There have been three London borough by-elections on Thursday – two in Hounslow and one in Barnet. The outcomes have been among the many extra fascinating in London these days. The usual by-election final result has tended to be a Labour maintain with a much-reduced vote share on a low turnout and Reform UK gaining floor, however solely considered one of this week’s three contests conformed to that generalisation.
Brentford had a double by-election following the resignations of two Hounslow Labour councillors. One in all them, Balraj Sarai, was on the centre of allegations that he was not performing his duties as he ought to and racking up an inventory of absences from council conferences. He resigned his Syon & Brentford Lock ward seat in January. He was joined by Rhys Williams of Brentford East ward, who stood down due to the strain his council duties was placing on his working and household life.
Allow us to deal first with Brentford East. A few weeks in the past a by-election came about within the ward missed by the Hammersmith Flyover. Now it’s time to transfer just a few miles west and contemplate the territory underneath the M4 Elevated Part round its curious double-deck junction with the A4 working beneath the flyover. Industrial improvement between the wars produced the “Golden Mile” of contemporary factories alongside the Nice West Highway. The ward can also be the situation of the Brentford Neighborhood Stadium, house of Premier League Brentford Soccer Membership, and the Musical Museum.
Whereas not strictly a council property ward, Brentford East has principally been constructed by social housing suppliers. Accordong to the 2021 census, 43 per cent of households have been in social housing (plus 4 per cent shared possession), 28 per cent have been non-public renters and solely 24 per cent owner-occupiers. There are some Nineteen Twenties “properties match for heroes” council estates within the north of the ward and the high-rise Nineteen Sixties Brentford Towers property, with its six 24-storey blocks by Inexperienced Dragon Lane. The ward’s inhabitants is 50 per cent white and 50 per cent from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds.
An oddly illustrious solid of 5 candidates, one from every of the primary events, stood within the by-election. Defending for Labour was Max Mosley, a senior economist on the Nationwide Institute for Social and Financial Analysis and to not be confused with the late Components One impresario. The Conservative candidate was Christine Cunniffe, principal of LVS Ascot faculty and a media critic (for GB Information) of Labour’s insurance policies round non-public schooling. Liberal Democrat Bernice Roust is a lighting engineer who appeared as an additional in Star Wars Episode VII: The Power Awakens. The Greens’ Rashid Wahab has a powerful CV of educating, enterprise and synthetic intelligence. David Kerr of Reform UK stood for that get together in Brentford & Isleworth within the 2024 normal election.
The outcome resembled the usual sample. Mosley was elected with 430 votes (48 per cent, down 15 per cent on 2022) on a dreadful turnout of 15 per cent. The primary problem got here from Reform, whose candidate polled 197 votes (22 per cent, the get together’s greatest up to now in a London by-election) with the opposite three candidates all polling fewer than 100 votes. The third-placed Conservatives have been trying notably bedraggled – the drop of their vote share (eight per cent) was their worst outcome for the reason that normal election.
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Syon & Brentford Lock ward is to the west of Brentford. Because the title suggests, it accommodates a part of Brentford, particularly the world across the River Brent simply earlier than it flows into the Thames. Brentford Dock was closed in 1964 and redeveloped for housing by the Higher London Council within the Seventies, although the Conservative majority on the GLC on the time of the scheme’s completion determined to promote most of it on the non-public market.
There was additional improvement since then. Brentford Lock itself is slightly upriver. The Brent right here is canalised as entry from the Grand Union Canal to the Thames. West of the Brent, the ward features a swathe of north Isleworth, together with the massive park landscaped by Functionality Brown across the Robert Adam Syon Home, the London house of the Dukes of Northumberland.
A lot of the housing, although, is inter-war suburbia. Syon & Brentford Lock has extra suburban demographics than Brentford East, being 41 per cent owner-occupied, 29 per cent non-public rented and 17 per cent social renting. The ward’s northern border is outlined by the Hounslow Loop railway line. It’s served by Syon Lane station, and Isleworth and Brentford stations are close to every finish of the ward. It’s moderately whiter (57 per cent of the inhabitants) than common for a Hounslow borough (44 per cent). The second largest ethnic group is Asian (20 per cent).
Six candidates stood, one from every of the 5 principal events plus Theo Dennison, an Impartial. Dennison is a former Labour councillor who had served as Hounslow’s Cupboard member for finance. He polled a creditable 21 per cent right here as an Impartial in Might 2022, having served as councillor for the predecessor Syon ward since 2010. He’s now a political campaigns marketing consultant whose purchasers embrace George Galloway’s Staff’ Social gathering;
Dennison put up a powerful problem to Labour within the Might 2024 Brentford West by-election, however a contest on his house turf gave him an optimum probability of getting again on the council. Two of the opposite candidates had additionally contested Brentford West final yr: Mike Denniss for the Conservatives and Freya Summersgill for the Greens. And Lib Dem Jack Ballentyne ran in Syon & Brentford Lock itself in 2022. Chinmay Parulekar for Reform UK was a brand new candidate, as was Jennifer Prain, a textile designer who represented Labour.
