Kirkcaldy is a coastal seat which includes some not unpleasant seaside resorts, and has been held by Labour since 1945. Yet while Kirkcaldy and its environs may be a coastal area, it is industrial first and foremost. Tourism plays second fiddle to both heavy and light industries, although the decline of coal mining and linoleum manufacture, on which Kirkcaldy really grew, has led to above-average unemployment.
Kirkcaldy (which boasts a four-mile long esplanade built in the 1920s partly to relieve unemployment at that time), Burntisland and Kinghorn are on the coast but Kirkcaldy itself could not be classed as a "resort". One of the ironies of this seat is that Kirkcaldy, birthplace of Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, has not been won by a Tory for over 60 years. Despite this, the local Labour council has honoured the town's most famous son with an Adam Smith museum.
The sitting Labour MP, Dr Lewis Moonie, has held the seat since 1987. The SNP are the second place party here, and they managed to take votes from Labour in 1992, but 1997 saw a 3.8% swing back to Labour.
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