Election 97

Sutton Coldfield

Current MP Sir Norman Fowler
Conservative 97 27,373
Labour 97 12,488
LibDem 97 10,139
Nationalist 97 0
Other 97 0
Elected party
Sutton Coldfield

Robert Waller wrote
Old constituency Sutton Coldfield
Conservative 92 37,001
Labour 92 8,490
LibDem 92 10,965
Nationalist 92 0
Other 92 324
Elected party Conservative

Held by former Conservative Party chairman Sir Norman Fowler, this ultra-middle-class suburb of Birmingham probably ranks only just behind Kensington and Chelsea in the current list of safe Tory seats. Three-quarters of Sutton Coldfield's employees are non-manual, 97 per cent are white and there are virtually no council estates. This has in the past been the ultimate safe seat. Fowler likes to quote a swing in a past by-election which, if projected on to the country as a whole, would have left him the only Conservative in the Commons, showing how nonsensical such calculations can be. We cannot expect such a result this time - even in the worst case, Fowler should have more than a few colleagues to hob-nob with in the division lobbies.


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