Finchley and Golders Green

[batman]

If nobody objects I shall write a profile of this seat in the next few days. I can also do Hendon if wanted

[Pete Whitehead]

Aug 26, 2023 7:25:09 GMT batman said:

If nobody objects I shall write a profile of this seat in the next few days. I can also do Hendon if wanted

I did the original profile for Hendon and will be updating that (also the Harrow and Hillingdon seats. I will also do the Brent seats if mondialito doesn't mind and no longer wishes to)

[batman]

sure, Hendon is yours Pete.

[iain]

Aug 26, 2023 7:25:09 GMT batman said:

If nobody objects I shall write a profile of this seat in the next few days. I can also do Hendon if wanted

Think I wrote the original for this - go ahead, I couldn’t care less!

[batman]

I'm not sure whether yours was the original, or replaced my deleted one. If I have failed to carry out this task by midweek please just transfer your profile to here, amended as needed.

[finsobruce]

Aug 26, 2023 22:24:29 GMT iain said:

Aug 26, 2023 7:25:09 GMT batman said:

If nobody objects I shall write a profile of this seat in the next few days. I can also do Hendon if wanted

Think I wrote the original for this - go ahead, I couldn’t care less!

There's a song in there somewhere fighting to get out.

[batman]

Edited to take into account the general election result


FINCHLEY AND GOLDERS GREEN

This constituency came into being in 1997, with parts of the effectively abolished Hendon South (always at least a safeish Conservative seat) brought in to join the majority of the Finchley constituency. It is a chunk of outer London suburbia, but not quite so outer that it reaches the very end of the built-up area of London, as is the case with the other 2 Barnet borough constituencies. Finchley will surely always be associated with its former Conservative MP Margaret Thatcher, first elected there in 1959, who rose to lead her party in 1975 and then to lead it to 3 consecutive general election victories, two of which were huge landslides. Like her predecessor as Conservative leader Ted Heath, her constituency did not always leave her completely free from electoral worries, although neither she nor he came all that close to losing their seats (Bexley, in his case); and its electoral behaviour, and that of this successor constituency, has become increasingly interesting as the years have progressed. This is a predominantly middle-class, owner-occupied (with a decent chunk of privately rented homes too) constituency, but it is not socially uniform and its lack of uniformity has tended to increase, roughly from the time that Mrs Thatcher became a nationally known figure in the Conservative Party in the early 1970s. In 1959, her inaugural election, she won by 16,000 over the Liberals, but by October 1974, and with only minor boundary changes, this had declined to under 4,000, with Labour rather than the Liberals her main challengers. Even in 1983 the Conservative lead here, while comfortable, was well below its 1959 level. When Labour finally broke through in Finchley and Golders Green in 1997, it was relatively unsurprising, at least when compared with the even more dramatic gain in Enfield Southgate nearby. Since then, this seat has been competitive between Labour and the Conservatives, with the notable exception of the 2019 result, of which more later.

