Follow the money: the London seats Labour is gunning for this election
It’s your guide to the general election in London — ft. Labour’s strategy revealed, a Tory big beast’s last stand, unfriendly fire up north, and what pollsters are predicting

Morning — we’re a week into the general election and campaign cash is already flowing through London. One party has opened up a particularly big war chest since the race was called, using the money for a tactic that’s now the norm in UK elections: online ads targeting Londoners. What Labour is saying to your neighbours leads your London general election guide below.
🗳️ Also in the guide: the Tory big beast fighting til the end, the battle to be king in the north, a smelly secret weapon, and what polling nerds think could happen in the capital.
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Your London general election guide
💰 MONEY TALKS 💰
There’s a surefire way to establish a party’s general election strategy: follow the money. And a lot has been sloshing around London already.
The Spy can reveal Labour has ploughed £60,000 into digital ads targeting Londoners in the capital’s key races since the general election was announced last Wednesday.
That’s over £8,500 per day, and it means Labour ads have appeared in Londoners’ Facebook and Instagram feeds more than 9,000,000 times in the election’s first week, Meta’s ad transparency library shows.
This digital bombardment has been concentrated on voters in 11 of London’s 73 constituencies — suggesting Labour believes these seats are crucial to its hopes of forming a majority government after the election.
They’re a mix of suburban outer London constituencies as well as affluent central seats, many of which have never voted red in their whole history — a sign of Labour HQ’s confidence that it can end up dominating the capital after July 4.
A case in point is Chelsea & Fulham, where Labour has already put more than £11,000 behind its candidate Ben Coleman, in an attempt to overturn a decades-old Tory majority.
It’s the most spent by Labour so far in any London seat, in an area that shunned Tony Blair even during his 1997 landslide — a testament to the party’s changing fortunes in the capital’s poshest neighbourhoods.
Much of the Chelsea cash has been spent on wooing Lib Dem voters rather than Conservatives, with Labour HQ clearly fearing a split vote.
That includes putting £800 behind a video message from a former Lib Dem voter, who claims “only Labour can beat the Conservatives in Chelsea & Fulham”, as well as a bar chart of a prediction that Labour will come first by only a small margin, neglecting to mention the party came behind the Lib Dems in 2019.
Other Coleman ads strike a patriotic tone, mirroring Sir Keir Starmer’s broader shift in Labour’s campaign messaging.
One is a video ad for his work helping veterans living in the Stoll Mansions in Fulham, who were potentially threatened with homelessness under plans to sell the building to Chelsea FC. Coleman takes credit for Stoll Mansions’s pledge that no veteran will lose housing under a deal with the club.
The pleas to Lib Dems continue in Kensington & Bayswater and Cities of London & Westminster, two more posh seats in Zone 1 in which Labour could cause a major upset.
In particular, Westminster has had essentially the same boundaries since 1950, and in every general election since residents have elected a Conservative MP.
Yet in 2017, Labour rocketed to second place, putting the party just eight percentage points behind the Tories.
Labour’s pitch in these affluent central seats comes from technocratic candidates, drawn from the world of international policy and economics.
Joe Powell, candidate for Kensington & Bayswater and a former corruption campaigner, has spent £500 on one ad where he boasts of previously working with former US president Barack Obama.
Out of all the London ads the Spy examined, Powell is also the only Labour candidate to explicitly mention Brexit in campaign material, in this case criticising Tory opponent Felicity Buchan of pursuing a “hard Brexit” — something she has since denied.
In addition, Powell and Labour’s Westminster candidate, economist Rachel Blake, have all spent cash on ads pledging to tackle dirty money in central London. In one message, with £500 behind it, Powell commits “to go after oligarchs and the corrupt wealth in luxury property in our borough that has made our housing crisis worse and hollows out our local community”.
Outer London is also key to Labour’s campaign, the ad spending suggests.
The party’s digital spending is second highest in Uxbridge & South Ruislip, the outer west London constituency that was the scene of a high-profile by-election last year, when its former MP, Boris Johnson, resigned from Parliament.
Labour has spent £10,000 on ads seen 735,000 times since May 22 in support of its candidate, Danny Beales, who lost by just 495 votes to the Conservatives last year.
Many point to the recent ULEZ expansion to explain Beales’ loss, since it was intensely unpopular in some pockets of outer London. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there’s no mention of Sadiq Khan’s scheme, nor in any of the other London ads examined by the Spy.
Instead, Uxbridge voters are being targeted by Labour on the issue of Hillingdon hospital, with the party using £1,500 to boost a video in which Beales claims the Conservative government has failed to deliver funding.
Indeed hospitals feature prominently throughout the Labour ads now being shown to Londoners, with repair issues and waiting lists at Charing Cross, Hammersmith and St Mary’s hospitals singled out by candidates in video messages.
But in outer London, the party is also spending a significant amount of cash on messages from former Conservatives, explaining they have now converted to Labour’s cause.
As is the case in Harrow East, a northwest constituency with the third highest spending on ads, in a further sign of outer London’s importance to Labour’s campaign.
