UK Local Elections 2022

[Alcibiades]

London Labour campaign launch was in Barnet- with both Keir and Sadiq.

Hardly surprising- it’s the London borough I reckon LOTO most want to win and I think Sadiq might have performed well there in his rather awful 2021 election.

I actually think he lost Barnet quite handily and probably underperformed Labour’s 2019 showing in the constituencies covering the borough — not surprising, as outer North London was fairly brutal for him in 2021.

[Alcibiades]

Observation from Wimbledon: the leaflets through the door recently have been marked by an increasingly vicious (and admittedly rather comical) Labour-Lib Dem battle. In fact, by this point I would go so far as to say it’s open bar chart warfare, with both parties dragging out their own graphs to convince voters the other CAN’T WIN HERE. But for the blue bars on the leaflets, you’d hardly know the Tories were running.

Anyway, this certainly links into whispers I’ve been hearing that Labour are worried about losing overall control to a Lib Dem surge. While I think it’s pretty likely the Lib Dems will leapfrog the Tories into second place, I reckon Labour have enough of a cushion in Mitcham to be able to hang on. Ultimately, it will come down to how many seats the Lib Dems can directly steal from Labour, or will gain solely from the Tories.

I realise this is a bit parochial, but Merton could possibly end up providing a bit of under-the-radar excitement in London whilst everyone’s attention is focused on the marquee Tory-Labour scraps in Wandsworth etc.

[Alcibiades]

Yes but it isn't going to be the case there.

While the 2 constituencies covering the council area were relatively poor Conservative results in the 2019 GE (it part due to the Lib Dem targeting), ‘Conservative remainers’ are pretty much the most resilient group of Conservative voters post-2019, and before their recent polling troubles there were actually many returning to the Conservatives (particularly those who had switched to the Lib Dems). Even now, YouGov polling has found Johnson’s approval rating among remainers is down by only about 5% since the 2019 election, while it’s down 20% among leavers.

Beyond the depolarisation around Brexit and Corbyn’s specific ability to alienate cultural conservatives, it’s also hard to imagine Kensington and Chelsea being the area where the Conservatives current woes around Partygate (‘one rule for them’) and the cost of living crisis are going to disproportionately hurt them.

Although admittedly these areas actually saw some of the heftiest swings to Labour at the 2021 mayoral election. Admittedly this was probably partly due to Khan, having positioned himself as a defender of pro-European liberal London values throughout his tenure, having strong personal appeal among these kinds of voters, and thus we shouldn’t read too much into it especially as it relates to council elections, but still an interesting tidbit.

(Also we shouldn’t conflate K&C with the likes of SW London. Whilst similarly inclined liberal Remainer professionals certainly do exist, it’s in rather smaller numbers. The area is simply far more Tory, and slightly, but noticeably, less Remain-voting.)

[Alcibiades]

Wandsworth is a very hard one to predict. It seems like it’s on a knife-edge from what I can tell, but it could well go more safely for either party on the night. While the borough’s constituencies have essentially been the number one death zone for the Tories in the entire country at the last couple of general elections, they have always overperformed by a lot at the local level; the low council tax is genuinely popular. No doubt there will be people who voted Labour in 2019 and intend to do so at the next election who will vote for their local Wandsworth Tory councillors this year. The question is if there will be enough of them for the Tories to hold the council.

I do think that there’s more pressure on the Tories here; if they hold it, it won’t be too hard for Labour to brush it off, but if they lose it, it will inevitably be the number one story of the night, a totemic, symbolic fall, even if the Tories outperform expectations elsewhere.

[Alcibiades]

When I went to vote earlier at around 5pm, I was the only person in the polling station. Seen a fair few Lib Dem signs around (and this was a ward where they finished third last time, though they’ve clearly been targeting it this year), and none for any of the others.

