My analysis of the 2018 British local elections, part 1: the London boroughs
"Floating through the summer sky, 99 red balloons go by." -Nena, "99 Red Balloons".
Or not. In fact many popped and fell right from the sky.
The 2018 British local elections have now finished, with all 150 councils having declared results, Hounslow and Tower Hamlets being the last to finish. The main focus was on the London boroughs where all seats were up for election and where Labour were expected to make large gains on the back of Remain votes in prosperous central London councils, despite Labour supporting Brexit and having backed Article 50 the same way the Conservatives did. Also in 2014 there were European elections at the same time which boosted Labour and UKIP's vote in particular, and where national factors where at play. These did not apply to this year's local elections, which unlike in 2010 or 2014 did not coincide with a European or parliamentary election.
The Corbynmania turned out to be just hype; Labour failed to gain a single council in London from the Conservatives, and the only council they gained was Tower Hamlets from no overall control. The Conservatives did however lose both Kingston-upon-Thames and Richmond-upon-Thames to the Liberal Democrats on the back of a "Remain backlash", and local malaise for the Liberal Democrats in Sutton, especially over waste issues, was not enough to result in a loss to the Conservatives or even no overall control.
Labour: Labour not only did not make the large numbers of gains it was expected to, but it actually lost seats in the key councils of Barnet and Hillingdon. In Barnet, which has the highest Jewish population of any council in the UK, anti-Semitism allegations completely overshadowed the incompetence of Barnet council and Capita's mismanagement of services Barnet council had handed over to it, and Labour lost 5 seats there. They also lost 4 seats in Hillingdon, covering the constituency of Uxbridge & Ruislip South which Boris Johnson is Conservative MP for.
Demographic change has certainly been helping Labour, though, as the Financial Times reported in the run-up to the election. Progressive Labour voters are being driven out of the inner city by exorbitant house prices and rents, with house prices in most inner London boroughs exceeding £500,000 on average and climbing into the millions in Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster. The northern suburbs are more affordable now, if not particularly so compared to houses outside London, and are only a short commute to London via Tube or Overground; they are also becoming more ethnically diverse. Redbridge, a perfect example of such a borough affected by these changes, was the borough where Labour made the most gains in London, 13 from the Conservatives, with boundary changes doing nothing to stem the tide. By comparison, Labour only made two gains from the Conservatives in Waltham Forest, with UKIP's disappearance being enough to save the Conservatives from outright devastation in that borough, and also only two in Croydon, where boundary changes had a much more significant impact than in Redbridge and where the south of the borough (which was not part of Croydon until 1965) remains solidly suburban, solidly owner-occupied, and solidly Conservative.
Despite the Grenfell Tower fire being the most talked about story in Kensington & Chelsea, Labour gained only one seat in the whole borough, with the divides in Kensington & Chelsea being as stark as ever (there is only one truly marginal ward in Kensington & Chelsea-Earl's Court) and wealthy Conservative voters clearly not concerned. Pro-Remain voters were unsurprisingly less than enthusiastic to turn out tactically for Labour in Wandsworth and Westminster. Labour's gain of the two seats in Maida Vale ward it did not win in 2014 was broadcast live on the BBC, creating high hopes for its supporters, but in the end they won only three more seats in Westminster. Wandsworth was the biggest disappointment of all; Labour fully expected to win it for the first time since 1974, needing to win 15 seats to do so. Labour gained just 7 seats, with the famously low council tax continuing to impress Conservative voters enough to brush aside the effects Brexit would have on this most middle-class and diverse of boroughs. Controversy over redevelopment of popular housing estates in Haringey and Lambeth, meanwhile, caused considerable Labour losses in both those boroughs but not enough to deprive them of control of either, even though the situation in Haringey also featured internal divisions with Momentum doing its best to replace "moderate" Labour councillors who supported the HDV project.
Conservatives: In this most diverse of places, the Windrush scandal, which caused the resignation of Amber Rudd from the post of Home Secretary a week before the election, had no effect on their performance. They were the main beneficiaries of the seats UKIP lost (although in Bexley there were boundary changes as well which also reduced the number of available seats from 63 to 45), but in Havering it was Labour and the various Residents' Associations who benefitted more from UKIP's losses, and they ensured the Conservatives did not gain overall control of Havering borough council even though it had the highest Leave vote in 2016 and the highest levels of Conservative support in last year's general election. Anti-Semitism controversy within Labour's ranks not only helped the Conservatives retain control of Barnet, it allowed them to make gains in Hackney, that most radical of London boroughs, for the first time in many years, and with the disappearance of the Liberal Democrats from Hackney council they are now the official opposition to Labour there.
