Its area was split between the new seats of Wakefield and Rothwell and Ossett and Denby Dale, first contested at the 4 July 2024 general election.

[2] 1885-1918: The existing parliamentary borough, and so much of the parish of Sandal Magna as lies to the north-east of the Great Northern and Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, being the portion known as Belle Vue.

Electors of the area, since five years before the Model Parliament of 1295 until 1826 had entitlement to vote for the two representatives for Yorkshire, the largest county in the country.

[n 2] From April 1784 until September 1812, one of the two members elected was William Wilberforce, internationally recognised as a leading figure in abolitionism (the anti-slavery movement).

Wakefield became a county division under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, drawing in, as an extension, the Belle Vue area of the parish of Sandal Magna.

Ahmad Khan was found guilty in 2022 of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008 serving an 18 month jail term[10] resulting in his resignation as an MP.

Rt Hon Arthur Greenwood was succeeded by Clement Attlee as leader of the Opposition in 1945, a few months before the party's landslide election victory.

When the wartime coalition government was formed, Winston Churchill appointed him to the British War Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio in 1940.

He was generally seen in such a role as of little wartime legislative effect, but in May 1940 he emerged as Churchill's strongest and most vocal supporter in the lengthy War Cabinet debates on whether to accept or reject a peace offer from Germany.

[16] Further to the completion of the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, the seat was abolished prior to the 2024 general election, with its contents split in two:[2] The constituency contained a rolling landscape with villages surrounding the city of Wakefield which is well connected to West Yorkshire, in particular Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield, however also via two junctions of the M1 to the west, to South Yorkshire such as Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield.

Wakefield Europort employs approximately 3,000 people, a major rail-motorway hub for Northern England imports and exports with EU countries.

Between 1997 and 2010 the constituency included the wards of Denby Dale and Kirkburton, generally Conservative-voting suburbs of Huddersfield in the neighbouring Kirklees borough.