I apologised to Daniel Francis, Labour MP for Bexleyheath & Crayford, after we met. My predictions for July’s basic election contained numerous duff calls, however so blithely had I assumed that his seat was nailed-on blue I didn’t give his prospects a second thought. After which, behold, he emerged victorious by 2,114 votes in part of outer south east London that, on the face of it, was one of many few that seemed more likely to maintain again the crimson landslide. How, precisely, did he do it?
Francis is fast to right any first impression that he simply slid by means of a spot brought on by right-wing electors splitting their favours between the Conservative, who completed second, and Reform UK’s candidate. The latter got here in third with a tidy 22.7 per cent of the vote, in contrast with the Tory’s 31.3 and Francis’s 36.2.
“There was a mixture of things,” he says, as we sip morning espresso in a café on Bexleyheath’s Broadway. Sure, the deep unpopularity of the Conservative authorities definitely helped, however it’s simple to overlook that Labour has prevailed on this suburban constituency bordering Kent earlier than – it returned a Labour MP, Nigel Beard in 1997, the primary 12 months of its existence, and once more in 2001.
Reform’s robust 2024 exhibiting, too, has an antecedent: UKIP, Francis stresses, did nearly as nicely in vote share phrases in 2015. That celebration was a major electoral pressure on the time, which explains David Cameron’s fateful choice going into the overall election to vow a referendum on European Union membership. However by 2017, with Nigel Farage not its chief and Britain having voted to go away the EU, UKIP was a spent pressure. In 2019, a unique, minor excessive proper celebration made subsequent to no impression. However Reform in 2024 was a far stronger proposition.
Francis’s level is that assist for Reform in Bexleyheath & Crayford didn’t all come from hacked-off Tories. He accepts that Farage’s newest automobile attracted some, however maintains that, primarily based on “the numerous conversations I had with these individuals”, had there been no Reform candidate “they won’t have voted in any respect”. Plus, importantly, just a few may in any other case have voted Labour.
That leaves us with a extra complicated rationalization for Francis’s triumph: a broad Tory-to-Labour swing augmented to some extent by Reform attracting former Tories, but additionally with vital native components in play to assist him cross the ending put up first. One distinction was that Sir David Evennett, who gained the seat for the Tories 5 instances in a row, had retired. One other was Francis’s very lengthy native service as a Bexley councillor and activist.
He’s been combating elections within the borough since 1994, when he was 17. He gained a council seat for the primary time in 2000 at a by-election. He grew to become cupboard member for transport after Labour secured a uncommon and tiny majority in 2002 – the celebration had solely beforehand gained management there in 1964 and 1971, adopted by a two-year spell in governing coalition with Liberal Democrat councillors from 1994.
He represented Bexley’s Belvedere ward from 2000 till 2010 and from 2014 till he stepped down this 12 months having gained his Home of Commons seat. The four-year hole occurred due his spouse being unwell, although he continued to work for his celebration throughout that point.
So as to add to his native roots, which embody attending Bexley Grammar college in Welling, Francis can level to a London ancestry that features a maternal grandfather who was born in a workhouse hospital in Elephant and Fort and lived off Lambeth Stroll, and paternal grandparents who lived in Borough earlier than changing into, in 1969, one of many first households to maneuver into the then model new Thamesmead property, half which lies in Bexley.
Francis has made an lively begin as an MP, akin to by bringing ahead the Aviation (Accessibility) Invoice beneath the ten-minute rule system, advocating stricter laws for airways of their remedy of passengers with disabilities. Francis has has twin 11-year-old daughters, considered one of whom makes use of a wheelchair, so this and associated issues are near his house and to his coronary heart (he’s very sad certainly with Bexley Council’s file on these points, a matter to which On London will return).
He has additionally held a string of what he calls “value of residing surgical procedures” to assist constituents apply for unclaimed, typically carer-related, monetary assist. However he’s beneath no illusions that retaining his parliamentary seat on the subsequent basic election might be troublesome. And he’s clear about what he thinks his celebration must do nationally to assist make that come about.
“This constituency is not any completely different to locations we name the Crimson Wall,” he says. In line with that’s his view that the Labour authorities’s priorities must be “restoring public companies, a steady financial system and people issues about small boats”.
Requested to characterise Bexleyheath & Crayford and the borough of Bexley as a complete, he attracts a partial distinction between the neighbouring Outdated Bexley & Sidcup seat, retained for the Tories in July by Louie French – in his case regardless of a 21.8 per cent Reform vote share – and his personal.
