Isle of Wight Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (; also referred to informally as The Island or abbreviated to IoW) is a county and the largest and second-most populous island in England. It is in the English Channel, between 2 and 5 miles off the coast of Hampshire, separated by the Solent. The island has resorts that have been holiday destinations since Victorian times, and is known for its mild climate, coastal scenery, and verdant landscape of fields, downland and chines. The island has been home to the poets Swinburne and Tennyson and to Queen Victoria, who built her much-loved summer
Politics of the Isle of Wight Hampshire is the police service, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight forms a single constituency of the House of Commons, with an electorate of 110,697 (as of 2017). This is by far the largest electorate in the country. The 2018 proposals from the Boundary Commission for England will split the constituency into two. The constituency was traditionally a battleground between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Between 1974 and 1987, the seat was a Liberal seat, then becoming Conservative until 1997 when the Liberal Democrats won on a reduced Conservative vote. The