whig politician who sat in the British House of Commons from 1780 to 1812, representing the constituencies of Stafford, Westminster and Ilchester. The owner of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in London, he wrote several prominent plays such as The Rivals (1775), The Duenna (1775), The School for Scandal (1777) and A Trip to Scarborough (1777). He served as Treasurer of the Navy from 1806 to 1807. Sheridan died in 1816 and was buried at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. His plays remain a central part of the Western canon and are frequently performed around the world.
Leigh Ingham is a British Labour politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Stafford since 2024.
The 1874 United Kingdom general election was held between 31 January to 17 February 1874. Although the Liberals won the majority of the votes, Benjamin Disraeli's Conservative Party managed to win a majority, largely caused by the number of uncontested seats held by the Conservatives. Although there had been minority Conservative governments in the intervening years, this was the first outright Conservative election victory since Robert Peel's victory in 1841 over thirty years earlier.
The election saw the Irish of the Home Rule League become a significant third party in Parliament, with 60 of 101 of the seats for Ireland. This was the first UK election to use a secret ballot following the 1872 Secret Ballot Act. The Irish Nationalist gains are often attributed to the effects of the Secret Ballot Act, as tenants faced less of a threat of eviction if they voted against the wishes of their landlords. However, the Home Rule League had already won 8 by-elections before the passage of the act, diminishing its often emphasised importance. Also in this election, the first two working-class MPs were elected: Alexander MacDonald and Thomas Burt, both members of the Miners' Union, were elected as Liberal-Labour (Lib–Lab) MPs in Stafford and Morpeth, respectively. The 1867 Reform Act eroded the legislative power of the rural gentry. The 1874 election, especially in Ireland, saw great landowners losing their county seats to tenant farmers.