Their biggest losses were not against Labour in north or central London, where if they made net losses against Labour they generally only lost a few more seats, but against the Liberal Democrats in south west London, whose largely pro-EU and affluent population routed the Conservatives convincingly. In Kingston-upon-Thames the Conservatives not only lost control but were reduced to 9 seats, their lowest ever in the history of the borough. In Richmond-upon-Thames an alliance between the Liberal Democrats and the Greens resulted in a Conservative loss of 28 seats, knocking them down to only 11. It must be said that in 2014, the Conservatives had already lost so many seats to Labour they could hardly make that many more losses in west London this year, where in 2014 they suffered the biggest hits.
Liberal Democrats: In the aftermath of Brexit negotiations and the fact London is the most pro-EU region in England, the Liberal Democrats reaped considerable reward as described earlier. They managed a similar feat in the Wimbledon area of Merton, which being a prosperous and educated suburb with easy access to central London often behaves like Kingston-upon-Thames politically, except during general elections. Their five gains in Merton were in all in wards covered by the Wimbledon constituency, as opposed to its rougher neighbour, Mitcham & Morden, in whose area they did not even come close to gaining any council seats.. They also won 6 seats from Labour in Haringey due to the controversy surrounding HDV; those were the only gains they made from Labour in Greater London with no pro-Remain switch from Labour to Liberal Democrat forthcoming.
It was not all rosy for the Liberal Democrats though-many of the losses they made, few though they were compared to the many gains they made, meant they lost all representation on the London borough councils of Barnet, Brent, Hackney, Redbridge, and for the first time since 1974, Harrow. A major nomination error there in 2002 cost them all but 3 seats before the campaign even started; by the 2006 election, where they avoided the mistake, the damage had been done and from 2006-2018 Christopher Noyce, who lost his seat this year, was the only Liberal Democrat councillor in Harrow where the Liberal Democrats were once the largest party. They also failed to gain any seats in Bromley, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, or Waltham Forest, where they were wiped out in 2014, with public sector liberals voting once again for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour in droves.
Green Party: People incorrectly stated that the "Corbyn effect" would result in a loss of all Green seats in London bar possibly that of Sian Berry in Highgate ward, Camden. In fact, the Green Party won a total of 11 seats in the whole of Greater London, only one less than in 2006. Their biggest gains were in Lambeth, where planned gentrification of estates in the borough by the Labour council angered long-term residents, who this time turned to the Green Party. As I described in an earlier blog post, Pete Elliott nearly gained the otherwise very safe ward of Gipsy Hill on a 28% swing in a by-election; this time he was duly elected as a Green councillor in Gipsy Hill. Rebecca Thackray, who had been a councillor for Herne Hill from 2006-2010, recaptured her seat but other Green gains were thwarted by "independent Green" Nick Edwards who polled 705 votes, more than double the margin Labour held the other two seats in Herne Hill over the Greens by. Most of all, the Greens won all three seats in St Leonard's ward, electing co-leader Jonathan Bartley to Lambeth borough council and confirming the Greens as the official opposition there.
Meanwhile, a pact with the Liberal Democrats in Richmond, where the Greens stood aside for the Liberal Democrats in all but six wards in return for endorsement of six candidates by the Liberal Democrats, ensured 4 Green gains in Richmond, which is the very first time the Green Party has won seats in an outer London borough. Against the odds, Sian Berry held her seat in Highgate, Camden and Caroline Russell hers in Highbury East, Islington, but the Greens could not capitalise elsewhere, missing out on a council seat in Dalston by just 22 votes and in Hackney Downs ward by just 91 votes; the Greens finished second in all but three wards of Hackney but failed to win any seats. John Coughlin was the only Green councillor to lose his seat, leaving Lewisham with no Green councillors for the first time in 16 years, and no opposition councillors to Labour at all in Lewisham.