[Alcibiades]

Tories reduced to third place in Merton with only 6 councillors* (3 in Village, by far the wealthiest ward in the borough, 1 in Hillside, which is sort of an extension of the Village, and 2 in Cannon Hill, lower middle class suburbia which has trended towards them recently) as Lib Dems become the official opposition, helped by some smaller gains from Labour as well. Overall a very bad night for the Tories in London, doing worse than what was already a bad election in the capital in 2018.

(On a personal note, very happy to have done my small bit to contribute to kicking out all three of my local Tory councillors!)

*Although they could still win a seat in previously Labour-held Lower Morden, which has a similar profile to Cannon Hill, and which seems to have gone to a recount.

[Alcibiades]

https://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/article/hampstead-get-out-of-bed-call-as-labour-win-with-paper-candidate

One of my favourite stories of this year’s elections: Labour put up a paper candidate in extremely wealthy long-time Tory stronghold Hampstead Town, they do not put any resources into the ward, he still wins, and he has to be woken up and taken to the count he was told he didn’t need to bother turning up to!

[Alcibiades]

https://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/article/hampstead-get-out-of-bed-call-as-labour-win-with-paper-candidate

One of my favourite stories of this year’s elections: Labour put up a paper candidate in extremely wealthy long-time Tory stronghold Hampstead Town, they do not put any resources into the ward, he still wins, and he has to be woken up and taken to the count he was told he didn’t need to bother turning up to!

It is inaccurate to call Hampstead Town a 'Tory Stronghold'. It voted Labour last year for Mayor and Assembly and definitely went red in both the 2017 and 2019 General Elections. Yes, it was traditionally much more Tory pre-Brexit (though the Lib Dems often did well back in the day) and it does remain more Tory in council elections than it does nationally. A Labour gain there is perhaps a bit surprising as they were pretty far behind in 2018, but considering how this ward has voted in other elections recently it is hardly the earth-shatteringly shocking event this article makes it out to be.

Also, according to a Labour Activist on Vote UK Forum, Mr Cohen did campaign in the ward, albeit without much support from the local Labour Party. This wouldn't make him a 'paper candidate' either, as that is someone who is persuaded to stand for a party in a ward thought to be a complete no-hope area just for the purposes of to giving their voters a candidate to vote for, but who does no campaigning, canvassing or leafletting whatsoever. That clearly wasn't the case here.

You are of course correct on its increased red lean, but it nonetheless has not elected a Labour councillor for over 50 years (hence the “long-time”), and for whatever reason (evidently misguidedly) the local Labour party did not feel that it was a realistic target at this year’s local. And who doesn’t like a little bit of electoral romance?

But seriously, that the Tories are losing this ward does go to show just how far they have fallen in London and that they have essentially been wiped out in much of the professional upper middle class portion of the capital.

[Alcibiades]

Is there a lack of coverage about seats and councils flipping in the south because the media think that it’s insignificant in the number of seats that will change in a GE, or is it largely just ‘mud red wall’?

I’ve just re-looked at them and they’re very bad- especially in Somerset.

I really think the Tories could be in for a very nasty shock courtesy of the Lib Dems at the next general election in the Home Counties and, as you say, possibly even the old Southwestern Liberal strongholds. I think many Conservatives are kind of assuming that the strong Lib Dem performance in the former in 2019 was a Brexit fluke, but that Brexit has killed them off for good in the latter. A potentially hugely dangerous complacency…

That’s without even getting into Labour gains in Worthing etc.

[Alcibiades]

It is basically the perfect combination of SW London being both a demographically and ideologically natural fit for the present incarnation of the party, and having a fairly long history of Liberal support — they didn’t win a parliamentary seat in SW London until 1997, but had won a GLC seat in Richmond as early as 1973, and first won the council there in 1986, as well as coming within 74 votes of taking Richmond and Barnes at the 1983 general election.

The “too rich to vote Labour, too educated/socially liberal/pro-European to vote Tory” line is an oversimplification, but it is broadly true and a decent encapsulation of the causes of Lib Dem strength; there are few areas in the entire country with a greater concentration of small-l liberal professionals. Nonetheless, there is a bit more nuance to it, not least in that there are not insignificant variations between the three seats they currently hold in the area.

