Tooting

[sirbenjamin]

In the 2023 review the 'new' Tooting constituency is essentially unchanged from its immediate predecessor - the Boundary Commission having decided to split a ward elsewhere in the London Borough of Wandsworth to make three seats fit, rather than performing more radical realignment surgery. (Three Wandsworth constituencies without ward splits was technically possible but nothing resembling Tooting would’ve survived.)

Tooting is in inner South London, taking in seven wards that comprise the South-Western third of Wandsworth. Unlike the other two seats in the borough, Tooting does not extend to the River Thames and consequently feels less ‘central’ in character than Battersea or Putney. Journey times into the City or West End from the southern part of the seat are not particularly quick, though this might improve one day in the distant future if Crossrail 2 gets here.

The political history of the seat has been somewhat different to the ‘Brighter Borough’ in which it lies. Wandsworth was Conservative-controlled from 1978 to 2022 and gained a reputation as something of a ‘Tory flagship’ council, but Tooting (and its predecessor seat Wandsworth Central) has been held by Labour since 1964. However, decades of unbroken representation by the same party don't begin to tell the eventful history of a constituency that has seen a number of close, sometimes acrimonious contests, and controversial candidate appointments.

The name of the seat is arguably less than satisfactory as it includes Wandsworth Common, Earlsfield and the residential fringes of Balham, Streatham and Wimbledon, while the Southern part of Tooting itself is actually on the other side of the border with Merton – demarcated by the River Graveney - and is in the Mitcham & Morden constituency. One of the component wards is also simply called ‘Tooting’, and there are two Graveney Wards in different boroughs, facing off over the River along a short shared border and generally adding to the geopolitical untidiness, at least for those like me who care about such things!

In the 1970s the sitcom 'Citizen Smith' introduced Tooting to a wider audience as the home of revolutionary Marxism, while in reality the MP at the time was the less radical Tom Cox, a low-profile backbencher on the mid-left of the party who seldom appeared on television demanding freedom for the area, but quietly went about representing it for an impressive 35 years, often with quite small majorities (just 1,441 in 1987).

Having successfully defended Tooting eight times, Cox’s eventual successor in 2005 was Sadiq Khan, who built a high profile in a relatively short space of time and after just 11 years as an MP became Mayor of London, triggering a By Election in a key marginal on the day that MP Jo Cox was tragically murdered, which added to the febrile atmosphere on the day.

For several elections, particularly the General Elections of 2010 and 2015, the Conservatives targeted this seat hard, only to come away empty-handed, and this was the case again in the By Election, the ‘middle one’ of candidate Dan Watkins’ trio of defeats here. (The Conservative viewpoint is generally that if Watkins, rather than the controversial Mark Clarke, had been the candidate in 2010, Khan would likely have been defeated.)

In a seat with notable Asian and Polish populations and significant numbers of NHS staff working at St George’s Hospital, Labour’s candidate Rosena Allin-Khan, a Polish-Asian NHS doctor (and Bedford ward councillor) appeared an extremely cynical choice of candidate for a party spooked by narrow escapes. One way or another, the selection proved effective for the By Election, with Allin-Khan achieving a substantial majority of 6,537 on a reduced turn-out, following two GEs where Sadiq’s lead had fallen below 3,000 votes. In 2017 and 2019 Allin-Khan was able to enjoy a majority far more comfortable than her predecessors had managed as the Tory focus switched away from the seat.

In the early 2000s, foreign language ‘translations’ of election literature distributed in the area and not subject to scrutiny became the subject of controversy, given the significance of the Asian vote. Following the threat of a lawsuit, local election agents agreed to clean up their act and whether or not underhanded smear tactics had had any effect in the past, they would be unnecessary now – though there are still people in possession of evidence that could make life difficult for Mr. Khan. If ‘Freedom for Tooting’ had been translated into Urdu, it would probably come out as ‘Free hospital treatment for your family in Tooting will end if the Conservatives are elected’.

