The Conservatives have been making some inroads here at local elections recently. They now hold five council seats to Labour’s 15 - and one for the Lib Dems, who are a very distant third in parliamentary elections, just ahead of Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party. This seat is one of only three seats outside London where two far-right parties stood at the last General Election.

Dudley is at the western edge of the West Midlands metropolitan conurbation, and is bordered by greenbelt to its west. It has recently tried to develop more areas of greenery within its own confines, and parkland and golf courses are starting to spring up.

A new £80m PFI-funded hospital and two ambulatory care centres (mini hospitals) are to be built in the constituency. This seat contains most of Dudley’s attractions, such as the zoo, castle, town museum and Black Country Museum. The latter is genuinely popular, and receives around one million visitors a year.