London vs the UK: Prepare for “Lexit”

Forget Scotland and its independence push, London is in the process of forging its own political divorce from the rest of the United Kingdom.

This election campaign is set to complete an historic break between the capital and the rest of the nation in political leanings, a rift that is likely to become even deeper over the next five-year parliament.

“London used to be the part of the UK that voted most like the national average of the whole country,” says Tony Travers, a political scientist at the London School of Economics who is one of the most respected experts on the politics of the capital city. “It is now the area that is least like the rest of the country, and that trend is getting stronger and stronger.”

Senior strategists at both Labour and Conservative headquarters agree that London  is politically moving onto a different planet from the rest of the nation, with Labour performing much stronger than the Tories while the reverse is true in the rest of the nation. According to Travers, London closely mirrored national election results from 1955 until Tony Blair’s first victory in 1997, when Labour polled about 7% more support in London than elsewhere.

Labour’s “over-performance” in the capital increased to 12% in 2015 and is even higher in the latest polls for the 2017 election, and the Conservatives have recently begun to receive much lower support in the capital than elsewhere. “We don’t really know why the difference has become so stark,” says Travers. There are plenty of demographic differences between London and the rest of the UK but it is not clear exactly which factors are behind this new rift in political leanings, he says.

London voters are on average younger, higher paid and more highly educated than the national average and they are more multicultural and much more in favour of remaining in the EU. “But none of those single factors really explains the strength of Labour in London,” Travers says. “Jeremy Corbyn’s proposals to increase income taxes on the highest earners would hit people in London more than  anywhere but Labour is still extremely popular here.”

Research on London by YouGov and the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University found that in the two months to the end of May Labour’s disproportionate strength in the capital ballooned from a lead of 37-34 points to a massive 50-33 points, meaning that Labour could actually increase its existing dominance of London seats.

At the 2015 election Labour won 45 of London’s 73 seats to just 27 for the Tories and just one Liberal Democrat but the Queen Mary research suggested that instead of regaining seats on June 8 the Tories could lose two more to Labour and two the Lib Dems. If Labour did in fact emerge with 47 seats to 23 for the Tories and three for the Lib Dems it would further cement the unprecedented split between the capital and the rest of the country, where every opinion poll and the feedback received by campaigners for the major parties suggests Tory MPs will strongly outnumber their Labour rivals.

Going on the latest YouGov seat projections almost one in five Labour MPs in the new parliament would come from London, compared to just one in 14 Tory MPs. That would have an inevitable impact on the future policies and priorities of each party, with Tory ‘UK’ backbenchers likely to target and scapegoat “London” in the way that “Brussels” had been attacked in the past.

The loss of Labour’s one-time stronghold in Scotland, and the fact that London is home to Jeremy Corbyn and the five MPs who he relies on as his most prominent spokesmen – John McDonnell, Diane Abbot, Emily Thornberry, Keir Starmer and Barry Gardiner – suggest the party’s identification with the capital will strengthen even further during the coming parliament.

by Peter Wilson

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