Golders Green, along with the somewhat confusingly named Hampstead Garden Suburb (which never has been in the same municipality as Hampstead) and the Childs Hill and Cricklewood areas, came into this constituency from Hendon South. If you were to ask non-Jewish Londoners which area of London had the largest Jewish population, the answer would very likely be Golders Green. It certainly has a plethora of Kosher food shops and restaurants and, more so than other areas of the London Borough of Barnet, has a large number of visibly Jewish people who range from the pretty Orthodox to the strictly-Orthodox, it being one of really two areas of London where the latter are a strong presence (the other being Stamford Hill/South Tottenham). However, while its Jewish population is certainly strong, a small number of other areas can at least rival it in terms of proportion of Jewish residents. Golders Green has long been a safe Conservative ward, although in the past Labour in its very strong years could come fairly close. Part of the reason for the closer results was that for many years the ward included a small part of the Cricklewood community which, although it does have some very pleasant suburban streets, is less owner-occupied and a bit more working-class than Golders Green. Golders Green is not generally superwealthy, but it is comfortably off and heavily interwar owner-occupied. Now that a Cricklewood ward has come into being on Barnet council, Golders Green has become by some distance the safest Conservative ward in the entire borough of Barnet, which despite Labour's historic and clear victory in the 2022 local elections still is possessed of several completely safe Conservative wards. Hampstead Garden Suburb next door also has a very strong Jewish community. This area was built in the Edwardian era and is almost entirely owner-occupied. Its properties are generally considered desirable and tend to be very expensive. Its population is distinctly less heavily Orthodox Jewish and has a distinctly larger presence of more liberal or secular Jews. The area is bisected by the A1 and has some local shops including Greenspan's the Kosher butchers (Greenspan is also a well-known name in Barnet Conservative politics, as it happens). The housing ranges from the merely comfortable to the superwealthy, who are strongly represented in The Bishop's Avenue in the east of the community, hard by the borough boundary with Haringey as the A1 enters Highgate. The population in some ways has some similarities to the demographics traditional to Hampstead itself, highly educated, tending towards the secular, and very prosperous. These voters would have been strongly opposed to Brexit in the 2016 referendum, and although the ward has always been safe for the Tories it has always had a strong opposition. In the past this tended to be from the Liberal (Democrat)s, but in common with quite a lot of London's most prosperous areas it has now sprouted a very respectable, though still clearly locally defeated, Labour vote. The other Conservative heartland in the constituency is Finchley Church End (sometimes jokingly referred to as Finchley Synagogue End). This has a demographic not that dissimilar to Garden Suburb and politically is also not that dissimilar. Here the opposition to the Tories is a little stronger, but is more split still, with the Lib Dems and Labour locked together in the runners-up spot in the last local elections. In years gone by, local elections in Finchley saw little or no serious showing by Labour, but there were Liberal councillors providing a bit of variety, and there has been a modest Lib Dem revival in this ward although currently that party has no councillors within the borough. Parts of Finchley have become just a little less smart than they were in the 25 years after WWII, and previously, but this part of Finchley, basically its core areas and western and south-western adjuncts, has seen no serious diminution of Conservative strength in real terms. These 3 wards provide a strong base for the Conservatives, but the rest of the constituency is different. In fact, all of the remaining 5 wards are now Labour-held, and only one of them, Childs Hill, was at all close in the 2022 local elections. It was this strength which enabled Labour to overturn what was on paper a pretty comfortable-looking Tory majority from the 2019 general election.

Coming originally from Hendon South, Childs Hill ward is a socially mixed area with some very good interwar suburban streets, which like Golders Green include a strong Jewish community, but also a significant council estate element. Labour did well to achieve a clear though fairly narrow victory over the Tories in this redrawn ward; it would have voted pretty strongly Conservative in the previous local elections. The new Cricklewood ward is like the revised Golders Green a 2-member ward. Cricklewood is quite a large community which has elements in 3 London boroughs, the others being Brent and (to a lesser extent) Camden. Although this ward does have some fairly well-to-do areas, it is distinctly less socially upscale than its neighbours to the east. While the best-off wards in this constituency have strong Jewish populations, a bit of a residual White British non-Jewish population and also a bit of an upwardly mobile Indian community, Cricklewood also has fair representation from other minorities who are generally seen as tending to do a little less well in today's Britain. Labour would always at the very worst be competitive in this area, but in their locally triumphant year of 2022 they ended up winning the ward overwhelmingly, helped even further by the very strong personal vote for Anne Clarke, an evidently popular local councillor who is also now the local GLA member.