Sadiq still lives in the seat, in semi-leafy Furzedown at the Southern end, and his presence has undoubtedly turned the ward from a Tory-leaning marginal into one that is safe for Labour, making the parliamentary seat safer in the process. Furzedown ward includes Graveney school, one of the largest in the country, whose alumni include broadcaster Naga Munchetty, frequent local Communist Party candidate Phil Brand and, umm, me. Education and Healthcare are important employers, which may explain why the seat was such a tough nut for the Tories to crack, even at the height of their pre-Brexit popularity in London.

At the Northern end of the seat, Wandsworth Common ward has traditionally been one of the strongest for the Conservatives in the borough. It extends almost to Wandsworth town centre and with green public spaces and owner-occupancy predominating is not dissimilar in character to the bits of Furzedown and Bedford wards around Tooting Bec common.

In between the Commons on the fringes of the seat the area is Tooting proper, along with Earlsfield and bits of Balham. Here the housing is denser with a greater proportion of socially and privately rented property as the A24 and the Northern Line running beneath it provides a convenient, if not particularly rapid, route into Central London. The area has become younger and trendier in recent years, and while this was vaguely positive demographic news for the Conservatives during the Cameron era, traditional working class Labour voters are now more likely to be replaced by contemporary middle class Labour voters rather than Tories. The fishmongers in Tooting Market may have been replaced by craft beer pop-ups, but the psephological impact is somewhere close to neutral.

With a Labour majority of over 14,000 and two other seats needed to be won back in Wandsworth, Tooting’s days as a realistic Tory prospect appear to be over, whatever happens at a national level. Freedom - from Labour representation at least - seems destined to remain out of reach.

[batman]

Good profile. I'm not sure I'd say that any part of Wimbledon is included, even though the new Wimbledon football ground is close to the constituency boundary. Balham and Streatham, yes absolutely.

[batman]

Nor do I agree that cynicism was applicable to Rosena Allin-Khan's selection. I met her when she was the deputy leader of the Labour Group on the council, and it was clear that she was pretty impressive.

[martinwhelton]

No longer has a Graveney ward as it was abolished at the 2022 local elections. The constituencies used the pre-2022 ward boundaries so it will have some wards which will be divided between seats.

Jul 17, 2023 16:55:55 GMT sirbenjamin said:

In the 2023 review the 'new' Tooting constituency is essentially unchanged from its immediate predecessor - the Boundary Commission having decided to split a ward elsewhere in the London Borough of Wandsworth to make three seats fit, rather than performing more radical realignment surgery. (Three Wandsworth constituencies without ward splits was technically possible but nothing resembling Tooting would’ve survived.)

Tooting is in inner South London, taking in seven wards that comprise the South-Western third of Wandsworth. Unlike the other two seats in the borough, Tooting does not extend to the River Thames and consequently feels less ‘central’ in character than Battersea or Putney. Journey times into the City or West End from the southern part of the seat are not particularly quick, though this might improve one day in the distant future if Crossrail 2 gets here.

The political history of the seat has been somewhat different to the ‘Brighter Borough’ in which it lies. Wandsworth was Conservative-controlled from 1978 to 2022 and gained a reputation as something of a ‘Tory flagship’ council, but Tooting (and its predecessor seat Wandsworth Central) has been held by Labour since 1964. However, decades of unbroken representation by the same party don't begin to tell the eventful history of a constituency that has seen a number of close, sometimes acrimonious contests, and controversial candidate appointments.

The name of the seat is arguably less than satisfactory as it includes Wandsworth Common, Earlsfield and the residential fringes of Balham, Streatham and Wimbledon, while the Southern part of Tooting itself is actually on the other side of the border with Merton – demarcated by the River Graveney - and is in the Mitcham & Morden constituency. One of the component wards is also simply called ‘Tooting’, and there are two Graveney Wards in different boroughs, facing off over the River along a short shared border and generally adding to the geopolitical untidiness, at least for those like me who care about such things!

