London’s Tories can take some heart from the borough’s by-election

As well as voting for the London Mayor and Assembly members on May 2, Londoners in 15 wards elected new councilors in borough by-elections. As is usual, we analyzed all the results for On London though astute readers will note that this is a large batch of them reported later and with less local color than usual.

Overall, the Tories would have taken some heart from two wins at Labor’s expense and most by-elections showing a small Labor swing in their favour. This was consistent with the last set of borough elections in May 2022, where Labor finished 16 points ahead of the Conservatives in Greater London as a whole, while Labour’s 2024 mayoral win was 11 points.

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The contests were scattered throughout the city and had various causes and different dynamics. The approach of the general election, since announced, was a factor in several of them.

Two Hackney Labor councilors vacated their mid-term seats as they were selected as parliamentary candidates: Steve Race (Hoxton East & Shoreditch) for the Labor seat of Exeter and Polly Billington (De Beauvoir) for the marginal target of Thanet East.

Another sign of Labour’s ambitions in the south of England was that Tom Rutland stood down from Lambeth Council (Streatham Common & Vale ward) in pursuit of the East Worthing & Shoreham parliamentary seat, which was never won by his party.

Meanwhile, Tory Aisha Cuthbert has given up her Bromley council seat (Shortlands and Park Langley) to contest the Kent parliamentary seat of Sittingbourne & Sheppey, which still looks fairly safe for the Tories.

A vacancy in the Deptford ward of Lewisham was created in March as Brenda Dacres secured another promotion by being elected Mayor of Lewisham in a by-election for the post.

The move rather than the hope of a move up was the reason Camden’s Conservative opposition group leader Gio Spinella (Frognal) quit the council. “I’m tired, I feel exhausted and I have nothing left to contribute,” he said. It was an honest statement about how even a dedicated and energetic local politician can burn out. I wish him a successful period of recharging his batteries.

Work commitments have led Tory Jade Appleton (Park Hill & Whitgift) to resign from Croydon council. Her Croydon colleague Mike Bonello, who represented Woodside for Labour, also felt the pressure from Labour. In Islington, former mayor Dave Poyser concluded that after a decade representing Hillrise for Labour, “his time is up”. Conservatives Alan Chapman (Hillingdon, Hillingdon East ward) and Stuart Graham (Kensington & Chelsea, Norland) moved from their respective wards.

Two of the by-elections resulted from Labor councilors falling out with their party. Lara Parizotto resigned from the party in October 2023 over the Labor leadership’s response to the Gaza war and from her Brentford West seat on Hounslow Council in March. Sonia Winifred (Lambeth, Knight’s Hill) resigned after voting for a Green Party resolution on Gaza, defying the position of the Labor group.

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Six of Labour’s 15 by-elections are narrowly contested. They were:

• Croydon, Woodside
• Hackney, Hoxton East and Shoreditch
• Islington, Hillrise
• Lambeth, Knight’s Hill
• Lambeth, Streatham Common and Vale
• Lewisham, Deptford

Labour’s winner in Croydon Woodside, Jessica Hammersley-Rich, has become yet another London councilor, also selected as a parliamentary candidate, in her case for Michael Gove’s Surrey Heath constituency. She is highly unlikely to win there, but with a name like hers she is perhaps destined to become a tough Labor chancellor. She would definitely be a headline writer’s dream.

Faruk Tinaz easily held Hackney’s Hoxton East and Ollie Steadman did the same in Islington Hillrise, as did Emma Louise Nye in Lambeth Knight’s Hill.

In Lambeth’s Streatham Common & Vale, Sarah Louise Cole’s comfortable 1,385-vote victory over the local Conservative runner-up was, however, Labour’s worst swing performance of the day. The campaign was dominated by one of London’s most controversial low-traffic neighborhood schemes. He was “suspended” in March, a move welcomed by Sadiq Khan. This drew a sting from the by-election opposition, but the memories were harsh enough to send Labour’s vote share down.

