Edinburgh North & Leith.

Edinburgh North and Leith is an inner-city seat in the north of the Scottish capital, running up from the docks at Leith. It is densely urban rather than a network of towns, with a Census population of about 110,000 and a median age of 36, a young electorate by national standards. There are no separate settlements to speak of: the seat is a slice of one continuous city. Local services fall to a single authority, the City of Edinburgh Council, a Scottish unitary covering two multi-member wards here, Forth and Leith Walk.

That footprint sits within a council where no single party holds sway. At the most recent ward contests, in 2022, the seats split evenly between the Greens, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP under Scotland's proportional system, rather than any one bloc sweeping the board. The parliamentary picture has moved more sharply: Labour took the seat in 2024 on 42 per cent, the SNP second on 27 per cent, where five years earlier the SNP had won with Labour a distant runner-up. The swing to Labour was, on the figures, pronounced. Tracy Gilbert has held the seat for Labour since 2024.

The direction of travel, then, is a recent and clear shift toward Labour, though a council split four ways tempers any reading of the area as settled. Recent local coverage has had a markedly administrative tenor, dominated by housing supply, building-safety repairs and street-level transport schemes rather than national controversy. The contrast between a decisive Westminster result and a fragmented council makes the seat better read as recently realigned than safe.