55% in 2017, 43% in 2024: London goes off Labour
Despite gaining more London MPs, Labour’s support has cooled in the capital
Morning — Keir Starmer may have won the general election, but he’s lost votes in London. While Labour gained eight new MPs in the capital on Friday night, mostly in outer London, the total share of Londoners voting for the party has gone down compared to the last election. Labour’s support across the city is now at its lowest level in 14 years, as the Greens and independents reap the rewards of the party’s move to the centre.
That’s the topline of your London election results special today, brought to you bleary-eyed after some long shifts in our day jobs in journalism. The piece is free to read to all our subscribers, in lieu of your usual Sunday round-up, and jam-packed with all the biggest takeaways from the London results. Reform hurting the Tories is the headline from the rest of the UK — but in London, it’s the damage Labour has taken on its left flank.
We’ll be back to your usual features and roundups next week — kicking things off with a deep dive into, er, London’s sex party scene. In your inbox soon.
More London MPs for Labour — but a big fall in the vote
A “loveless landslide” is how Labour’s general election victory is being described, after a meagre 2% increase in the popular vote delivered Keir Starmer a huge 172-seat majority.
Nowhere sums this up more than London — despite Labour gaining seats from the Tories, the party’s share of the vote actually fell across the capital.
43% of Londoners voted for Keir Starmer’s Labour on July 4, down from the 48% that voted for the party under Jeremy Corbyn at the last election in 2019, and far below the 55% seen in 2017, which had been Labour’s highest popular vote in the capital in 100 years.
It’s also below the 50% of Londoners that voted for Tony Blair in 1997, when he won Labour’s last landslide.
Yet Labour gained eight extra constituencies in London this time round, meaning most of the capital’s electoral map is now painted red.
They include the Cities of London & Westminster, a central constituency that had been blue since the 1950s, and Uxbridge & South Ruislip in outer London, formerly Boris Johnson’s seat.
The reason was first-past-the-post: Labour traded support in its London strongholds, where the party’s majorities are unassailably high, for small gains in these new seats.
In the London constituencies Labour already held, the party’s vote share fell by 10 percentage points on average — in all cases but one, not enough to lose.
But in those the party gained in London, Labour’s vote share increased by 5 points on average, enough to tip marginals over the edge.
Helping Starmer was the Tories’ collapse to their worst result in London since 1918, achieving just 20% of the vote.
It’s the first time less than 30% of Londoners picked the Conservatives at the ballot box in both the 20th and 21st centuries, in a damning sign of how far the party has now strayed into the capital’s political wilderness.
The Tories were also completely wiped out in inner London with the loss of seats like Chelsea & Fulham to Labour, leaving the party holding on to a handful of the capital’s outermost suburban constituencies.
This blue collapse, combined with the quirks of the UK’s electoral system, is behind Labour’s loss of votes but gain in seats in London.
It’s a pattern that’s played out in other parts of the country, with many disaffected Tory supporters choosing to protest vote, clearing the way for Labour.
But unlike other UK voters fed up with the two main parties, Londoners didn’t deliver a third-place finish for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Instead, the Greens saw their best result in the capital ever, while independent candidates caused a surprising amount of havoc for Labour across London seats held by key figures in the party.
Though they didn’t win anywhere outright, the Greens tripled their share of the vote to 10% across the capital and got more than 20% of the vote for the first time in four London races.
Among these is Hackney North & Stoke Newington, where Diane Abbott was nearly blocked from standing for Labour by the party leadership, but then given the go-ahead after an outcry.
Rather than leading to a surge in support for Abbott, the drama seems to have turned many Hackney voters off Labour entirely. The Greens came second with 23% of the vote, up from 8% in 2019, while Labour and Abbott saw their share fall from 70% to 59%.
An equally good showing for the Greens in neighbouring Hackney South & Shoreditch — 23% of the vote, up from 6%. Together the two results suggest Hackney may become a prime target for the Greens to get their first London MP at the next election.
Lewisham North and Walthamstow also saw Greens leap to over 20% of the vote, and both saw Labour’s vote share fall. The party’s leftwing manifesto and stance on Gaza clearly resonated in some pockets of London.
Indeed independents critical of Labour, particularly on Gaza, gave the party a serious run for its money in London.
There was of course Jeremy Corbyn, who succeeded in his independent bid in Islington North against Labour rival Praful Nargund.
To big cheers from his supporters at the count in Islington, Corbyn was declared the winner with 49% of the vote versus 34% for Nargund, meaning the former Labour leader will keep his seat of 40 years.
Other independents failed to win but nonetheless cut Labour majorities to slithers, despite lacking Corbyn’s name recognition.
In Ilford North, Wes Streeting — now appointed health secretary by Starmer — nearly lost by just 500 votes to Leanna Mohamad, a British Palestinian who resigned her Labour membership just a year prior over Gaza.
Labour MP Rushanara Ali was nearly unseated in Bethnal Green & Stepney, with her share of the vote slashed from 74% to 34% by independent Ajmal Masroor, who got 31% of the vote.
On voting day, a van carrying an electronic poster that read “a vote for Labour is a vote for genocide” with a photo of Ali and Starmer was spotted parked on Columbia Road, in her constituency.
Even Starmer saw his majority shrink in his north London seat of Holborn & St Pancras, in his case because of independent candidate Andrew Feinstein, a former South African MP turned corruption campaigner.
Starmer got 65% of the vote last time, versus 49% now, while Feinstein got 19%.
And while she didn’t win, it looks like Faiza Shaheen’s independent run in Chingford & Woodford Green cost Labour a gain from the Conservatives in north east London and gave incumbent Ian Duncan Smith another term.
The vote was split down the middle — 26% for Shaheen and 26% for Labour’s Shama Tatler, versus 36% for IDS — in contrast to Shaheen’s assurances it was a “clear choice” between herself and the Conservatives ahead of polling day.
Shaheen, who was deselected by Labour shortly after the election was called, has since said the party brought the result on itself, due to the “bullying and humiliation they put me through”.
But in the end, despite the falling vote share, Labour have now ended up with 59 of London’s 75 constituencies, up from 52 in 2019.
Also making their London votes work harder in terms of seats were the Liberal Democrats, who swept all of their key targets in south London.
Ed Davey’s party won Wimbledon, Sutton & Cheam and Carshalton & Wallington from the Tories, putting the Lib Dems on six London MPs in total — the highest since 2010 — even though many constituencies saw the party’s vote share tumble.
The party still came third in London’s popular vote overall, squeaking ahead of the Greens in fourth — and Reform in fifth.
Nigel Farage’s party didn’t win any London seats and did worse relative to its UK-wide result, where it came third in the popular vote.
Reform’s best performance was in Hornchurch & Upminster, an outer east London seat on the border of Essex, where the party nearly came close to unseating a Conservative MP.
Reform got 28% of the vote there, five points behind the Conservatives’ 33% vote share.
Dagenham & Rainham, Bexleyheath & Crayford, Romford and Bexleyheath & Crayford also all saw Reform achieve at least 20% of the vote there.
Nice roundup. But it would be nice if you could add a credit line to the map. It took me hours to put together. Credit Matt Brown/Londonist.