Islington South & Finsbury
Aug 25, 2023 13:28:08 GMT
Pete Whitehead, Robert Waller, and 2 more like this
Post by John Chanin on Aug 25, 2023 13:28:08 GMT
This highly compact seat can be divided into 3 parts. The old borough of Finsbury sits to the south of Pentonville and City Roads, although it also covered the north side of Pentonville Road which is lined by council estates. Its inclusion in the constituency name is archaic, and an example of the Boundary Commission’s reluctance to change. No-one these days says they live in Finsbury, and outsiders are more likely to associate it with Finsbury Park, well to the north, and not in this constituency. Today the area goes by the name of Clerkenwell, the seat extending south to the borders of the city, including some fine Georgian housing. Clerkenwell Square is a pleasant open space with the Marx Memorial Library alongside the bars and restaurants, and the City University is based in Clerkenwell. The famous grade 1 listed Finsbury Health Centre is here, along with the old Mount Pleasant Sorting Office, once claimed to be the largest in the world. Not needing such space these days part of the site is being redeveloped for housing. On the edge of the city is its famous cemetery at Bunhill Fields, now listed, containing the graves of Daniel Defoe and William Blake amongst others. Nearly 50% of households live in social housing - a number of large private estates were bought by Islington Council in the 1970s, and renovated rather than redeveloped. A lot of this property has slipped back into private ownership, but more is private rented than owner-occupied.
North of the Angel is very mixed. There is a lot of very expensive and grand Victorian property in Barnsbury and Canonbury, interspersed with many council and housing association estates, some quite run down. Added in the latest boundary changes is the very similar De Beauvoir ward of Hackney, where large and expensive owner-occupied homes dominate. Just to the east of the Angel there is a lot of new development around the City Road basin on the Grand Union Canal, the new ward now being called St Peters & Canalside. Through the middle runs Upper Street - the now very trendy shopping centre, which includes the Camden flea market, and the old Chapel Street open market, both only distantly related to their plebeian origins. Highbury Corner at the northern end is a major transport interchange for road and rail. The west side of the seat is based around Caledonian Road, and is more down market, with the area around Kings Cross station quite grim and one of London's red light districts. As you head north from Kings Cross it gets better, and there are more large Victorian houses in Holloway. This part of the seat also contains the gaunt walls of Pentonville prison, and the old Caledonian cattle market, now a park with its famous clock in the middle.
Despite this variety the seat is fairly uniform socially (perhaps I should say uniformly polarised between rich and poor). It remains a white seat by inner London standards, with a larger Chinese population than Indian, most unusually. There is a higher black population in the Caledonian Road sector, and in the council estates brought in from Hackney. As elsewhere in inner London, despite the enclaves of poverty, managerial employment is very high, and routine employment low, although a little less so along the Caledonian Road, and associated with this, educational qualifications are among the highest in the country. Owner-occupation is low everywhere, and social housing still accounts for over 40% of households, the 5th highest in the country.
You might think that this would make it a safe Labour seat, but it has a much more marginal history. The Labour MP George Cunningham defected to the SDP in 1982, and at the subsequent general election lost by less than 400 votes to Chris Smith, and the majority remained in 3 figures in 1987. However victories were more comfortable subsequently, and Smith was a cabinet minister in the Blair government, as well as the first openly gay MP. The SDP also took control of Islington Council in 1981 after a series of defections, and the Liberal Democrats subsequently remained a local force, winning every ward here in 2002, and splitting them evenly in 2006. Following the coalition Labour have recovered and have held all the wards since 2014, although the 2019 general election result showed there is still a substantial underlying Liberal Democrat vote here. The constituency was a fraction under the minimum size according to the new rules. The Boundary Commission’s original idea was to add the City of London, much of whose residential population lives on the border of Islington. This did not meet with much approval, and instead the De Beauvoir ward of Hackney has been added to the seat, not unreasonable as it is very similar to Canonbury on the other side of Southgate Road. This will make no political difference to what is now a safe Labour seat. Indeed in 2024 unusually for inner London the Labour vote and lead hardly dropped, although as elsewhere the Greens leapfrogged the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives to take second place. The present MP is lawyer Emily Thornberry, who succeeded Chris Smith in 2005. She is a former leadership candidate, and was surprisingly omitted from the new Labour government after a long period on the front bench.
Census data: Owner-occupied 27% (568/575 in England & Wales), private rented 31% (62nd), social rented 42% (5th).
: White 62%(496th), Black 12%(40th), South Asian 5%(185th), Mixed 7%(14th), Other 13%(33rd)
: Managerial & professional 59% (12th), Routine & Semi-routine 18% (529th)
: Degree 56% (19th), Minimal qualifications 19% (536th)
: Students 12% (53rd), Over 65: 9% (551st)
Boundaries : The new seat is made up of 92% from Islington S & Finsbury and 8% from Hackney S & Shoreditch
All of the old Islington S & Finsbury seat is in the new one.