His neighbouring MP, Francis says, has extra of the “very Ted Heath sort of Tory, of the post-war consensus mould amongst his constituents, “individuals who could be attorneys or work within the Metropolis”. Conservative Prime Minister Heath was, after all, the MP for French’s seat and its predecessors for many years.
Bexleyheath & Crayford, although altering, continues to be considerably fashioned by a unique social and financial historical past. Francis emphasises that the city of Crayford within the japanese facet of the seat was the bottom for the Vickers Firm for the entire of the twentieth Century, an important producer of navy plane and armaments and a significant native employer.
In the present day, he says, the world “has a workforce that’s the spine of London another way”. He mentions builders, plumbers and taxi drivers. He additionally describes elements of it as being amongst “the poorer elements of London”.
Francis describes a whole lot of native voters as “the outdated white working-class”, a few of them “Conservative by means of and thru” but keen to vote for Labour in conducive circumstances beneath the proper chief: “They voted for Tony Blair.” There are additionally amongst that group individuals he recollects telling him in 2019, “I’ve been Labour all my life, however I can not have Jeremy Corbyn main the nation”.
The borough of Bexley as a complete was considered one of London’s 5 Depart-voting boroughs among the many 32, with a really decisive 63 per cent wanting out. However Francis’s characterisation of native views about immigration suggests this shouldn’t be seen as proof of hardline opposition to it.
“Individuals completely settle for immigration when it really works and when public companies are working,” he says, mentioning long-established Nigerian and South Asian communities. “I believe the most important downside is individuals are paying extra tax than ever however nothing works anymore.” He repeats his recipe for a repeat Labour victory: “Create a steady financial system, and folks have gotten to really feel that their residing requirements have risen. We have to have invested and improved public companies and we have to present that we’ve grappled with immigration.”
Francis was drawn to politics when at secondary college, the place he studied it at A-level and his Bexley Grammar friends included now former Bexley Tory councillor Jo Tanner, a political and communications strategist who labored on Boris Johnson’s 2008 London Mayor marketing campaign. Regardless of that, Francis obtained Tanner’s endorsement for his 2024 basic election marketing campaign. In his victory speech (beneath), he paid tribute to his “wonderful politics trainer”, the late Doreen Weston, who he says taught him not which celebration to assist however, quite the opposite, to “query every part”.
His teenage college days have been, although, formative by way of his political leanings. He cites rising road homelessness and failing public companies as issues that have been massive on the time and have worsened once more at the moment. There was one other challenge, too: “We had the headquarters of the British Nationwide Social gathering in Welling. Daily – and I imply every single day – my mates and I noticed the impression of that; seeing mates overwhelmed up due to the color of their pores and skin, or their perceived sexuality.”
The BNP had opened what was formally a bookshop in 1989. 4 years later, Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racists in neighbouring Eltham. Later in 1993, in Tower Hamlets, the BNP gained its first ever council seat. A month after that, an indication towards the BNP base in Welling grew to become violent. It was the Lab-Lib council management fashioned in 1994 that introduced concerning the store’s closure.
The interview over, the MP and I catch considered one of Sadiq Khan’s Superloop high-speed buses from a cease not far away from the café to Abbey Wooden station, the place the Elizabeth line spur terminates on the Bexley-Greenwich border. For me, it’s the subsequent a part of my trip house to Hackney, for Francis, the subsequent stage of a visit to his new place of job, Westminster.
The Superloop service, he says, has proved standard. Like different outer London Labour politicians, he thinks the Mayor introduced in his newest Extremely-Low Emission Zone enlargement too quick, growing opposition, and he provides extra public transport enhancements to his record of coverage priorities, with an extension of the Elizabeth line amongst them.
However he factors out that Khan obtained extra votes – 4,602 extra – on this 12 months’s mayoral election than he bought first preferences beneath the outdated supplementary vote system in 2021, and that, regardless of the numerous months of typically ugly anti-ULEZ campaigning, there was no swing towards him.
Francis want to see extra police on the road in his constituency, however notes that it was beneath Johnson that two native police stations have been closed. He gives a extra optimistic evaluation of Mayor Khan than some Labour politicians within the capital’s most suburban territories. “I believe Sadiq does perceive the aspirations of communities in outer London,” he says. He’ll hope that goes for Keir Starmer’s authorities too.
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