History
The constituency was created in 1983 from parts of the seat of Abingdon. It is a safe seat for the Conservative Party. Its first MP was Robert Jackson, who served as a junior minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
However, Jackson defected to the Labour Party in 2005, and so Wantage unexpectedly had a Labour MP. Jackson was deemed unlikely to be re-elected in Wantage as a Labour MP, so he did not stand at the 2005 general election. At that election, Ed Vaizey was elected as MP for Wantage and now holds the post of Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries.
Read more about this topic: Wantage (UK Parliament Constituency)
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