Is London the most Conservative major English city?

[Conservatopia]

I only just realised this but it appears to be true and I don't see this changing any time soon, unless the Bournemouth-Poole conurbation became a city.

It probably seems obvious to everyone else but to me it just sounds odd that London is the most Tory (or least Labour) large city.

[Antonio the Sixth]

My dissertation research actually touches on it (looking at urban areas rather than administratively-defined cities, but still) and the answer apparently is "it used to be until very recently, but not anymore". In 2019, the Tories did worse and Labour did better in London than in other urban areas of 200k inhabitants or more. In 2017 the opposite was true for Tories (for Labour the evidence is more mixed).

[parochial boy]

Portsmouth-Southampton? Maybe neither are major in their own right, but both are cities and together they make up a pretty solid metro area with iirc only two Labour MPs.

Also, with London you might have a degree of the size of the city being relatively big as a proportion of the metro area as a whole. Like places like Orpington or Havering technically being in London, whereas the equivalent outer suburbs of other big cities often won’t be.

It’s also not all that unusual for the capital/economic capital to have a relatively large right wing electorate as well. Especially when home to a large financial/industrial elite. Paris, Madrid and Stockholm all immediately stick out as being fairly conservative capital cities. Admittedly not all for exactly the same reasons, but all have always been the home of a conservative minded economic elite.

[Hnv1]

didn't the new Midlands metro area vote more Tory than London?

London is absolutely huge and has places like Romford that really ought to be a part of Essex rather than London

[Alcibiades]

It was indeed probably the West Midlands conurbation in 2019 (more comparable to Greater London than the city of Birmingham alone), which the Tories very narrowly won, while obviously losing London handily - by 16 percentage points.

[Blair]

Some of us still use the old ILEA boundary from the 1980s as there political definition of London- so probably not!

[Former President tack50]

It’s also not all that unusual for the capital/economic capital to have a relatively large right wing electorate as well. Especially when home to a large financial/industrial elite. Paris, Madrid and Stockholm all immediately stick out as being fairly conservative capital cities. Admittedly not all for exactly the same reasons, but all have always been the home of a conservative minded economic elite.

Isn't Paris these days pretty much safe for Macron? (which given the state of the French left, is about as left as one can get; though admittedly even if PS or LFI miraculously began to poll at 20% I would not expect them to win Paris over Macron)

[Conservatopia]

So the TLDR of this thread is that yes London is the most Tory city but that's only because the city boundaries are drawn wider than they are for most other English cities.

Very informative

[Antonio the Sixth]

It’s also not all that unusual for the capital/economic capital to have a relatively large right wing electorate as well. Especially when home to a large financial/industrial elite. Paris, Madrid and Stockholm all immediately stick out as being fairly conservative capital cities. Admittedly not all for exactly the same reasons, but all have always been the home of a conservative minded economic elite.

Isn't Paris these days pretty much safe for Macron? (which given the state of the French left, is about as left as one can get; though admittedly even if PS or LFI miraculously began to poll at 20% I would not expect them to win Paris over Macron)

That's a terrible way of analyzing political geography, though.

[CumbrianLefty]

Of course, there was a time when London was a *genuinely* pro-Tory city.

A look at the 1987 GE results might astound the unwary.

[afleitch]

I mean, Greater London is only a loose definition of London even to this day.

The best way to look at London electorally is to split it into the old County of London (Inner London) and areas corresponding to the old overlapping counties; Middlesex(with a bit of Hertford), Surrey, Kent and Essex. We can do this pretty roughly, even as constituency boundaries shift

So (electorate in 000's)

County 2,009
Middlesex 1,586
Essex 772
Surrey 700
Kent 407

Now you can divide the County of London along the Thames and 'Middlesex' along the historic A5 road to break those units down somewhat but I've not done that here.

So here is 2019 (CON/LAB/LD/OTH)

County   22.1   56.5   15.2   6.2
Essex   34.3   54.5   5.8   5.4
Kent           55.9   28.3   11.2   4.6
Middlesex   35.1   47.8   13.1   4
Surrey   38.4   29.6   28.7   3.3

So here County London and Essex London are Labour bastions, Kentish London is a Tory bastion, Middlesex is Labour but more balanced and Surrey London is Tory but with a strong Lib Dem presence.

Here is 2010
         
County   28.6   41.6   23.4   6.4   
Essex   31.3   42.8   15.1   10.8   
Kent           51.5   21.3   18.1   9.1   
Middlesex   35.9   38.2   20.6   5.3   
Surrey   39.7   23.5   30.9   5.9   

Similar positions, with a much stronger Lib Dem presence. But the Tory shares are fairly stable since then, with the only substantial relative fallback in County/Inner with an even advance in Kentish London.

Labour have of course piled on votes in part because what it means to be a London Lib Dem voter (and the Lib Dems are political chameleons depending on where they are standing) has changed since then; ebbing away and then having a bit of a rebound.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Depends on the election, doesn't it? Sometimes it can be, sometimes it is very much not. Quite a bit comes down to definitions as well. The city is also large enough that different parts will sometimes behave divergently - Andrew's post just above uses a good way of showing that. All of this has been the case for quite some time.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...but that's only because the city boundaries are drawn wider than they are for most other English cities.