There, the party has plunged £4,000 into an ad where a former local Conservative politician, professor Kishan Devani, reveals he is going to vote for Labour’s candidate, Primesh Patel.
In a video message, Devani particularly highlights that Patel has been “a champion of the British Indian community in Harrow East”, a constituency that Labour last won in 2005.
Devani was once a prominent London Tory, having publicly campaigned for Zac Goldsmith’s unsuccessful bid for mayor against Sadiq Khan in 2016. An ad in which Devani endorses Danny Beales is also being shown to Uxbridge voters.
Other outer London seats Labour is gunning for are Beckenham & Penge, spending £5,100, Hendon, £4,700, and Chipping Barnet, £3,800.
Down south, Labour is putting substantial firepower behind candidates in Croydon, where the party may be able to defeat a government minister.
£5,600 has been spent by the party in Croydon South, where Lab candidate Olga Fitzroy is taking on policing minister Chris Philp and his majority of 12,339.
Such a Tory scalp would be particularly symbolic to some Londoners, given Philp’s repeated insistence that stop and search needs to be used more widely by the Met Police.
Labour is again banging the tactical voting drum in Croydon South, advertising a dubious bar chart that suggests Lib Dems switching would help unseat Philp. It’s based on just one ward in the constituency, however — overall Philp beat the combined Labour and Lib Dem vote in 2019.
Not all of Labour’s ad spending has been offensive, though — some of the cash is being used to defend current MPs.
Clive Efford, currently the Labour MP for Eltham, is having his seat changed to Eltham & Chislehurst.
Labour’s coughed up £1,500 in digital ads for his campaign so far, suggesting the party fears new Chislehurst voters are more likely to vote blue.
Labour has also spent £1,800 on Margaret Mullen in Dagenham & Rainham, an east London seat the party won by a whisker in the 2019 general election, with a majority of just 293.
From the Spy’s previous reporting, we speculate there could be concern in Labour HQ that Mullen may be hindered by local frustration in Rainham over Launder’s Lane, a landfill that keeps catching fire, as well as plans for a new quarry.
In all these key seats above, Labour is vastly outspending the Conservatives on Facebook and Instagram ads.
While Labour has put £10,000 towards Uxbridge, the Conservatives have only spent £400 in aid of its candidate, Steve Tuckwell.
Likewise, Bob Blackman, current Tory MP for Harrow East, has spent just £200 on Facebook and Instagram ads as of May 29.
All in all, if Labour keeps up its current rate of spending, by the Spy’s maths the party will have blown just shy of £360,000 on ads in the capital by election day. So much for fiscal discipline.
🔵 THE LAST BIG BEAST 🔵
Meanwhile, Conservative campaign headquarters have been grappling with a more fundamental problem — finding new candidates to stand in London.
In the weeks leading up to prime minister Rishi Sunak’s snap announcement last week, a wave of the party’s London MPs have announced they won’t be defending their seats — eight so far.
Labour has seen seven resignations — including party veterans like Harriet Harman (Camberwell & Peckham) and Margaret Hodge (Barking) — but the relative scale of the party’s departures is also far smaller.
The Tory resignations represent more than 33% of their total London cohort of 21, while for Labour it’s 15% of the party’s current 47 MPs in the capital.
It means at least a third of the Conservatives campaigning in London are new blood, including in some of the key battlegrounds.
Nickie Aiken is stepping down as MP for Cities of London and Westminster, having only served one term, and Tory newbies are taking on the marginal fights of Hendon and Wimbledon too.
One Tory big beast is standing his ground though, despite a razor-sharp majority in his outer London seat: Ian Duncan Smith.
The former Conservative party leader in the early 2000s is the most senior of his party in London to keep up the fight, even though his seat of 30 years, Chingford & Woodford Green, is one of the capital’s tightest marginals.
IDS has a majority of just 1,262, or 2.6 percentage points, after being given a run for his money in the 2019 general election by left-wing academic Faiza Shaheen of Labour.
Shaheen, aka the ‘Chingford Corbynite’, has previously made much hay out of IDS’s role in David Cameron’s coalition government of the early 2010s, where he was secretary of state for work and pensions and oversaw benefit reforms.
She was selected as Labour’s candidate this time around as well, except — a twist on Wednesday evening, just as we were putting the final touches on this guide.
The Times reports Labour “is poised” to suspend Shaheen, after reportedly liking a tweet dismissing antisemitism accusations from the “hysterical” Israel lobby and claiming the party is “institutionally Islamophobic”.
The Labour national executive committee will have the final say on whether Shaheen can stand next week.
All the while, IDS has been posing for pics while campaigning for a new local policing hub in Woodford.
But speaking of Corbynites…
🔴 KING IN THE NORTH? 🔴
It’s official — Jeremy Corbyn is standing in Islington North as an independent against the party he once led.
Corbyn made the announcement officially last Friday, following months of uncertainty about whether he’d mount a solo fight to keep his north London seat of 40 years.
At one point, there was even speculation he’d run for London mayor, after he had the Labour whip suspended in 2020 over his reaction to a critical report on antisemitism in the party under his leadership.