The outcome was a squeaker. Dennison gained, however with a majority of solely 12 votes over Prain. He recieved 615 votes to her 603, every whole representing 33 per cent of the vote. It was the primary Labour loss to the Left since Stoke Newington in Hackney went Inexperienced in September. Nevertheless, the risk from this quarter appears to have ebbed since simply after the final election. The swing was comparatively small: Labour’s vote was down solely 5 factors, which was a smaller drop than that suffered by the Tories. This quantities to a technical swing of 0.8 per cent from Conservative to Labour.
That, although, that shall be of little comfort for shedding the seat and Hounslow’s ruling Labour group shall be rueing these 12 votes. The administration now has an articulate, efficient and annoying opponent within the council chamber. One could be aware that Dennison has stated that Galloway was however one consumer amongst others, but when he needs to align a bit nearer there may be already a Staff’ Social gathering councillor in Hounslow – Amritpal Mann of Heston East who defected from Labour in March 2024 following his suspension for a social media publish about Gaza.
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Barnet’s by-election got here three weeks after the borough’s earlier electoral engagement within the Burnt Oak ward on 13 February. The competition in Finchley Church Finish took place due to the demise of long-serving Conservative councillor Eva Greenspan, who had first been elected in 1990 and served a time period because the borough’s mayor in 2006-07. On the time of her demise, she led the twinning committee between Barnet and the Tel Aviv suburban borough of Ramat Gan. Present (Labour) Barnet mayor Tony Vourou paid tribute to Greenspan as “a beacon of management, integrity, and compassion”.
Finchley Church Finish ward is outlined on two sides by main roads – the A406 North Round and the A1 Nice North Approach. In public transport phrases it’s served by Finchley Central station on the Northern Line. The ward is principally residential and prosperous. There’s hardly any social housing – 58 per cent are owner-occupiers and 35 per cent are renting privately.
A brand new landmark is Edgewood Mews, a putting improvement (half inexpensive) on a small patch of land by a very aggressive part of the North Round. Finchley Church Finish is majority white (62 per cent) with an Asian inhabitants of 17 per cent, however its most distinctive characteristic is that it is without doubt one of the wards on the centre of Barnet’s, and due to this fact London’s, Jewish neighborhood. The inhabitants was 30 per cent Jewish by religion within the 2021 Census, and greater than that by neighborhood id (19 per cent professed no faith and eight per cent didn’t reply the Census query).
The forces of liberal Judaism are stronger right here than they’re in Golders Inexperienced or Hendon. The ward has been reliably Conservative in latest rounds of native elections, though these days by a lot smaller margins than in different strongly Jewish wards. In Might 2022, the Tories have been on 41 per cent to 25 per cent every for Labour and Lib Dem and one other eight per cent for the Greens.
The Finchley Church Finish poll paper was partly a reunion of candidates who had fought the Brunswick Park ward in 2022. Conservative candidate Josh Mastin-Lee, Inexperienced David Farbey and Reform candidate Lisa Rutter all stood there, though Rutter was then an incumbent Conservative councillor. Two others have been veterans of the Golders Inexperienced by-election in February 2023: Lib Dem James Goldman and Rejoin EU’s Brendan Donnelly. Donnelly, a Conservative MEP in 1994-99, has an extended and variegated electoral profession. Impartial Brian Ingram fought Backyard Suburb ward in 2022. Health teacher Beverley Kotey was a first-time candidate for Labour.
When the votes have been counted, Mastin-Lee (pictured, centre), a solicitor, had held the seat for the Tories with 1,509 votes (45 per cent) on a turnout of 25.5 per cent. Labour took a creditable second place with 977 votes (29 per cent). Remarkably, Labour’s share of the vote was up from the place it was in 2022, when the get together gained a Barnet majority for the primary time ever and the swing to the Conservatives was a worthless 0.2 per cent. In contrast with 2014, Labour’s pre-2022 excessive Barnet tide, the swing was three per cent to Labour. Barnet Labour will regard the Finchley Church Finish outcome as encouraging. The ward is extra typical of the borough than Burnt Oak, the place Labour had a foul outcome final month, and due to this fact a greater portent for the approaching battle for management of Barnet in Might 2026.
Nevertheless, Labour had a bonus in Finchley Church Finish within the type of a pool of potential liberal recruits. The massive losers within the by-election have been the Lib Dems, whose share fell from 25 per cent in 2022 (their greatest within the borough) to simply six per cent (213 votes). The reason is to be discovered within the broader politics of the Finchley & Golders Inexperienced parliamentary constituency.
The Liberal Democrats got here second within the 2019 normal election with former Labour MP Luciana Berger as their candidate, and in 2022 nonetheless had some hopes of constructing an area base. Nevertheless it was to not be – they didn’t win any seats in Barnet. The Lib Dem vote went on to break down in Labour’s favour within the 2024 normal election as Sarah Sackman (now a inmister of state) gained the seat. Their vote relies on native activism, which appears to have dried up. Rutter’s third positioned end (351 votes, 11 per cent) will please Reform in a ward that was by no means going to be fertile territory.
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Taken collectively, the three by-elections – with Westminster Vincent Sq. final week – present a slackening within the anti-Labour winds which have blown laborious since July 2024. It’s potential, in fact, that it is a statistical blip brought on by variations in native circumstances, however additionally it is potential that it represents a change within the political climate.
The following by-election contest in London is within the Mayfield ward of Redbridge on 27 March.
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