Ealing Central and Acton

[Pete Whitehead]

Apr 6, 2020 23:07:50 GMT @barnabymarder said:

This is a reasonably good description of the constituency.

Rather blowing your own trumpet there Barnaby
It is an excellent description though

[heslingtonian]

Found this a rather surprise Conservative gain in 2010 to be honest. I think it’s going to be rather hard to win back

[iain]

Apr 7, 2020 11:28:52 GMT @barnabymarder said:

Apr 7, 2020 10:33:15 GMT heslingtonian said:

Found this a rather surprise Conservative gain in 2010 to be honest. I think it’s going to be rather hard to win back

If the new seat was notionally Labour in 2010 - I can't remember whether it was or not - it would only have been by a very small amount, as the whole of Shepherds Bush had been removed from the previous constituency, and 2 Conservative-voting wards, Ealing Common and Ealing Broadway, were added. So at the time I don't think it was a surprise at all. Your last sentence is surely right though.

It was:
Labour - 33.4%
Conservative - 31.2%
Lib Dem - 30.6%
Other - 4.8%

[batman]

This seat was first contested in 2010. It is fairly similar to the Ealing Acton seat which existed up to 1997, but contains slightly more of the Ealing community than that seat did and, unlike that seat, takes in a part of West Ealing too - although part of the former Pitshanger ward, around the Pitshanger Lane local shops, was for some time in Cleveland ward, but is now in a redrawn new Pitshanger ward, and therefore in Ealing North. Traditionally, the Ealing community itself has tended somewhat towards the Conservatives, and the Acton community somewhat towards Labour (although the Tories did win the old Acton seat twice before it was merged with a chunk of Ealing in 1974). This seat, unlike Ealing Acton, is basically split right down the middle between the Ealing/West Ealing section, and the Acton section. As such, it was always likely to be marginal, and that was what it turned out to be in both the 2010 and 2015 general elections. Since then, however, it has swung strongly towards Labour, and there are many who suspect that that swing may be hard to reverse for the Tories.

Ealing as a community or, if you like, town as opposed to its entire eponymous borough has a longstanding nickname, The Queen of the Suburbs. It certainly has some very attractive residential areas, on and around the North Circular Road south-east of the town centre, around the Common, north of Haven Green opposite Ealing Broadway station, which after years of waiting now has Crossrail services. These areas are heavily owner-occupied with some private renting and very few council-built enclaves. Even further up the social scale is the interwar development between Hanger Lane and the neighbouring Piccadilly Line stations of North Ealing and Park Royal, centred on a road called Corringway. Here are large detached houses, almost all still undivided. This polling district was said to be the only one in the entire borough where Labour failed to achieve 20% of the vote, and even now it would not be much higher than that as the Conservatives are very strong. However, a lot of Ealing proper has what is often termed an "intellectual" population - interested in the arts, educated, fairly socially liberal. These voters are found in many of Britain's major urban centres, London very much included, and a majority of them will have voted against leaving the European Union in 2016. The high incidence of such voters has contributed to a noticeable weakening of the Conservative position in three of the 4 Ealing community wards - Ealing Common, Hanger Hill and Ealing Broadway. Labour now has its first-ever councillor in the first-mentioned of these, and very unusually the ward elected one councillor from Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in 2018. The other two wards were very safe for the Conservatives when they were first created, but the Tories now only have a modest majority in Ealing Broadway, and had to make do with sharing Hanger Hill with the Liberal Democrats (with Labour close behind) in 2022. These wards have similarities but also differences. Ealing Common does have one solidly working-class polling district, almost entirely council-built, immediately south-east of South Ealing tube station. Ealing Broadway has some very graceful streets north of Haven Green but is a little less socially upscale south of the Broadway, where there is a great deal of multi-occupancy and a smattering of council-built homes. Hanger Hill is quite socially polarised between the previously mentioned Corringway area and the much more down-at-heel West Twyford area, named after a derelict former stately home and lying east of Hanger Lane tube station. The area immediately west of the famous Hanger Lane Gyratory System, in the middle of which the station is found, has a significant Iranian and Iraqi population and it too is a decent source of Labour votes despite the ward voting more Conservative than Labour. The remaining Ealing ward, Walpole, is a long-term marginal, with again a rather "intellectual" and very upmarket eastern end, but a much more working-class western end which includes a fair-sized council estate. Labour frequently wins Walpole ward, but rarely by much, and sometimes the Tories have been able to win too. Taken as a whole, the Ealing half of the constituency is still mainly white (with a large and long-established Polish community almost throughout, complete with imposing Polish church and restaurant in the town centre), though it is less so than was once the case.

