London Exodus

[Deleted]

Another thing we should remember about a ‘London exodus” is that this has been happening in one form or another for decades.

In the 50s and 60s you had swum dwellers decanted out from Inner London to the likes of Basildon, Crawley, Harlow, Milton Keynes, Stevenage etc.

Since the 70s there has been considerable ‘white flight’ from much of London - part of the reason why seats like Croydon North, Ilford South and Mitcham & Morden have swung so heavily against the blues since the 80s.

Huge drops in Barking & Dagenham and Newham since 2001 also.

I believe in the 2021 census Asians may be in the majority in Ilford North as they are in South now - a further testament to the rapid nature of demographic change in Outer London.

Hard to imagine Boris’s “doughnut strategy” in 2008 working now.

[ccoleman]

London has always had a negative net internal migration rate. Nothing unusual there.

[Pete Whitehead]

Dec 30, 2017 17:36:25 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

Hard to imagine Boris’s “doughnut strategy” in 2008 working now.

Indeed it had already stopped working by 2012. There were huge swings to Labour then in areas like Enfield, Barking, Hayes, Feltham etc and what actually saved Boris was a good swing in his favour in upmarket but liberal inner London areas like Hampstead, Clapham, Dulwich etc

[Deleted]

Dec 30, 2017 21:56:40 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Dec 30, 2017 17:36:25 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

Hard to imagine Boris’s “doughnut strategy” in 2008 working now.

Indeed it had already stopped working by 2012. There were huge swings to Labour then in areas like Enfield, Barking, Hayes, Feltham etc and what actually saved Boris was a good swing in his favour in upmarket but liberal inner London areas like Hampstead, Clapham, Dulwich etc

Yes.

The ward results for 2012 are very interesting. Boris doing well in the likes of Bermondsey and Hornsey & Wood Green.

Hence my view that with someone like Ruth Davidson in charge the Conservatives could make ground in seats like these but I fully accept she’s highly unlikely to get the job.



But yes, some of the wards were very impressive wins:

Clapham Town
Fortis Green
Muswell Hill (!)
Riverside
Surrey Docks

Have any of these even elected Tory Councillors in my lifetime (since 1997)?

[rr1981]

Dec 30, 2017 23:08:10 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

Dec 30, 2017 21:56:40 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Indeed it had already stopped working by 2012. There were huge swings to Labour then in areas like Enfield, Barking, Hayes, Feltham etc and what actually saved Boris was a good swing in his favour in upmarket but liberal inner London areas like Hampstead, Clapham, Dulwich etc

Yes.

The ward results for 2012 are very interesting. Boris doing well in the likes of Bermondsey and Hornsey & Wood Green.

Hence my view that with someone like Ruth Davidson in charge the Conservatives could make ground in seats like these but I fully accept she’s highly unlikely to get the job.



But yes, some of the wards were very impressive wins:

Clapham Town
Fortis Green
Muswell Hill (!)
Riverside
Surrey Docks

Have any of these even elected Tory Councillors in my lifetime (since 1997)?

As follows:

Clapham Town: Often a split ward (Lab/Con) in late 70s and early 80s. Also split in 1994 and 2002 (Con was Bernard Gentry - now of Clapham Common). So YES

Fortis Green: Con since creation til lost to Labour in 1994 (along with every ward in Haringey except Highgate). Never regained. Sunsequently flirted with LD so NO (just)

Muswell Hill: Akin to Fortis, True Blue until 1994 when lost to Labour for first time ever. Then went LD in 1998 (Featherstone et al) in their first breakthrough ward. Never regained by Con. So NO (just)

Riverside: This and predecessor never ever Tory. Not even in 1968. Lab then LD. So NO

Surey Docks: Again, this and predecessor (Dockyard) never ever Tory. Not even in 1968. Lab then LD. So NO

Hope helps.  1997 is yesterday to me (I was born in 1981), so I don't really regard BJ winning in Fortis and Muswell as a big deal (they are posh areas that, were they in, say, Wandsworth LB, would probably be Blue. They are both full of bankers these days). Riverside and Surrey Docks are also rapidly gentrifying so there is no reason why the right sort of Tory shouldn't be able to win there. Clapham Town has recent Tory dalliances of course...

Hope clarifies.

RR

[Deleted]

Dec 30, 2017 23:36:14 GMT rr1981 said:

Dec 30, 2017 23:08:10 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

Yes.

The ward results for 2012 are very interesting. Boris doing well in the likes of Bermondsey and Hornsey & Wood Green.

