Essex is a county in eastern England, bordering Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the south, and Greater London to the southwest. Chelmsford is the county town, while Basildon, Harlow, Tilbury, and Southend-on-Sea are other major settlements in the region. The region is divided into the agricultural north and the working-class and industrial south, and the region had a population of 1,802,200 in 2016. Once a Labour stronghold, it later became a Conservative Party-dominated region following the Thatcher era.