Richmond Park is the wealthiest of the three (and in fact the most university-educated constituency in the entire country), which in recent times has meant that it is the most Tory (a reversion from the 1970s and 80s, when it was the most Liberal — probably because there were fewer hedge-funders, while the other two, as will be explained below, were much more conservative). However, that’s somewhat splitting hairs these days and the Tories have no realistic prospect of winning it back soon; this is exemplified by the fact that in last week’s election, the ward of Barnes, the very wealthiest in the borough and indeed one of the most anywhere in London, flipped from a full slate of Tory councillors to a full slate of Lib Dems (it is telling that the one councillor the Tories have now on the council — a 90 year old ex-Labour member — is in one of the least well-off wards, on the Twickenham side — being where it is, this merely means lower middle class rather than actually poor). At 71%, it is also a staggeringly Remain-voting seat, the most of these three.

Next comes Twickenham, which demographically sits in the middle of the three; by no means outrageously wealthy, but solidly professional middle class with little deprivation. This demographic median is also a happy electoral median for the Lib Dems, and this is their safest seat in the entire country. Finally, Kingston is the least middle class, though it is still comfortably more so than the national average. Overall, it is the most demographically varied of the three, containing one of the largest commercial town centres in Outer London, professional middle class suburbia such as Surbiton which strongly resemble similar areas in the other two seats, very humdrum, possibly a bit Brexity, lower middle class suburbia in Hook, Chessington and Tolworth, and formerly Labour-voting (the Lib Dems now clean up there) council estates in Norbiton.

In these latter two especially, there was significant demographic and cultural change from the end of the 20th century, as they were transformed from stereotypically stodgy, close-minded suburbia to more liberal (and Liberal) professional milieus. Twickenham was the oppressively conformist early 1960s suburban setting for, the film An Education, while Surbiton was chosen as a stereotypical curtain-twitching suburb for the sitcom The Good Life.

This brings me back to the point on local strength and fortunate historical circumstances; Twickenham and Kingston in particular bear a decent resemblance to some of the suburban North London seats Labour gained in 2017; yet Labour remains incredibly weak there (with the exception of Sadiq Khan winning them in 2021), as the Lib Dems are the default anti-Tory option. Similarly, the Lib Dems, although they have had some success, are nowhere near as strong in professional upper middle class areas of North London such as Highgate and Hampstead that resemble Richmond.

Finally, Sutton used to be part of the yellow blob in South London (they originally gained the council in the 80s after a backlash to a comically reactionary Tory administration, the last in the country to demand robes be worn to meetings), but has trended away from the party since Brexit; it voted Leave and thus is rather different to the seats they currently hold. Although the Lib Dems suffered fewer losses than anticipated in the council elections there and held the majority when some had predicted they would lose it, I struggle to see them winning Carshalton and Wallington back, especially with Tom Brake out of the picture.

On the flip side, Wimbledon looks like an almost sure gain for them at the next election, especially after they basically swept the wards covering the seat last week. Wimbledon is, as a crude analogy, kind of like a mixture between its neighbours Richmond and Putney — more urban and working class than the former, less so than the latter — and is accordingly a mixture of the two in terms of politics. It has little historic Liberal strength, having instead been held by Labour in the Blair years, but the Lib Dems came within 600 votes of winning it at the last election thanks to a popular local candidate, Brexit, and the unpopularity of Corbyn. They now seem to have gotten their foot firmly in the door, cemented by the aforementioned council gains, and although Labour might make a play for it at the next general, I think the Lib Dems will gain it fairly comfortably. Like its more longstanding Liberal neighbours, Wimbledon seems to be flipping yellow due to a combination of natural ideological inclination and fortunate local circumstances.

Sorry, this went on for rather longer than I originally intended, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to share some local knowledge