Acton is a different matter altogether and is essentially a mixture of not particularly upmarket owner-occupied and privately rented areas and council estates, some of which are of some size. Acton proper essentially has 3 and a bit council wards; the 3 entirely-Acton-proper wards are all Labour-held, and none of them can now be regarded as anything but safe. South Acton, though it has some pleasant areas in its western extremities close to Ealing Common station, is particularly reliably Labour and includes a large, and partially rebuilt, medium-to-high-rise council estate. Its predecessor ward, Heathfield, was not lost by Labour for decades. Acton Central and East Acton are fairly politically similar to each other, having some good residential streets but both having large, and in this case mainly low-rise, council estates. Both have coherent Tory votes, but Labour is pretty well ahead these days. East Acton ward contains perhaps the sole genuinely wealthy Acton enclave of Shaa Road, close to a Saudi school, a road full of large detached and often gated houses containing some celebrities. One element of Western Acton (shading into North Ealing) is what is probably London's only large Japanese community, complete with Japanese shops, schools and even estate agents, some of which lives in former council houses near West Acton station. Many members of this community are here for fixed periods for work purposes, are not naturalised British citizens, and thus do not vote. Taken as a whole, however, Acton as a community - including the section of is which is in Southfield ward - tends to be a little down-at-heel and much less affluent than Ealing is as a community. Labour's historic slight edge has tended to widen further in recent years. Southfield ward, however, is different. Most of the ward is in the W4 postal area, which is Chiswick, and Chiswick remains a distinctly upmarket area for the most part - of course, the great majority of it lies within the borough of Hounslow, not Ealing. Some of the roads in the ward are very prosperous indeed. Unlike the Hounslow council Chiswick wards, however, the ward is not a long-term Conservative stronghold, but rather has been held without interruption, not even in their dreadful year of 2014, by the Liberal Democrats, who, perhaps benefitting from the somewhat "intellectual" (again) nature of the population, and perhaps also benefitting from efficient local vote-squeezing of Labour, have held the ward for decades now, defying constant Conservative and more sporadic Labour efforts to oust them. The tiny Acton Green open space at the southern edge of the ward is oddly-named, since it's regarded as being in Chiswick, not in Acton. The Liberal Democrats in recent years have not done as well in Southfield ward in general elections as they have in local ones, their votes being rather dispersed in favour of the two main parties. In 2015 the Tories were the main beneficiaries despite losing the seat, since 2017 probably Labour have been. As a whole, the Acton area is significantly more multi-racial than the Ealing area, having large Black Caribbean and African and middle Eastern communities, as well as the mostly non-voting Japanese community. The Black Caribbean community, as with Shepherds Bush immediately to Acton's east, is long-established.

So, this is a constituency which is fairly conveniently halved between Ealing/West Ealing, and Acton with a bit of Chiswick thrown in. Politically, it was seen as a three-way marginal in 2010, largely because it contained (as it still does) by far the Liberal Democrats' two strongest wards in the borough, Ealing Common and Southfield, and the partial Liberal Democrat win in Hanger Hill in 2022 tends to suggest that they would have polled pretty well there too in 2010. In that year of the so-called Cleggasm, the Lib Dems were strongly fancied to win by many, the Conservatives by plenty more, and Labour by not that many. In the end, it seems that Labour's vote in its strongest areas was just firm enough to prevent large-scale movement towards the Lib Dems, and they retained an only moderately close second place, with the Tories' Angie Bray, already a seasoned campaigner, elected. She may well have hoped to consolidate her lead, but Labour picked a strong local candidate for the 2015 election in Dr Rupa Huq, resident in Ealing all her life, well-known in the area, and with a celebrity sister to boot. She went down very well on the doorstep, so it appears, and squeezed the Liberal Democrat vote well enough to defy the poor national results for Labour and take the seat; it seems that Bray had failed to build up a personal vote of any consequence. She then greatly benefitted from the large swing to Labour seen in so many London seats, sometimes known as the Corbyn surge, to increase her majority to a barely credible 13,800, gaining support from centrist pro-European voters (she was a very strong advocate of Remain in the 2016 referendum) and pro-Corbyn left-wing voters alike. The Tories were only able to chip away at this majority slightly in 2019, and this now looks like a completely safe Labour seat.

[Robert Waller]

Thank you! All contributors welcome, new or old ...

