North Norfolk is a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election.
Formerly a safe seat for the Conservatives, it has been represented by the Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb since 2001. This marked the first time that a Liberal aligned candidate had won a seat in Norfolk since 1929. This was to be followed by the election of Simon Wright in Norwich South in 2010.
At the May 2005 general election the seat was one of the Conservatives' top targets as Lamb was defending a majority of just 483 against a relatively high-profile Tory, Iain Dale. However, Lamb instead increased his majority to 10,606. Although the seat had been Labour for 25 years since World War II, Labour have slumped to a distant third in recent years.
The seat often has the highest turnout of any constituency across the eastern counties in general elections at well over 70%.
North Norfolk was described by the Earl of Leicester as "the one constituency in England where, in 1964, it was so feudal that it had to be explained to the electors that the ballot was secret."
Famous quotes containing the words north and/or parliament:
“I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)