The voters of North West Durham went to the polls on 9th April 1992 faced with the choice of their sitting MP, Hilary Armstrong who is now Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top and two young candidates who frankly had no chance of winning, because North West Durham is a Labour safe seat. Since it was formed in 1950 the constituency has been held by 5 Labour MPs to today when Pat Glass is their representative. Hilary had first been elected in 1987, succeeding her Father who held the seat from 1964. So for 46 years Father and Daughter were the sole representatives for this constituency, returning well over 50% of the vote at each election. As popular and effective as they undoubtedly were, the sense of frustration felt by voters of other parties and those who do not support any party must be huge. Across these many elections, the vote for Labour remains at around 20,000 votes each time, yet like most constituencies the number of those entitled to vote is over 70,000. This means that 50,000 people have not voted for Labour on each occasion. Surely such a failed system cannot be perpetuated. Nevertheless although these two pretenders to the North West Durham did not get elected in 1992, this failure has not appeared to have damaged their careers!