Hence my view that with someone like Ruth Davidson in charge the Conservatives could make ground in seats like these but I fully accept she’s highly unlikely to get the job.



But yes, some of the wards were very impressive wins:

Clapham Town
Fortis Green
Muswell Hill (!)
Riverside
Surrey Docks

Have any of these even elected Tory Councillors in my lifetime (since 1997)?

As follows:

Clapham Town: Often a split ward (Lab/Con) in late 70s and early 80s. Also split in 1994 and 2002 (Con was Bernard Gentry - now of Clapham Common). So YES

Fortis Green: Con since creation til lost to Labour in 1994 (along with every ward in Haringey except Highgate). Never regained. Sunsequently flirted with LD so NO (just)

Muswell Hill: Akin to Fortis, True Blue until 1994 when lost to Labour for first time ever. Then went LD in 1998 (Featherstone et al) in their first breakthrough ward. Never regained by Con. So NO (just)

Riverside: This and predecessor never ever Tory. Not even in 1968. Lab then LD. So NO

Surey Docks: Again, this and predecessor (Dockyard) never ever Tory. Not even in 1968. Lab then LD. So NO

Hope helps.  1997 is yesterday to me (I was born in 1981), so I don't really regard BJ winning in Fortis and Muswell as a big deal (they are posh areas that, were they in, say, Wandsworth LB, would probably be Blue. They are both full of bankers these days). Riverside and Surrey Docks are also rapidly gentrifying so there is no reason why the right sort of Tory shouldn't be able to win there. Clapham Town has recent Tory dalliances of course...

Hope clarifies.

RR

Thanks very much for clarifying!

[East Anglian Lefty]

I think referring to all migration out of London as 'white flight' is unhelpful and inaccurate. It's undoubtedly true for places like Clacton, but plenty of people moving out would have done so anyway and it had nothing to do with the ethnicity of their neighbours, and it's not like ethnic minorities aren't also moving out of London.

[beastofbedfordshire]

Jan 6, 2018 12:21:40 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

I think referring to all migration out of London as 'white flight' is unhelpful and inaccurate. It's undoubtedly true for places like Clacton, but plenty of people moving out would have done so anyway and it had nothing to do with the ethnicity of their neighbours, and it's not like ethnic minorities aren't also moving out of London.

Don't disagree with this but I'm quite sure that the destinations they end up in, may be quite different.

[Deleted]

It doesn’t seem to be affecting the seats that border London in the same way demographic change in Inner London affected places like Croydon and Redbridge in elections from the 80s on.

The likes of Broxbourne, Epping Forest and Spelthorne (despite bordering areas of large-scale demographic change) are as strong as ever for the Conservatives.

[ccoleman]

Jan 6, 2018 12:21:40 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

I think referring to all migration out of London as 'white flight' is unhelpful and inaccurate. It's undoubtedly true for places like Clacton, but plenty of people moving out would have done so anyway and it had nothing to do with the ethnicity of their neighbours, and it's not like ethnic minorities aren't also moving out of London.

Yes, especially when one of the largest destinations for departing Londoners is Birmingham.. leaving London is driven by cost of living as much as anything else (probably more than anything else tbh).

[Sibboleth]

London has always been the sort of city that people move to and move from. Talk of an exodus is absurd clickbait nonsense, talk of white flight is for the most part just completely ridiculous.

[Sibboleth]

Dec 30, 2017 17:36:25 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

In the 50s and 60s you had swum dwellers decanted out from Inner London to the likes of Basildon, Crawley, Harlow, Milton Keynes, Stevenage etc.

The New Towns mostly attracted people of whatever background who just wanted a new house; particularly popular with young families. Disproportionate movement out of the slum districts was more to Australia - no man did more to clear British slums of their people than Arthur Calwell - and to overspill estates.

[Sibboleth]

Dec 30, 2017 21:56:40 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Dec 30, 2017 17:36:25 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

Hard to imagine Boris’s “doughnut strategy” in 2008 working now.

Indeed it had already stopped working by 2012. There were huge swings to Labour then in areas like Enfield, Barking, Hayes, Feltham etc and what actually saved Boris was a good swing in his favour in upmarket but liberal inner London areas like Hampstead, Clapham, Dulwich etc

It only worked in 2008 because of specific Livingstone related backlashes - he ignored the periphery and suffered the consequences. Not a traditional or normal map at all.

[Sibboleth]

Also why would Londoners moving to Birmingham make Birmingham more Labour? It's not 1937 any more.