In the 1970s the sitcom 'Citizen Smith' introduced Tooting to a wider audience as the home of revolutionary Marxism, while in reality the MP at the time was the less radical Tom Cox, a low-profile backbencher on the mid-left of the party who seldom appeared on television demanding freedom for the area, but quietly went about representing it for an impressive 35 years, often with quite small majorities (just 1,441 in 1987).

Having successfully defended Tooting eight times, Cox’s eventual successor in 2005 was Sadiq Khan, who built a high profile in a relatively short space of time and after just 11 years as an MP became Mayor of London, triggering a By Election in a key marginal on the day that MP Jo Cox was tragically murdered, which added to the febrile atmosphere on the day.

For several elections, particularly the General Elections of 2010 and 2015, the Conservatives targeted this seat hard, only to come away empty-handed, and this was the case again in the By Election, the ‘middle one’ of candidate Dan Watkins’ trio of defeats here. (The Conservative viewpoint is generally that if Watkins, rather than the controversial Mark Clarke, had been the candidate in 2010, Khan would likely have been defeated.)

In a seat with notable Asian and Polish populations and significant numbers of NHS staff working at St George’s Hospital, Labour’s candidate Rosena Allin-Khan, a Polish-Asian NHS doctor (and Bedford ward councillor) appeared an extremely cynical choice of candidate for a party spooked by narrow escapes. One way or another, the selection proved effective for the By Election, with Allin-Khan achieving a substantial majority of 6,537 on a reduced turn-out, following two GEs where Sadiq’s lead had fallen below 3,000 votes. In 2017 and 2019 Allin-Khan was able to enjoy a majority far more comfortable than her predecessors had managed as the Tory focus switched away from the seat.

In the early 2000s, foreign language ‘translations’ of election literature distributed in the area and not subject to scrutiny became the subject of controversy, given the significance of the Asian vote. Following the threat of a lawsuit, local election agents agreed to clean up their act and whether or not underhanded smear tactics had had any effect in the past, they would be unnecessary now – though there are still people in possession of evidence that could make life difficult for Mr. Khan. If ‘Freedom for Tooting’ had been translated into Urdu, it would probably come out as ‘Free hospital treatment for your family in Tooting will end if the Conservatives are elected’.

Sadiq still lives in the seat, in semi-leafy Furzedown at the Southern end, and his presence has undoubtedly turned the ward from a Tory-leaning marginal into one that is safe for Labour, making the parliamentary seat safer in the process. Furzedown ward includes Graveney school, one of the largest in the country, whose alumni include broadcaster Naga Munchetty, frequent local Communist Party candidate Phil Brand and, umm, me. Education and Healthcare are important employers, which may explain why the seat was such a tough nut for the Tories to crack, even at the height of their pre-Brexit popularity in London.

At the Northern end of the seat, Wandsworth Common ward has traditionally been one of the strongest for the Conservatives in the borough. It extends almost to Wandsworth town centre and with green public spaces and owner-occupancy predominating is not dissimilar in character to the bits of Furzedown and Bedford wards around Tooting Bec common.

In between the Commons on the fringes of the seat the area is Tooting proper, along with Earlsfield and bits of Balham. Here the housing is denser with a greater proportion of socially and privately rented property as the A24 and the Northern Line running beneath it provides a convenient, if not particularly rapid, route into Central London. The area has become younger and trendier in recent years, and while this was vaguely positive demographic news for the Conservatives during the Cameron era, traditional working class Labour voters are now more likely to be replaced by contemporary middle class Labour voters rather than Tories. The fishmongers in Tooting Market may have been replaced by craft beer pop-ups, but the psephological impact is somewhere close to neutral.

With a Labour majority of over 14,000 and two other seats needed to be won back in Wandsworth, Tooting’s days as a realistic Tory prospect appear to be over, whatever happens at a national level. Freedom - from Labour representation at least - seems destined to remain out of reach.