It might be worth letting John Chanin know, so he can amend the 'to do' list.

[batman]

Nov 19, 2021 23:08:19 GMT Robert Waller said:

Thank you! All contributors welcome, new or old ...

It might be worth letting John Chanin know, so he can amend the 'to do' list.

I'm an old contributor known to you personally. Just had to change my handle as I couldn't use my old one. I will message John as you suggest.

[Robert Waller]

2011 Census

Age 65+ 10.6% 596/650
Owner-occupied 45.5% 604/650
Private rented 34.4% 12/650
Social rented 16.6% 304/650
White 63.3% 597/650
Black 9.0% 52/650
Asian 15.8% 66 /650
Born in UK 53.4% 638/650
Born in Ireland 2.7% 10/650
Born in EU except Ireland 14.6% 5/650
Managerial & professional 44.5%
Routine & Semi-routine 13.4%
Employed in information and communication 11.6% 4/650
Degree level 48.4% 15/650
No qualifications 11.6% 641/650
Students 10.0% 147/650

2021 Census

Owner occupied 44.3% 532/573
Private rented 40.0% 7/573
Social rented 15.7% 257/573
White 57.9%
Black 9.2%
Asian 15.9%
Managerial & professional 44.7% 40/573
Routine & Semi-routine 13.2% 556/573
Degree level 56.6% 16/573
No qualifications 12.1% 538/573






General Election 2019: Ealing Central and Acton

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Rupa Huq 28,132 51.3 -8.4
Conservative Julian Gallant 14,832 27.1 -7.7
Liberal Democrats Sonul Badiani 9,444 17.2 +11.7
Green Kate Crossland 1,735 3.2 N/A
Brexit Party Samir Alsoodani 664 1.2 N/A

Lab Majority 13,300 24.3 -0.6

Turnout 54,807 72.6 -2.0

Registered electors 75,510

Labour hold

Swing 0.3 Lab to C

[londonw5er]

Total votes here in the 2022 LB Ealing elections were:

Labour 38,475 (39%)
Lib Dem 26,270 (27%)
Con 25,426 (26%)
Green 7,534 (8%)
Other 568 (1%)

It's the first time that the Lib Dems have outpolled the Tories here in a local election although not the first time they have been in second place as they were ahead of Labour in 2006. Labour recovered sufficiently by 2010 to narrowly beat them to 2nd place in the general election.

[batman]

I've edited my profile of this seat a little to reflect a ) the ward boundary changes b ) the Lib Dem gains in Hanger Hill in 2022 and c ) the impending coming of Crossrail.

[evergreenadam]

May 19, 2022 11:03:49 GMT londonw5er said:

Total votes here in the 2022 LB Ealing elections were:

Labour 38,475 (39%)
Lib Dem 26,270 (27%)
Con 25,426 (26%)
Green 7,534 (8%)
Other 568 (1%)

It's the first time that the Lib Dems have outpolled the Tories here in a local election although not the first time they have been in second place as they were ahead of Labour in 2006. Labour recovered sufficiently by 2010 to narrowly beat them to 2nd place in the general election.

The proposed boundary changes will help Labour if implemented.

[Pete Whitehead]

The proposed boundary changes do indeed help Labour here, although it is fairly academic now. It is moot whether they would have made a difference in any election - perhaps the Conservative lead in 2010 would have been just to large to be overcome by them.
Walpole ward is donated to Ealing Southall to bring that seat into quota, with the loss of over 9,000 voters. To replace it over 10,000 voters come in from the Northern Hammersmith wards of College Park & Old Oak and Wormholt. This is a deprived area around Wormwood Scrubs prison and surrounding (but not including) the White City estate. There is a large black population here and a very large proportion of social housing. While Labour outpolled the Conservatives by 3 to 2 in Walpole in May 2022, they outpolled them by more than 4 to 1 in the incoming wards. To a limited extent this restored the old (1997-2010) Ealing, Action & Shepherds Bush seat but it includes more of Ealing and less of Shepherd's Bush. At least it substantially reverses the then very pro-Conservative boundary changes that translated that seat into Ealing Central & Acton.

[batman]

perhaps when the boundary changes are confirmed I might have enough time to rewrite some of my profiles accordingly. Thanks Pete for your work in detailing the proposed changes.

[Pete Whitehead]

Notional result 2019 on the proposed new boundaries

Lab	28897	53.2%
Con	14005	25.8%
LD	8978	16.5%
Grn	1647	3.0%
BxP	802	1.5%
Oth
Majority	14892	27.4%