Others: UKIP, naturally enough, failed to win any of the seats they were defending and their candidate numbers were considerably down from 2014 anyway; as Brexit is still on course to occur there is little reason to vote for the party, especially with the chaos it has been through and with splinter groups Democrats & Veterans and the For Britain Movement fighting for its already limited vote. Residents' Associations generally performed well, with the Merton Park Residents' group holding their 3 seats in Merton and the various Residents' Associations in Havering (Cranham, Hornchurch, South Hornchurch, Romford etc.) benefitting well from UKIP's collapse. The Kingston Residents' Group, however, universally polled poorly in Kingston-upon-Thames, being caught out in the LD-Con squeeze. Among the Independent candidates who stood in this election, the most successful was Malcom Grimston in West Hill, Wandsworth, who resigned from the Conservative group earlier this year and retained his seat as an Independent; in fact he polled more than double the votes of the two Labour candidates who won the other two seats in that ward from the Conservatives. By comparison, chess master Michael Basman finished bottom in Chessington South ward with 109 votes, which is nevertheless 9 more than he polled in the whole of the Kingston & Surbiton constituency last year, and local elections generally have much lower turnout than parliamentary elections, even in south west London which has one the highest local election turnouts. Aspire and Peoples' Alliance for Tower Hamlets, which formed from the ashes of the disbanded Tower Hamlets First group, ended up splitting each others' votes in spectacular fashion, and only one candidate between the two groups, Rabina Khan, was elected in Tower Hamlets, ensuring an easy Labour recapture of Tower Hamlets council.
A Polish citizens' concerns movement, Duma Polska (meaning "Polish Pride" in Polish), fielded 47 candidates in London but most achieved derisory vote totals, usually finishing bottom in the wards they contested and with fewer than 100 votes each, with the exception of Ealing where they put up 17 candidates and finished third only to the Conservatives and Labour in Perivale. As Ealing has the largest Polish community of all London boroughs this is not particularly surprising. The Women's Equality Party also failed to win any seats, or come even close to doing so, yet it indirectly deprived the Green Party of further wins than the 11 the Greens achieved; many WEP candidates stood in very Green-friendly wards. The Christian Peoples' Alliance lingered in the doldrums, even in Newham which remains their strongest base; they nevertheless came bottom in most wards. The Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition, much reduced from 2014 given that most of its supporters are now supporting Labour, achieved similarly poor results even in Waltham Forest, home to the daughter of its leader. Renew, founded as a new centrist pro-EU party seeking to overturn Brexit, fielded only a few candidates and only Chris Coughlan, who stood in the constituency of Battersea as an Independent last year, achieved a respectable vote.
Part 2 coming soon.
Or not. In fact many popped and fell right from the sky.
The 2018 British local elections have now finished, with all 150 councils having declared results, Hounslow and Tower Hamlets being the last to finish. The main focus was on the London boroughs where all seats were up for election and where Labour were expected to make large gains on the back of Remain votes in prosperous central London councils, despite Labour supporting Brexit and having backed Article 50 the same way the Conservatives did. Also in 2014 there were European elections at the same time which boosted Labour and UKIP's vote in particular, and where national factors where at play. These did not apply to this year's local elections, which unlike in 2010 or 2014 did not coincide with a European or parliamentary election.
The Corbynmania turned out to be just hype; Labour failed to gain a single council in London from the Conservatives, and the only council they gained was Tower Hamlets from no overall control. The Conservatives did however lose both Kingston-upon-Thames and Richmond-upon-Thames to the Liberal Democrats on the back of a "Remain backlash", and local malaise for the Liberal Democrats in Sutton, especially over waste issues, was not enough to result in a loss to the Conservatives or even no overall control.
Labour: Labour not only did not make the large numbers of gains it was expected to, but it actually lost seats in the key councils of Barnet and Hillingdon. In Barnet, which has the highest Jewish population of any council in the UK, anti-Semitism allegations completely overshadowed the incompetence of Barnet council and Capita's mismanagement of services Barnet council had handed over to it, and Labour lost 5 seats there. They also lost 4 seats in Hillingdon, covering the constituency of Uxbridge & Ruislip South which Boris Johnson is Conservative MP for.
Demographic change has certainly been helping Labour, though, as the Financial Times reported in the run-up to the election. Progressive Labour voters are being driven out of the inner city by exorbitant house prices and rents, with house prices in most inner London boroughs exceeding £500,000 on average and climbing into the millions in Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster. The northern suburbs are more affordable now, if not particularly so compared to houses outside London, and are only a short commute to London via Tube or Overground; they are also becoming more ethnically diverse. Redbridge, a perfect example of such a borough affected by these changes, was the borough where Labour made the most gains in London, 13 from the Conservatives, with boundary changes doing nothing to stem the tide. By comparison, Labour only made two gains from the Conservatives in Waltham Forest, with UKIP's disappearance being enough to save the Conservatives from outright devastation in that borough, and also only two in Croydon, where boundary changes had a much more significant impact than in Redbridge and where the south of the borough (which was not part of Croydon until 1965) remains solidly suburban, solidly owner-occupied, and solidly Conservative.