[Deleted]

Great profile sirbenjamin. As an aside, this seat's got some of the best South Asian food in London. Re: 2010, I doubt Watkins wins. He's a decent bloke, and he's not Mark Clarke. Still, Khan was a Councillor for donkeys' years, so Westminster incumbency and name recognition save him, IMO. Does Khan run again in 2015 if he lost in 2010? If he regains this, does he still run for Mayor? Does Tessa Jowell win the nomination? If Tessa dies in office, we'd have a London Mayoral by-election. 

[batman]

I don't think Tessa Jowell had much chance of getting the Mayoral nomination. Although she came over pretty well in hustings etc., her politics were just a bit too Blairite for the London-wide Labour Party whereas Khan was regarded as Miliband-ite soft left.

[Deleted]

Jul 18, 2023 7:06:42 GMT batman said:

Jul 18, 2023 6:36:57 GMT @weld said:

A typically top-notch profile batman . As an aside, this seat's got some of the best South Asian food in London. Re: 2010, I doubt Watkins wins. He's a decent bloke, and he's not Mark Clarke. Still, Khan was a Councillor for donkeys' years, so Westminster incumbency and name recognition save him, IMO. Does Khan run again in 2015 if he lost in 2010? If he regains this, does he still run for Mayor? Does Tessa Jowell win the nomination? If Tessa dies in office, we'd have a London Mayoral by-election. 

it's not my profile, it's sirbenjamin's

Corrected

[Robert Waller]

2021 Census Boundaries (ranks England and Wales)

Age 65+ 9.6 % 547/575
Owner occupied 47.6% 520/575
Private rented 36.1% 30/575
Social rented 16.2% 240/575
White 66.5% 480/575
Black 10.0% 62/575
Asian 14.0% 103/575
Managerial & professional 52.6% 6/575
Routine & Semi-routine 11.8% 568/575
Degree level 61.8% 5/575
No qualifications 10.4% 559/575
Students 7.5% 168/575



General Election 2024: Tooting

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Rosena Allin-Khan 29,209 55.2 +2.5
Conservative Ethan Brooks 9,722 18.4 -9.8
Green Nick Humberstone 5,672 10.7 +6.7
Liberal Democrats Judith Trounson 4,438 8.4 -5.8
Reform UK Andrew Price 2,546 4.8 +4.0
Workers Party Tarik Hussain 807 1.5 New
Rejoin EU Jas Alduk 370 0.7 New
Independent Davinder Jamus 179 0.3 New

Lab Majority 19,487 36.8 +12.3

Turnout 52,943 69.6 -6.4
Registered electors 76,082

Labour hold
Swing 6.2 C to Lab




General Election 2019: Tooting

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Rosena Allin-Khan 30,811 52.7 -6.9
Conservative Kerry Briscoe 16,504 28.2 -4.8
Liberal Democrats Olly Glover 8,305 14.2 +8.9
Green Glyn Goodwin 2,314 4.0 +2.5
Brexit Party Adam Shakir 462 0.8 New
SDP Roz Hubley 77 0.1 New

Lab Majority 14,307 24.5 -2.0

Turnout 58,473 76.0 +1.3
Registered electors 76,933

Labour hold
Swing 1.1 Lab to C



Boundary Changes and Notional results

N/A Unchanged seat

Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/london/London_176_Tooting_Portrait.pdf

[batman]

I have now finished editing all my previous profiles, in order to acknowledge the 2024 general election results, and where applicable other relevant developments. Sirbenjamin who wrote the profile for this seat appears to have disappeared from the forum at least for the time being, so I propose either to edit his profile or write a completely new one again to acknowledge the 2024 results. There may be a few other constituencies where I might do this too.

[The Bishop]

Its a perfectly serviceable profile, so maybe it just needs updating rather than wholesale rewriting?

[batman]

yes, it does look pretty good. I will certainly use the great majority of it.

[sanders]

Nov 1, 2024 13:57:14 GMT batman said:

yes, it does look pretty good. I will certainly use the great majority of it.

Your profiles here are really excellent. How did you become so informed?

[batman]

My work sends me to a lot of different parts of London, I have frequently campaigned for Labour in many areas, and I've been around a long time. Also I have learnt from the excellent profiles written by others, very much including Robert himself. In general, I try to read up & know my stuff. Thank you for your kind words.

