When created in 1918 the constituency was carved out of the west of the abolished seat Wandsworth. The rest of the latter formed Wandsworth Central, Balham and Tooting and Streatham. Putney formed one of the divisions of the Parliamentary Borough of Wandsworth. ;Political history The seat was Conservative from 1918 until 1964, in a national context of Labour marginal wins in the 1920s, the landslide Labour victory in 1945 and the narrower Labour win in 1950. After the Labour win of 1964, the fairly narrow Heath ministry win of 1970 failed to tip the seat back to the Conservative Party, and the seat was held by Labour for 15 years with Hugh Jenkins as MP. Putney was next held by Conservative Secretary of State for National HeritageDavid Mellor from 1979 until 1997 during the party's successive national governments; the 1997 Labour landslide saw Putney gained by Tony Colman and a signal early-declared result as the landslide unfolded. Putney was the first Conservative gain on election night in 2005, when Justine Greening took back the seat from Labour on a two-party swing of 6.5%. The 2015 result gave the seat the 148th most marginal majority of the Conservative Party's 331 seats by percentage of majority, similar to the 2010 result. The 2017 election saw Greening re-elected, but with a 10% swing to Labour; this heavy swing against the Conservatives has been attributed to the fact that the Borough of Wandsworth voted 75% in favour of remaining in the European Union in the previous year's referendum. In 2019, it was the only seat in the country gained by Labour.
Constituency profile
Putney has long had many desirable properties of South-West London with Southfields to the south and the River Thames to the north with Fulham lying across the river. The majority of the area as in the 19th century is covered by mid-to-high income neighbourhoods whereas the eastern boundary of the seat eating into Wandsworth town centre is more mixed, and Roehampton which has its University consists of, in terms of housing, by a small majority, a diverse council stock that owing to its cost has only fractionally been acquired under the Right to Buy — much of this ward remains in one form or another reliant on social housing. The local council is not a bellwether of who will win the Putney seat, and for a considerable time has imposed the lowest council tax in the country. Between 1997 and 2005 Putney had a unique attribute of being the only seat in the country where every single component ward elected a full slate of Conservative councillors, yet the constituency had a Labour MP, Tony Colman. In the 2016 EU Referendum, Putney voted 72.24% to Remain.