Labour’s best result was in Lewisham Deptford, building on an increased share it won in the same ward by-election last autumn. Mayor Dacres is succeeded by David Walker.

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Two wards saw Labor hold off serious challenges:

• Hackney, De Beauvoir
• Hounslow, Brentford West

Labor swept home in the July 2022 by-election in the De Beauvoir borough, finishing just 27 votes ahead of a Green Party candidate. It later emerged that the “personal reasons” cited for the former Labor councilor’s resignation were a police investigation which later resulted in the admission of three charges of possessing indecent images of children. So there was clearly a chance that Labor would lose. However, Jasmine Martins saw off Green’s latest challenge, this time with 119 votes.

In the Brentford West ward of Hounslow, Labour’s main opposition came from Theo Dennison, a former council cabinet member who left Labor amid acrimony during the 2018-22 term, running as an independent. Dennison is a political campaign consultant whose clients include George Galloway’s Labor Party. He claims some of the credit for Galloway’s by-election victory in Rochdale. But Emma Yates, from Labour, prevailed.

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Labor conservatives won two wards:

• Sutton, St Helier West
• Wandsworth, West Putney

These were in wards where Labor made new inroads in 2022, taking a seat in St Helier West in the Lib Dem stronghold of Sutton for the first time and winning two seats in the West Putney ward of Wandsworth as it won control of the former Tory flagship for the first time since 1974. In both cases the ward seats were shared between Labor and Conservative councillors.

This time, the result in the Sutton ward was ignominious for Labour, who slipped to third place as Tory candidate Catherine Gray (pictured) won by just six votes from the Lib Dem in second place. The ward contains part of the council-built St Helier housing estate, which straddles the Sutton-Merton border. It has gone towards the Lib Dems, with the Tories gaining ground recently. Gray’s victory will of course be welcomed, but the Labor vote in one ward in the marginal Tory-held Carshalton & Wallington parliamentary seat could bode ill for the party.

In the Wandsworth ward, planning issues were prominent in the campaign, particularly around densification and housing. The Putney Society was among the civic groups claiming the Labor council had deviated from its Local Plan. The five per cent swing for the Tories in the seat was enough for their candidate Nick Austin to win it. Reproduced throughout the borough, it would probably be enough to secure a narrow City Hall majority.

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Two wards saw Labor perform well in areas outside London without winning:

• Bromley, Shortlands and Park Langley
• Croydon, Park Hill and Whitgift

In addition to Sutton, the May 2 by-election revealed the same absence of insider-outsider polarization seen in the London mayoral vote. The overall series of results suggested little change to the Tories since 2012, but in these affluent suburban wards the swing was in the other direction.

Labour’s slow advance in Bromley continued, although Tory Gemma Jade Turrell won Shortlands & Park Langley by 848 votes. In the Park Hill & Whitgift ward of Croydon there was a much stronger movement in favor of Labour, even though Tory Andrew Price won. This will boost the party after the reverses in the neighborhood two years ago. The contest was also notable for Andrew Pelling’s debut as a Lib Dem. During his long political career in Croydon, which has spanned various types of elections, Pelling has already represented both the Conservatives and Labour, and stood as an independent.

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In the end, three wickets resulted in comfortable catches from Tory.

• Camden, Frognal
• Hillingdon, Hillingdon East.
• Kensington and Chelsea, Norland.

Steven Adams won in Frognal, Martin Kelly won in Hillingdon East with over 1,500 votes and Stéphanie Petit won in Norland with 51%.

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Taken together, the by-election results of the 15 district councils suggest that London is likely to be a low-swing region at the next general election, offsetting Labour’s better than national average performance in 2017 and 2019.

X/Twitter: Lewis Baston and To London. Support OnLondon.co.uk and its freelancers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get your money’s worth too. Details HERE. Photo of Catherine Gray from her X/Twitter feed.