Gordon (UK Parliament constituency)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Gordon was a UK Parliament county constituency in Scotland from 1983 to 2024. It covered central Aberdeenshire and the northern part of Aberdeen City, including Ellon, Huntly, Inverurie and the Dyce area near Aberdeen Airport. It elected one MP by the first-past-the-post system.

It was created in 1983 from East Aberdeenshire and West Aberdeenshire and underwent boundary changes several times. In 2005, boundaries were redrawn to include more Aberdeen City areas; in 2023, after a Boundary Commission review, the seat lost parts of Aberdeen City and gained part of Banff and Buchan, and was renamed Gordon and Buchan for the 2024 general election.

Politically, Gordon was a closely fought three-way seat between Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and SNP. At its start, Liberal MP Malcolm Bruce won in 1983 and increased his majority in 1987 before a smaller margin in 1992. After 1997, Liberal Democrats held the seat with increasing majorities until SNP’s Richard Thomson cut the Lib Dem majority in 2010. In 2015, former SNP leader Alex Salmond won the seat. In 2017, Conservative Colin Clark defeated Salmond in a large swing—the biggest in Britain that year. In 2019, SNP’s Richard Thomson narrowly won back the seat, so the contest remained tightly balanced between SNP and Conservatives.

The area is affluent and semi-rural, with a mixed economy of oil, farming and tourism. It sits along the A90 and A96 corridors and includes towns such as Ellon, Inverurie and Huntly, with parts of Aberdeen City in the southern area, including Bankhead, Bridge of Don and Dyce. Aberdeen International Airport lies within the constituency.

In the Scottish Parliament, Gordon was represented by Nora Radcliffe (Liberal Democrat) from 1999 and later by Alex Salmond (SNP) from 2007 to 2016. In the 2016 EU referendum, Gordon voters supported remaining in the EU.