North of the Angel is very mixed. There is a lot of very expensive and grand Victorian property in Barnsbury and Canonbury, interspersed with many council and housing association estates, some quite run down. Added in the latest boundary changes is the very similar De Beauvoir ward of Hackney, where large and expensive owner-occupied homes dominate. Just to the east of the Angel there is a lot of new development around the City Road basin on the Grand Union Canal, the new ward now being called St Peters & Canalside. Through the middle runs Upper Street - the now very trendy shopping centre, which includes the Camden flea market, and the old Chapel Street open market, both only distantly related to their plebeian origins. Highbury Corner at the northern end is a major transport interchange for road and rail. The west side of the seat is based around Caledonian Road, and is more down market, with the area around Kings Cross station quite grim and one of London's red light districts. As you head north from Kings Cross it gets better, and there are more large Victorian houses in Holloway. This part of the seat also contains the gaunt walls of Pentonville prison, and the old Caledonian cattle market, now a park with its famous clock in the middle.
Despite this variety the seat is fairly uniform socially (perhaps I should say uniformly polarised between rich and poor). It remains a white seat by inner London standards, with a larger Chinese population than Indian, most unusually. There is a higher black population in the Caledonian Road sector, and in the council estates brought in from Hackney. As elsewhere in inner London, despite the enclaves of poverty, managerial employment is very high, and routine employment low, although a little less so along the Caledonian Road, and associated with this, educational qualifications are among the highest in the country. Owner-occupation is low everywhere, and social housing still accounts for over 40% of households, the 5th highest in the country.
You might think that this would make it a safe Labour seat, but it has a much more marginal history. The Labour MP George Cunningham defected to the SDP in 1982, and at the subsequent general election lost by less than 400 votes to Chris Smith, and the majority remained in 3 figures in 1987. However victories were more comfortable subsequently, and Smith was a cabinet minister in the Blair government, as well as the first openly gay MP. The SDP also took control of Islington Council in 1981 after a series of defections, and the Liberal Democrats subsequently remained a local force, winning every ward here in 2002, and splitting them evenly in 2006. Following the coalition Labour have recovered and have held all the wards since 2014, although the 2019 general election result showed there is still a substantial underlying Liberal Democrat vote here. The constituency was a fraction under the minimum size according to the new rules. The Boundary Commission’s original idea was to add the City of London, much of whose residential population lives on the border of Islington. This did not meet with much approval, and instead the De Beauvoir ward of Hackney has been added to the seat, not unreasonable as it is very similar to Canonbury on the other side of Southgate Road. This will make no political difference to what is now a safe Labour seat. Indeed in 2024 unusually for inner London the Labour vote and lead hardly dropped, although as elsewhere the Greens leapfrogged the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives to take second place. The present MP is lawyer Emily Thornberry, who succeeded Chris Smith in 2005. She is a former leadership candidate, and was surprisingly omitted from the new Labour government after a long period on the front bench.
Census data: Owner-occupied 27% (568/575 in England & Wales), private rented 31% (62nd), social rented 42% (5th).
: White 62%(496th), Black 12%(40th), South Asian 5%(185th), Mixed 7%(14th), Other 13%(33rd)
: Managerial & professional 59% (12th), Routine & Semi-routine 18% (529th)
: Degree 56% (19th), Minimal qualifications 19% (536th)
: Students 12% (53rd), Over 65: 9% (551st)
Boundaries : The new seat is made up of 92% from Islington S & Finsbury and 8% from Hackney S & Shoreditch
All of the old Islington S & Finsbury seat is in the new one.
| 2017 | % | 2019 | % | Notional | % | 2024 | % | |
| Labour | 30,188 | 62.8 | 26,897 | 56.3 | 29,728 | 57.0 | 22,956 | 53.7 |
| Conservative | 9,925 | 20.7 | 8,045 | 16.8 | 8,518 | 16.3 | 3,584 | 8.4 |
| Liberal Democrat | 5,809 | 12.1 | 9,569 | 20.0 | 10,270 | 19.7 | 4,045 | 9.5 |
| UKIP/Brexit/Reform | 929 | 1.9 | 1,136 | 2.4 | 1,193 | 2.3 | 3,388 | 7.9 |
| Green | 1,198 | 2.5 | 1,987 | 4.2 | 2,252 | 4.3 | 7,491 | 17.5 |
| Other | 182 | 0.4 | 182 | 0.4 | 1,300 | 3.0 | ||
| Majority | 20,263 | 42.2 | 17,328 | 36.2 | 19,458 | 37.3 | 15,465 | 36.2 |