Despite the Grenfell Tower fire being the most talked about story in Kensington & Chelsea, Labour gained only one seat in the whole borough, with the divides in Kensington & Chelsea being as stark as ever (there is only one truly marginal ward in Kensington & Chelsea-Earl's Court) and wealthy Conservative voters clearly not concerned. Pro-Remain voters were unsurprisingly less than enthusiastic to turn out tactically for Labour in Wandsworth and Westminster. Labour's gain of the two seats in Maida Vale ward it did not win in 2014 was broadcast live on the BBC, creating high hopes for its supporters, but in the end they won only three more seats in Westminster. Wandsworth was the biggest disappointment of all; Labour fully expected to win it for the first time since 1974, needing to win 15 seats to do so. Labour gained just 7 seats, with the famously low council tax continuing to impress Conservative voters enough to brush aside the effects Brexit would have on this most middle-class and diverse of boroughs. Controversy over redevelopment of popular housing estates in Haringey and Lambeth, meanwhile, caused considerable Labour losses in both those boroughs but not enough to deprive them of control of either, even though the situation in Haringey also featured internal divisions with Momentum doing its best to replace "moderate" Labour councillors who supported the HDV project.
Conservatives: In this most diverse of places, the Windrush scandal, which caused the resignation of Amber Rudd from the post of Home Secretary a week before the election, had no effect on their performance. They were the main beneficiaries of the seats UKIP lost (although in Bexley there were boundary changes as well which also reduced the number of available seats from 63 to 45), but in Havering it was Labour and the various Residents' Associations who benefitted more from UKIP's losses, and they ensured the Conservatives did not gain overall control of Havering borough council even though it had the highest Leave vote in 2016 and the highest levels of Conservative support in last year's general election. Anti-Semitism controversy within Labour's ranks not only helped the Conservatives retain control of Barnet, it allowed them to make gains in Hackney, that most radical of London boroughs, for the first time in many years, and with the disappearance of the Liberal Democrats from Hackney council they are now the official opposition to Labour there.
Their biggest losses were not against Labour in north or central London, where if they made net losses against Labour they generally only lost a few more seats, but against the Liberal Democrats in south west London, whose largely pro-EU and affluent population routed the Conservatives convincingly. In Kingston-upon-Thames the Conservatives not only lost control but were reduced to 9 seats, their lowest ever in the history of the borough. In Richmond-upon-Thames an alliance between the Liberal Democrats and the Greens resulted in a Conservative loss of 28 seats, knocking them down to only 11. It must be said that in 2014, the Conservatives had already lost so many seats to Labour they could hardly make that many more losses in west London this year, where in 2014 they suffered the biggest hits.
Liberal Democrats: In the aftermath of Brexit negotiations and the fact London is the most pro-EU region in England, the Liberal Democrats reaped considerable reward as described earlier. They managed a similar feat in the Wimbledon area of Merton, which being a prosperous and educated suburb with easy access to central London often behaves like Kingston-upon-Thames politically, except during general elections. Their five gains in Merton were in all in wards covered by the Wimbledon constituency, as opposed to its rougher neighbour, Mitcham & Morden, in whose area they did not even come close to gaining any council seats.. They also won 6 seats from Labour in Haringey due to the controversy surrounding HDV; those were the only gains they made from Labour in Greater London with no pro-Remain switch from Labour to Liberal Democrat forthcoming.
It was not all rosy for the Liberal Democrats though-many of the losses they made, few though they were compared to the many gains they made, meant they lost all representation on the London borough councils of Barnet, Brent, Hackney, Redbridge, and for the first time since 1974, Harrow. A major nomination error there in 2002 cost them all but 3 seats before the campaign even started; by the 2006 election, where they avoided the mistake, the damage had been done and from 2006-2018 Christopher Noyce, who lost his seat this year, was the only Liberal Democrat councillor in Harrow where the Liberal Democrats were once the largest party. They also failed to gain any seats in Bromley, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, or Waltham Forest, where they were wiped out in 2014, with public sector liberals voting once again for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour in droves.