Instead, Islington will play host to a fight of symbolic importance to the UK left, who’ve been criticising the direction Sir Keir Starmer has taken Labour since he replaced Corbyn as leader in 2019.
But local considerations will ultimately win out. National reporters have been flocking to Islington North — which covers Archway, Holloway and Finsbury Park — to scope out views in his heartland.
If the vox pops are to be believed, many are staying loyal. “If Jeremy jumps from the 10th floor of a building, we will all follow him,” says the owner of Gadz, the cafe adorned with Corbyn photos and posters on Clifton Terrace in Finsbury Park.
Others aren’t. “Corbyn had his chance as Labour leader and he wasted it. I want to see a change at the national level, so I’m voting Labour,” says a Highbury resident.
So far in his campaign, Corbyn pledged to “be a voice to end the arms trade with Israel” at an emergency protest on Rafah on Tuesday, as well as writing an article in the Islington Tribune criticising Labour’s decision to block him from standing locally.
Whether Corbyn can truly succeed is still a big unknown, statistically speaking. As of writing, no polls have been published that ask Islington residents if they’d vote for an independent Corbyn over Labour.
In the 2019 general election, when he stood for Labour, Corbyn got 64% of the vote.
We now know his Labour opponent though: a local Islington councillor, Praful Nargund.
Relatively new to elected politics, having been first elected to the borough council in 2022, Nargund describes himself as an “entrepreneur and campaigner” on his website, having spent a decade “using innovation to tackle inequalities in fertility treatment”.
So far the Spy hasn’t seen Nargrund call out Corbyn directly in any of his social media channels.
Labour insiders have previously suggested many were reluctant to stand against Corbyn, because his popularity amongst some members means “you will have a target painted on your back for the rest of your career”.
Meanwhile, nearby in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Diane Abbott says she’s being prevented from standing for Labour, despite having had the whip restored.
What’s less clear is whether she too will mount an independent campaign — or if she even needs to.
Like Corbyn, Abbott had the Labour whip suspended, in her case for comments she made last year likening the discrimination faced by Jewish people, the Irish and Travellers to the bullying of redheads.
Earlier in the week the BBC had revealed that Labour had completed its investigation into Abbot’s remarks back in December, with her completing an antisemitism awareness course in February.
Then came a report in the Times suggesting Abbott would be blocked from running in Hackney, though Sir Keir Starmer has now said “no decision has been taken to bar” her.
Abbott appeared outside Hackney town hall on Wednesday evening and made a defiant speech, vowing: "as long as it is possible, I will be the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington".
Waiting in the wings in Hackney are the Greens, who’ve quietly but made a few gains on the borough council the past few years.
There’s at least some possibility the party could use the race to score its first London MP, if Labour and Abbott sufficiently split the vote.
Though it’s a big hill to climb: Abbott won 70% of the vote in the 2019 election.
💩 RIVERS OF CRUD 💩
Aside from Labour, the Lib Dems are gunning for gains in the capital, and they’ve been quick to deploy their secret weapon — the sorry state of the River Thames.
This week the party published figures it acquired via Freedom of Information, revealing for the first time that Thames Water had pumped 14.2bn litres of sewage into the river in central London last year.
It’s a particularly relevant campaign issue to London Lib Dems — the party currently controls the riverside and leafy constituencies of Richmond Park and Twickenham in the capital’s southwest, where environmental concerns are at the fore.
Leader Ed Davey, himself a London MP for Kingston and Surbiton, paddled boarded and then fell into Lake Windermere earlier in the week, on a trip highlighting a recent sewage scandal in the lake.
A key target for London Lib Dems is down south: the marginal seat of Wimbledon, where the party came second to the Conservatives by just 628 votes in 2019.
There, the Lib Dems are being represented by Paul Kohler, a university professor who garnered national media attention in 2015 after appearing on TV show This Morning severely bruised, having been “savagely” beaten at an attack at his home in Wimbledon.
Kohler would go on to lead a legal battle to prevent half of London’s police station front counters from being closed.
Kohler was meant to take on sitting MP Peter Hammond, currently a minister in the department for transport — but yesterday Hammond announced he was standing down.
Perhaps he was spooked by news that Labour HQ has seemingly redirected campaigners away from Wimbledon to Croydon South, leaving the Lib Dems with a clear run at the seat.
Or it might have been the fact the Wimbledon constituency has tweaked boundaries this year. Some analyses suggest the Lib Dems would have actually won it 2019, due to the inclusion of new wards from Kingston and Surbiton, Davey’s seat.
Victory for Lib Dems in Wimbledon would take their total London MP count to four, its highest in the capital in years, though still below the seven the party had after the 2010 election.
They may go further still — there’s a chance that the Lib Dems win the seat of Cities of London & Westminster too.
Though also a Labour target seat, the Lib Dems were the ones to come second in Westminster 2019, at the time represented by candidate Chuka Umunna, a former Labour politician who quit over Brexit, then joined the Lib Dems.
📊 WHAT THE POLLS SAY 📊
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