[Devil Wincarnate]

Jan 6, 2018 14:55:02 GMT Sibboleth said:

London has always been the sort of city that people move to and move from. Talk of an exodus is absurd clickbait nonsense, talk of white flight is for the most part just completely ridiculous.

"Exodus" was a fairly unhelpful title, I do concede (although "Londoners- where they leave from and where they head to" sounded a bit too Dale Carnegie).  But as a set of data, it is genuinely fascinating that Londoners don't just head to some places more than others, some of which are surprising, but also that there are patterns of where they head to that correlate to the places they left.

[Pete Whitehead]

Jan 6, 2018 15:03:17 GMT Sibboleth said:

Dec 30, 2017 21:56:40 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Indeed it had already stopped working by 2012. There were huge swings to Labour then in areas like Enfield, Barking, Hayes, Feltham etc and what actually saved Boris was a good swing in his favour in upmarket but liberal inner London areas like Hampstead, Clapham, Dulwich etc

It only worked in 2008 because of specific Livingstone related backlashes - he ignored the periphery and suffered the consequences. Not a traditional or normal map at all.

Some of those patterns, the Conservatives doing well in non-traditional areas like Harold Hill, Hainault, Feltham etc were already apparent in 2004. No doubt for the same reasons, but 2008 wasn't a one off

[Deleted]

Jan 6, 2018 21:28:44 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Jan 6, 2018 15:03:17 GMT Sibboleth said:

It only worked in 2008 because of specific Livingstone related backlashes - he ignored the periphery and suffered the consequences. Not a traditional or normal map at all.

Some of those patterns, the Conservatives doing well in non-traditional areas like Harold Hill, Hainault, Feltham etc were already apparent in 2004. No doubt for the same reasons, but 2008 wasn't a one off

Also New Addington and St Helier.

Also remember in 2006 Labour had no Councillors in Ilford North. Hard to imagine now.

[Deleted]

Jan 6, 2018 15:00:00 GMT Sibboleth said:

Dec 30, 2017 17:36:25 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

In the 50s and 60s you had swum dwellers decanted out from Inner London to the likes of Basildon, Crawley, Harlow, Milton Keynes, Stevenage etc.

The New Towns mostly attracted people of whatever background who just wanted a new house; particularly popular with young families. Disproportionate movement out of the slum districts was more to Australia - no man did more to clear British slums of their people than Arthur Calwell - and to overspill estates.

Yes the massive export of people to Australia is often forgotten in analyses of postwar population movements, which tells you something about our national self image.

[Deleted]

Dec 29, 2017 15:37:45 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

Dec 29, 2017 14:17:14 GMT tiberius said:

Is it reasonable to assume more Labour than Tory voters are leaving London, if this exodus is especially caused by being priced out of housing?

I do think the effects of gentrification for the Conservatives have been limited.

Yes it turned Putney and Battersea into more Tory areas, but they’ve made no headway in Hornsey & Wood Green or Bermondsey (although the 2010 result there was strong).

It’s true you have wards like Clapham Common where the Conservatives hold 3/3 council seats for the first time in decades but these and their results in seats line Vauxhall in 2015 look to have been undone by brexit.

In many areas the effect has been negative. What were once middle income family homes perhaps bought relatively cheaply in the 80s or early 90s might now be houseshares of young professional renters. Household disposable income will be higher, this will bleed into the local economy thus "gentrification"; but household capital will be lower, and if lower economic security wasn't enough for the new occupiers to be Labour voters then May's kulturkampf will have been.

[Andrew_S]

Jan 7, 2018 0:56:22 GMT @strinity said:

Dec 29, 2017 15:37:45 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

I do think the effects of gentrification for the Conservatives have been limited.

Yes it turned Putney and Battersea into more Tory areas, but they’ve made no headway in Hornsey & Wood Green or Bermondsey (although the 2010 result there was strong).

It’s true you have wards like Clapham Common where the Conservatives hold 3/3 council seats for the first time in decades but these and their results in seats line Vauxhall in 2015 look to have been undone by brexit.

In many areas the effect has been negative. What were once middle income family homes perhaps bought relatively cheaply in the 80s or early 90s might now be houseshares of young professional renters. Household disposable income will be higher, this will bleed into the local economy thus "gentrification"; but household capital will be lower, and if lower economic security wasn't enough for the new occupiers to be Labour voters then May's kulturkampf will have been.

There must have been an enormous exodus of Tory-minded voters from a seat like Walthamstow which they won in 1987 but where Labour polled 80% in 2017. (The national Tory share in both elections was almost the same).