Broadband slower in Conservative constituencies, study finds

Dan Howdle • June 26th, 2024

This was quite a job. Not least because parliament decided to redraw the entire constituency map of the UK last year in preparation for a 2024 or 2025 General Election, making assigning postcodes to each constituency that much harder. In this blog we'll take a look at the most interesting data points. Just remember, we make no comment, positive or negative about any political party, we are merely reporting the numbers we uncovered.

Labour constituencies are faster than Conservative constituencies on average

By grouping constituencies into groups according to the parties that held them up to the dissolution of parliament prior to the 2024 General Election, we were able to form averages by party. What this showed was that Labour constituencies are the fastest on average, putting Conservatives constituencies on second place. You may think, ah, well, that's because more Conservative constituencies are rural, and you may or may not be right. But these are the numbers, including the other parties:

Party	Average download
Labour	126.75Mbps
Conservative	121.20Mbps
Independent and other	116.41Mbps
Liberal Democrat	112.97Mbps
SNP	111.46Mbps

Don't forget, you can download the entire list of 650 constituencies and speeds on the study's source page.

Most of the fastest constituencies were Labour, most of the slowest Conservative

The averages have a habit of smoothing things out a bit too much. Taking a different scoop from the sample can sometimes make the differences a little more clear/stark. Looking at the top ten fastest constituencies in the UK, six of them are Labour, while only three are Conservative. On the flipside, six of the ten slowest constituencies in the UK are Conservative, while there are no Labour constituencies to be found there at all.

Here are the fastest and slowest constituencies in the UK, along with the political party whose MP resided there up to the dissolution of parliament prior to the 2024 General Election on 4 July:

Top 10 fastest constituencies

Rank	Constituency	MP	Party	Constituency download speed in Mbps
1	Swansea West	Geraint Davies	Independent	192.61
2	Southampton Itchen	Royston Smith	Conservative	187.34
3	Southampton Test	Alan Whitehead	Labour	184.10
4	Portsmouth South	Stephen Morgan	Labour	178.39
5	Portsmouth North	Penny Mordaunt	Conservative	178.38
6	Gower	Tonia Antoniazzi	Labour	174.39
7	Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham	Diana Johnson	Labour	167.92
8	Neath and Swansea East	Christina Rees	Labour	167.56
9	Sutton and Cheam	Paul Scully	Conservative	166.96
10	Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice	Emma Hardy	Labour	166.02

Top 10 slowest constituencies

Rank	Constituency	MP	Party	Constituency download speed in Mbps
650	Na h-Eileanan an Iar	Angus Brendan MacNeil	Independent	40.69
649	Whitehaven and Workington	Trudy Harrison	Conservative	51.81
648	Orkney and Shetland	Alistair Carmichael	Liberal Democrat	57.06
647	Caithness Sutherland and Easter Ross	Jamie Stone	Liberal Democrat	62.27
646	Aberdeenshire North and Moray East	Douglas Ross	Conservative	62.97
645	North Norfolk	Duncan Baker	Conservative	63.73
644	Bournemouth East	Tobias Ellwood	Conservative	66.76
643	Ynys Mon	Virginia Crosbie	Conservative	70.21
642	Argyll Bute and South Lochaber	Brendan O'Hara	Scottish National Party	71.05
641	North Devon	Selaine Saxby	Conservative	73.94

Labour's Shadow Cabinet is faster than the Conservative Cabinet

Another of the 'just for fun' findings of our research is that Labour also has faster broadband when exclusively including the Conservative government cabinet and pitting it against Labour's Shadow Cabinet. The Labour cabinet is a fair bit larger than the current Conservative one, and there are some members of both who are either not MPs (so don't have constituencies, such as Lord Cameron), or had presided over constituencies that have been too substantially redrawn to assign them to one in this upcoming election.

Here is the comparison of constituency broadband speeds when facing off the cabinet against the shadow cabinet:

Cabinet Ministers	Constituency download speed in Mbps	Shadow Cabinet	Constituency download speed in Mbps
Rishi Sunak	97.26	Keir Starmer	131.06
Oliver Dowden	117.97	Angela Rayner	97.16
Jeremy Hunt	BOUNDARY CHANGES	Rachel Reeves	132.51
Lord Cameron	NOT AN MP	Bridget Phillipson	108.52
James Cleverly	102.83	Yvette Cooper	137.64
Grant Shapps	135.94	Wes Streeting	127.06
Alex Chalk	146.70	Edward Miliband	114.81
Michelle Donelan	114.23	David Lammy	113.23
Michael Gove	133.28	Pat McFadden	123.78
Victoria Atkins	92.73	Nick Thomas-Symonds	109.81
Steve Barclay	101.69	Jonathan Ashworth	128.12
Penny Mordaunt	178.38	Shabana Mahmood	116.59
Lord True	NOT AN MP	Jonathan Reynolds	105.60
Kemi Badenoch	122.88	Liz Kendall	117.90
Claire Coutinho	122.07	John Healey	BOUNDARY CHANGES
Mel Stride	95.81	Louise Haigh	117.82
Gillian Keegan	91.26	Thangam Debbonaire	117.78
Mark Harper	108.36	Anneliese Dodds	133.93
Lucy Frazer	BOUNDARY CHANGES	Steve Reed	138.16
Richard Holden	BOUNDARY CHANGES	Peter Kyle	130.64
Chris Heaton-Harris	146.33	Hilary Benn	133.90
Alister Jack	79.19	Ian Murray	123.45
David T C Davies	105.05	Jo Stevens	BOUNDARY CHANGES
		Emily Thornberry	98.46
		Lisa Nandy	128.11
		Darren Jones	128.10
		Ellie Reeves	113.15
		Lucy Powell	125.96
		Alan Campbell	101.48
		Angela Smith	NOT AN MP
		Roy Kennedy	NOT AN MP
Average:	116.22	Average:	120.55

Liberal Democrats' Ed Davey is the fastest party leader

Finally, it's the face of of broadband speeds in the constituencies of party leaders. Here, the Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey trounces the opposition. His constituency of Kingston and Surbiton is by far the fastest of the three leaders. Why three leaders? Well, because a fair few other party leaders do not have a constituency. See Greens, for example. The SNP – the UK's third largest party by seats – on the other hand is led by John Swinney, whose own constituency was substantially redrawn in the boundary changes made public last year, so technically he doesn't have a constituency either.

Here are the broadband speeds in the constituencies of the main party leaders:

Leader	Party	Constituency download speed in Mbps
Ed Davey	Liberal Democrats	163.49
Keir Starmer	Labour	131.06
Rishi Sunak	Conservative	97.26

Closing comments

This is, at the end of the day, a data set others will be able to use to make points about broadband where they live, and prompt a little healthy competition among MPs to improve connectivity for their constituents. If you want to know how fast the broadband is in your constituency, you can download the full data from the source page of this research.