[batman]

I have edited sirbenjamin's original profile of this seat to take into account the 2024 general election result, and other relevant considerations. I have removed the paragraph about Rosena Allin-Khan's selection being cynical, because I know it to have been nothing of the kind. Sorry, sirbenjamin. Of course Robert can always put that bit back in if he wishes. Kudos to him, however, for using the word "comprise" correctly, which is becoming something of a rarity today.




TOOTING


In the 2023 review the Tooting constituency is essentially unchanged, the Boundary Commission having decided to split a ward elsewhere in the London Borough of Wandsworth to make three seats fit, rather than performing more radical realignment surgery. (Three Wandsworth constituencies without ward splits was technically possible but nothing resembling Tooting would have survived.)

Tooting is in inner South London, taking in seven complete wards, and parts of two others, that comprise the South-Western third of Wandsworth. Unlike the other two seats in the borough, Tooting does not extend to the River Thames and consequently feels less ‘central’ in character than Battersea or Putney. Journey times into the City or West End from the southern part of the seat are not particularly quick, though this might improve one day in the distant future if Crossrail 2 gets here.

The political history of the seat has been somewhat different from the "Brighter Borough" in which it lies. Wandsworth was Conservative-controlled from 1978 to 2022 and gained a reputation as something of a Tory flagship council, but Tooting (and its predecessor seat Wandsworth Central) has been held by Labour since 1964. However, decades of unbroken representation by the same party don't begin to tell the eventful history of a constituency that has seen a number of close, sometimes acrimonious contests, and controversial candidate appointments.

The name of the seat is arguably less than satisfactory as it includes Wandsworth Common, Earlsfield and the residential fringes of Balham, Streatham and Wimbledon, while the Southern part of Tooting itself is actually on the other side of the border with Merton – demarcated by the River Graveney - and is in the Mitcham & Morden constituency. One of the component wards was until 2022 simply called ‘Tooting’; until 2022, there were also two Graveney Wards in different boroughs, facing off over the River along a short shared border and generally adding to the geopolitical untidiness, according to sirbenjamin, but in the ward boundary changes that year Wandsworth's Graveney ward - a long-term Labour stronghold - was abolished. However, a Tooting Bec ward was created, and that was won overwhelmingly by that party, with Tooting Broadway, a bigger Labour stronghold still, sitting to its south.

In the 1970s the sitcom "Citizen Smith" introduced Tooting to a wider audience as the home of revolutionary Marxism, demanding "freedom for Tooting!", while in reality the MP at the time was the less radical Tom Cox, a low-profile Electricians' Union-sponsored backbencher on the soft right of the party who seldom appeared on television demanding freedom for the area, but quietly went about representing it for an impressive 35 years, often with quite small majorities (just 1,441 in 1987).

Having successfully defended Tooting eight times, Cox’s eventual successor in 2005 was Sadiq Khan, who built a high profile in a relatively short space of time and after just 11 years as an MP became Mayor of London, triggering a by-election in a key marginal on the day that MP Jo Cox was tragically murdered, which added to the febrile atmosphere on the day. However, in that by-election Labour's Rosena Allin-Khan, a hospital doctor not related to Sadiq, and who had been deputy leader of Wandsworth's opposition Labour Group, won with a handily increased majority. For several elections, particularly the General Elections of 2010 and 2015, the Conservatives had targeted this seat hard, only to come away empty-handed, and this was the case again in the by-election, the "middle one" of candidate Dan Watkins’s trio of defeats here. (The Conservative viewpoint is generally that if Watkins, rather than the controversial Mark Clarke, had been the candidate in 2010, Khan would likely have been defeated, though Khan's majority of over 2,500 makes that seem somewhat unlikely.) Having entrenched herself in the constituency with a strong positive swing in 2017, giving her a majority which was only slightly reduced in percentage terms in 2019, Allin-Khan stood for the Deputy Leadership of the Party in 2020, performing creditably enough to end up as runner-up to Angela Rayner.