Well, this is complicated as well. There's no real consistency on how wide the boundaries of local authorities with city status are drawn. Manchester, Bristol and Liverpool all have extremely tightly drawn boundaries, but those of Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford are quite the opposite - so much so in the case of Bradford (which includes several large towns that are certainly not mere suburbs even if they do have a commuter relationship with the city) that there's a semi-official tendency in local government to refer with care to 'the district' rather than 'the city'. You then have cases such as Birmingham and Newcastle where the boundaries are not tightly drawn in one sense, but are in another as the city is part of a historically multi-polar conurbation.

As is often the case with British local government boundaries, those of London are quite arbitrary. The original plans for the GLC included much further out into the suburbs, particularly into Surrey, but successful campaigns against inclusion were fought because it was feared that inclusion in the GLC would result in higher rates.

[afleitch]

Also worth noting for those not in the know, the Greater London Authority reconstituted the old GLC which itself was a trial run for larger urban authorities and the potential regionalisation of the 1960's and the only one to effectively be enacted as intended (with the later Metropolitan Counties being smaller and less power than was expected to be the case.)

The imbalance some sixty years later has contributed to the effective weakening of 'the North' in terms of political power and ability to martial economic power.

(and ironically Greater London, being 'too big' has a system of boroughs which themselves are now seen as 'too small.')

[beesley]

Portsmouth-Southampton? Maybe neither are major in their own right, but both are cities and together they make up a pretty solid metro area with iirc only two Labour MPs.

This is where I (being a local resident) would argue that the principle of a metro area isn't really applicable. The actual number of services (to use a broad and all encompassing term) we share is pretty limited, and whilst places like Fareham do face us and Portsmouth, that is just on account of geographic proximity to both, not comparable to somewhere like Pudsey.

Of course I will craft whatever definition I can to ensure Southampton is a major city - but it's certainly a major focal point with 250,000 residents - and has enough features that it's claim to being a major city is to me only dampened by the number of larger cities, and a sphere of influence that overlaps with London's.

If you're prepared to go that far down then Stoke on Trent (still more populous than us) would take the 2019 title. I'm not sure that's wise.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(and ironically Greater London, being 'too big' has a system of boroughs which themselves are now seen as 'too small.')

They're classics of British Local Government in that they are at once too large and too small.

[Conservatopia]

Southampton is a major city

Nice try.

  Portsmouth
  Southampton

There's no real consistency on how wide the boundaries of local authorities with city status are drawn.

As is often the case with British local government boundaries, those of London are quite arbitrary. The original plans for the GLC included much further out into the suburbs, particularly into Surrey, but successful campaigns against inclusion were fought because it was feared that inclusion in the GLC would result in higher rates.

That's nothing - I used to live in Swansea. Look up their boundaries. Since the Welsh Rural Councils faded away there's no real definition of Swansea's boundaries. Neath is practically the same city as Swansea yet is separated, while Gorseinon is governed as though it were as much a part of Swansea as Uplands.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's nothing - I used to live in Swansea. Look up their boundaries. Since the Welsh Rural Councils faded away there's no real definition of Swansea's boundaries. Neath is practically the same city as Swansea yet is separated, while Gorseinon is governed as though it were as much a part of Swansea as Uplands.

To create the Swansea unitary they just merged the old Swansea district with most of the old Lliw Valley district and were lazy enough to run the split at the boundary between two parliamentary constituencies. A real back-of-a-fag-packet job all round.

[afleitch]

At least it's not Glasgow, which has no hinterland, detached wealthy suburbs and the border with Lanarkshire about 5000ft from the city centre.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

At least it's not Glasgow, which has no hinterland, detached wealthy suburbs and the border with Lanarkshire about 5000ft from the city centre.

Making the Glasgow unitary smaller than the Glasgow district was certainly... a choice. No great shock that successive administrations from different parties and different factional groupings of those parties have... struggled... because, honestly, that's setting up a local authority to fail.

[Estrella]

Yet again plugging Jay Foreman's vaguely related videos on British local government

[afleitch]

At least it's not Glasgow, which has no hinterland, detached wealthy suburbs and the border with Lanarkshire about 5000ft from the city centre.

Making the Glasgow unitary smaller than the Glasgow district was certainly... a choice. No great shock that successive administrations from different parties and different factional groupings of those parties have... struggled... because, honestly, that's setting up a local authority to fail.

The 1994 reform was done without a Commission and failed in it's intent (to create Tory run councils. At least until STV). Though to be fair, the fact there hasn't been any reform to the structure in twenty plus years of devolution is a huge failing.

The thing is, people liked Strathclyde. Eventually. They managed a 70% turnout on a non-binding postal referendum against water privatisation which was a proxy vote for confidence in the Region itself (the fact the government backtracked and Scottish Water remains mostly public today is a forgotten important victory)

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's quite impressive how across the board terrible the 1990s changes to local government were. Incoherent at the absolute best and often considerably worse.

[Hnv1]

It's quite impressive how across the board terrible the 1990s changes to local government were. Incoherent at the absolute best and often considerably worse.

They had no eye for the future. London's sprawl keeps expanding in all directions despite the so-called green belt around. people started calling Watford a London team which is odd as it was distinctively not London back in the '80s

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's not just that they had no eye for the future, many of them had no eye for the present. They mostly just restored former county boroughs, ignoring the fact that those no longer bore any significant relation to actual urban boundaries.