Green Party: People incorrectly stated that the "Corbyn effect" would result in a loss of all Green seats in London bar possibly that of Sian Berry in Highgate ward, Camden. In fact, the Green Party won a total of 11 seats in the whole of Greater London, only one less than in 2006. Their biggest gains were in Lambeth, where planned gentrification of estates in the borough by the Labour council angered long-term residents, who this time turned to the Green Party. As I described in an earlier blog post, Pete Elliott nearly gained the otherwise very safe ward of Gipsy Hill on a 28% swing in a by-election; this time he was duly elected as a Green councillor in Gipsy Hill. Rebecca Thackray, who had been a councillor for Herne Hill from 2006-2010, recaptured her seat but other Green gains were thwarted by "independent Green" Nick Edwards who polled 705 votes, more than double the margin Labour held the other two seats in Herne Hill over the Greens by. Most of all, the Greens won all three seats in St Leonard's ward, electing co-leader Jonathan Bartley to Lambeth borough council and confirming the Greens as the official opposition there.
Meanwhile, a pact with the Liberal Democrats in Richmond, where the Greens stood aside for the Liberal Democrats in all but six wards in return for endorsement of six candidates by the Liberal Democrats, ensured 4 Green gains in Richmond, which is the very first time the Green Party has won seats in an outer London borough. Against the odds, Sian Berry held her seat in Highgate, Camden and Caroline Russell hers in Highbury East, Islington, but the Greens could not capitalise elsewhere, missing out on a council seat in Dalston by just 22 votes and in Hackney Downs ward by just 91 votes; the Greens finished second in all but three wards of Hackney but failed to win any seats. John Coughlin was the only Green councillor to lose his seat, leaving Lewisham with no Green councillors for the first time in 16 years, and no opposition councillors to Labour at all in Lewisham.
Others: UKIP, naturally enough, failed to win any of the seats they were defending and their candidate numbers were considerably down from 2014 anyway; as Brexit is still on course to occur there is little reason to vote for the party, especially with the chaos it has been through and with splinter groups Democrats & Veterans and the For Britain Movement fighting for its already limited vote. Residents' Associations generally performed well, with the Merton Park Residents' group holding their 3 seats in Merton and the various Residents' Associations in Havering (Cranham, Hornchurch, South Hornchurch, Romford etc.) benefitting well from UKIP's collapse. The Kingston Residents' Group, however, universally polled poorly in Kingston-upon-Thames, being caught out in the LD-Con squeeze. Among the Independent candidates who stood in this election, the most successful was Malcom Grimston in West Hill, Wandsworth, who resigned from the Conservative group earlier this year and retained his seat as an Independent; in fact he polled more than double the votes of the two Labour candidates who won the other two seats in that ward from the Conservatives. By comparison, chess master Michael Basman finished bottom in Chessington South ward with 109 votes, which is nevertheless 9 more than he polled in the whole of the Kingston & Surbiton constituency last year, and local elections generally have much lower turnout than parliamentary elections, even in south west London which has one the highest local election turnouts. Aspire and Peoples' Alliance for Tower Hamlets, which formed from the ashes of the disbanded Tower Hamlets First group, ended up splitting each others' votes in spectacular fashion, and only one candidate between the two groups, Rabina Khan, was elected in Tower Hamlets, ensuring an easy Labour recapture of Tower Hamlets council.
A Polish citizens' concerns movement, Duma Polska (meaning "Polish Pride" in Polish), fielded 47 candidates in London but most achieved derisory vote totals, usually finishing bottom in the wards they contested and with fewer than 100 votes each, with the exception of Ealing where they put up 17 candidates and finished third only to the Conservatives and Labour in Perivale. As Ealing has the largest Polish community of all London boroughs this is not particularly surprising. The Women's Equality Party also failed to win any seats, or come even close to doing so, yet it indirectly deprived the Green Party of further wins than the 11 the Greens achieved; many WEP candidates stood in very Green-friendly wards. The Christian Peoples' Alliance lingered in the doldrums, even in Newham which remains their strongest base; they nevertheless came bottom in most wards. The Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition, much reduced from 2014 given that most of its supporters are now supporting Labour, achieved similarly poor results even in Waltham Forest, home to the daughter of its leader. Renew, founded as a new centrist pro-EU party seeking to overturn Brexit, fielded only a few candidates and only Chris Coughlan, who stood in the constituency of Battersea as an Independent last year, achieved a respectable vote.
Part 2 coming soon.
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