In the early 2000s, foreign language translations of election literature distributed in the area and not subject to scrutiny became the subject of controversy, given the significance of the Asian vote. Following the threat of a lawsuit, local election agents agreed to clean up their act and whether or not underhanded smear tactics had had any effect in the past, they would be unnecessary now – though there are still people in possession of evidence that could make life difficult for Mr. Khan. If "Freedom for Tooting" had been translated into Urdu, it would probably come out as ‘Free hospital treatment for your family in Tooting will end if the Conservatives are elected’.

Sadiq Khan still lives in the seat, in semi-leafy Furzedown at the Southern end. This ward, which takes in the only part of the Streatham community which remained in the borough of Wandsworth after the creation of the present-day borough in 1965, has changed from being a knife-edge marginal into one that is totally safe for Labour, and this has contributed to making the parliamentary seat safer in the process. Furzedown ward includes Graveney school, one of the largest in the country, whose alumni include broadcaster Naga Munchetty, frequent local Communist Party candidate Phil Brand and sirbenjamin. Education and healthcare are important employers, which may explain why the seat was such a tough nut for the Tories to crack, even at the height of their pre-Brexit popularity in London.

At the Northern end of the seat, Wandsworth Common ward has traditionally been one of the strongest for the Conservatives in the borough. It extends almost to Wandsworth town centre and with green public spaces and owner-occupancy predominating is not dissimilar in character to the bits of Furzedown ward around Tooting Bec common. The boundary changes were such that the local Labour Party felt that it had become winnable, and put quite a lot of effort into it in the 2022 local elections, but in fact it was held by a greater ease than anticipated, leaving it still the second-safest Tory ward in the whole borough. This better-than-anticipated result for the Tories was probably just about the only such case in Wandsworth in 2022.

In between the Commons on the fringes of the seat the area is Tooting proper, along with Earlsfield and bits of Balham. Here the housing is denser with a greater proportion of socially and privately rented property as the A24 and the Northern Line running beneath it provides a convenient, if not particularly rapid, route into Central London. The area has become younger and trendier in recent years, and while this was vaguely positive demographic news for the Conservatives during the Cameron era, traditional working class Labour voters are now more likely to be replaced by contemporary middle class Labour voters rather than Tories. The fishmongers in Tooting Market may have been replaced by craft beer pop-ups, but the psephological impact is somewhere close to neutral.

With a Labour majority of over 14,000 in 2019, rising to not much less than 20,000 in 2024, Tooting’s days as a realistic Tory prospect appear to be over, whatever happens at a national level. Apart from Wandsworth Common, only two wards Balham, and Wandsworth Town - and neither ward is entirely in this constituency, with Wandsworth Town ward in particular only having a small element included - has any remaining Conservative councillors, and three of the wards are very safe Labour indeed. Freedom - from Labour representation at least - seems destined to remain out of reach.

[sanders]

Yeah, this one looks out of contention for the Tories, despite their strong second places in 2010 and 2015. Graveney in particular is super safe for Labour these days.

[batman]

Well it would be, but as the profile says that ward has been abolished, at least the Wandsworth ward of that name has. The super safe Labour wards in the constituency are now Tooting Broadway, Tooting Bec, and Furzedown. Labour holds Wandle, Trinity and South Balham wards too but these are much more marginal.

[Adam Gray]

Tooting *Broadway* - Tooting's been abolished just like Graveney (though it's more or less the successor to Graveney).

Tooting Bec, like the former Tooting ward, might be vulnerable in a very bad Labour year as it's got most of the uphill bits of Tooting that can vote Conservative on occasion, plus a little bit of the old Nightingale and Wandsworth Common, which wouldn't typically be strongly Labour.

But that depends on whether London's the same as it was in 2006 (when the Tories got 2 of the 3 Tooting ward seats) or if it's now even more strongly Labour (or even more antipathetic to the Conservatives).

[batman]

thanks Adam. I knew that really but momentarily forgot when writing/editing this. Will correct