Why Labour's London squeeze exposes a fragmented modern British politics

ShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleNick RobinsonToday programme presenterBBC"Do you know the result which is keeping them awake in Number 10?," a Cabinet minister recently asked me. Scotland, I asked? Wales? No, I was told. The answer was London. The reason Sir Keir Starmer and his team are waiting so nervously for the results of next week's council elections in London is that it represents Labour's new heartland. One in seven Labour MPs represents constituencies in the capital. The prime minister is a London member of parliament, as is his deputy, David Lammy, as well as the man who wants Starmer's job, Health Secretary Wes Streeting. The Secretary State for Housing, Steve Reed, completes the quartet of powerful London MPs in the Cabinet. A significant percentage of the party's activists, and the members who choose the party's leaders, live in the capital. Losses here will hurt Labour's core. Of course, politicians from all sides are known to make dramatic claims in the run-up to elections - sometimes out of fear, and sometimes to manage expectations. But this year, virtually everyone expects serious losses for Labour in London. The pollster YouGov predicts it could be Labour's worst result in the capital for almost 50 years. And those losses would come from a squeeze from both sides of politics. Labour is under attack from the Greens in London's progressive inner boroughs; and from Reform in the traditionally more socially conservative outer ring. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats expect to gain some councils too. The veteran academic of London's politics, Tony Travers, a politics professor at the London School of Economics, says the capital may be about to witness a "political earthquake". It's a frightening prospect for Labour's leaders. And it doesn't just matter for London. It could supercharge the debate currently raging over whether Sir Keir should be replaced as prime minister. It also provides an insight into the dilemma Labour faces about which direction to take, and a warning of the fate that might await the party at the next general election. It's all so different to the night which sealed London's place as the new power base of the modern Labour party. Labour faced a grim day on 6 May 2010: the party lost its parliamentary majority, with big swings against it in the north, south, and Wales. But in a corner of inner east London, it was a different story. In both constituencies in the borough of Hackney, just five miles from Westminster, the party actually increased its majority, to the surprise of those gathered at Hackney Town Hall to watch the result. After all votes were counted, it was clear that Labour had fared much better across the capital city compared to the rest of the country. It signalled just how dominant Labour was becoming in London. Over the next 14 years, the party strengthened its control of councils, and the Labour Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan comfortably won three elections in a row. Eventually, at the general election two years ago, the party won 59 out of London's 75 parliamentary seats, wiping out the Conservatives in inner London. This year, all 32 of the city's councils are up for grabs, along with five borough mayors. In the last set of local elections, in 2022, Labour won 21 of the councils. Now, polling by YouGov and JL Patners suggests they could be set to lose top position in a handful of them. Everyone agrees it will be a rough night for the governing party in London. Ridley Road market in Hackney is a busy maze of open-air stalls, selling everything from spices to textiles to fresh fruit. Among its visitors earlier this month was the Green Party's leader, Zack Polanski. The last time there were local elections in Hackney, Labour won 50 of the borough's 57 seats, and the Greens just two. But now the Greens are hoping to take this council, which has been Labour-run since the 1970s. YouGov predicts Hackney is one of the boroughs that will fall to the Greens on election night. "I feel like it's an unfair and unbalanced society at the moment," a woman tells me. She is a single parent and working full-time. She thinks Polanski "seems to have good ideas about taxing the rich", adding: "I'm really fed up with getting poorer and poorer as I get older." An Ipsos poll from earlier this month found that just over half of Britons (54%) ranked cost of living as a "very important" issue in determining their vote at this year's elections. Prof Tony Travers says the Greens have capitalised on voters' concern with the cost of living. "The Greens don't really talk about the environment now," he says. The Hackney Green's manifesto has "Climate and Environmental Justice" at the bottom of the list of what it stands for, behind anti-austerity, putting workers-first, and being anti-fascist. The Greens claim to represent the change that Labour promised but that, they argue, Sir Keir has failed to deliver. They call for a wealth tax, tougher rent controls, and 100% co

Why Labour's London squeeze exposes a fragmented modern British politics

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Why Labour's London squeeze exposes a fragmented modern British politics

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