At the other end of the constituency are the other Finchley community wards, East Finchley, Woodhouse and West Finchley. These wards have been Labour-dominated for several decades, although for a time the Tories were competitive in West Finchley, or its predecessor St Paul's. This dominance is particularly pronounced in East Finchley, which can perhaps be said along with Cricklewood and Friern Barnet wards to have the most inner-city atmosphere of any Barnet borough ward. The ward does have a small element which is part of the Hampstead Garden Suburb community, but this is heavily outvoted by the 19th century terraces interspersed with council-built dwellings which more typify East Finchley. In fact the area is something of a misnomer (in a constituency replete with apparent misnomers), as it lies to the south-east of Finchley proper, across the North Circular Road. It was still middle-class enough to elect Conservative councillors until the early 80s, but was a Labour gain against the trend in the 1982 elections, and since then has rapidly established itself as one of the very safest Labour wards in the entire borough, its main rival in that regard being Burnt Oak in the Hendon constituency (which saw a rare Labour survival even in the disastrous 1968 elections). It is not exactly poor and downtrodden, but has a strong public-sector and rather studenty vibe, rather like some of its neighbouring communities over the borough boundary in Haringey. The Tories are not even in second place in this ward any more, and in 2022 were outpolled by Labour by more than four to one, which on its own more than compensates for Labour's deficit in Golders Green ward. The ward does not physically look like one where Labour should be that far ahead, but London has many such wards especially away from the very outer areas. Closer to Finchley proper are West Finchley and Woodhouse wards. Woodhouse is essentially an ex-marginal (gained by Labour in 1986) that has now acquired safer Labour characteristics. It is rather more outer-suburban in character than East Finchley, but not much; its housing stock is a mixture of interwar and older terraces with some council property. It forms the north-eastern part of Finchley and parts of the ward are known as North Finchley but again this is not necessarily a geographically accurate description. To complete the confusion, the area known as West Finchley and its eponymous Underground station are actually north rather than west of central Finchley. This is mostly owner-occupied but socially rather less upscale than Finchley Church End immediately to its south. Some Jewish residents remain here, and indeed one of the local Labour councillors is a senior Liberal/Reform (the two synagogue groups have recently merged) Rabbi, Danny Rich. However, this area has significant other ethnic minorities, including from various parts of the Indian subcontinent. Labour won the predecessor St Paul's ward in a 1983 by-election and has been at worst competitive ever since; there is a bit of a Liberal Democrat presence as in Finchley Church End, but Labour is a long way ahead now. Again, the social composition of the ward does not really suggest such a safe Labour electoral outcome. But this ward, as with so much of the borough, has an electorate which is the sort that has tended to shy away from the Conservatives in most recent years partly because of the Brexit issue. The voters here, as with several of the Labour-held wards, are predominantly middle-class professionals, but not generally the wealthiest City workers, and tend to work in professions where Conservative support has dropped considerably in recent years.

The contrast, however, between the 2022 local election results and what happened here in the 2019 general election is very striking. Although the Conservative share of the vote dropped from 47% to under 44% in 2019, they were able to increase their majority substantially from its narrow 2017 figure. Much of this is to do with the antisemitism issue. Although not all of the wards with the largest Jewish population in the borough are included in this seat, several of them are, and in particular Golders Green, Garden Suburb and Finchley Church End have significant such populations, with several of the Labour-held wards having a smaller Jewish community too (Childs Hill's Jewish population, in particular, is far from negligible). The Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree from 2010 onwards, Luciana Berger, is Jewish and has a background in this area. She was on the end of very high levels of antisemitism, including credible physical threats, and having served for a time in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet she found herself unable to continue within the Labour Party, and joined first the short-lived Change UK, then after a short interval the Liberal Democrats. Rather than seeking re-election in her own constituency (where ironically she had beaten off a vocal but rather overly ramped Lib Dem challenge when first elected in 2010), she decided to seek it here where she had been brought up, and was adopted by the Liberal Democrats to this end. The already selected Labour candidate decided not to stand in opposition to her, and resigned, leaving Labour to select another candidate. Berger's narrative proved compelling for many Jewish voters, and those who while not in the Jewish community felt strong sympathy with that community, and despite a strong Labour rearguard action in its strongest wards she swept ahead of Labour to come a strong, but not that close, second place to the Conservative MP, Mike Freer, who since he was first elected in 2010 had, too, maintained strong links with the Jewish community, although not belonging to it himself. Since then, however, the political landscape has changed enormously, both nationally and locally. After the landslide defeat suffered by Labour in 2019, its leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose leadership must have cost Labour many votes in this constituency and some of its neighbours (while undoubtedly attracting some other radical voters), resigned, and the party elected Sir Keir Starmer as its replacement. Starmer has acted to rebuild Labour's base in the Jewish community and judging from the 2022 local elections, despite the overwhelming Conservative victory in Golders Green, he and Labour have enjoyed some success in this regard. Although Labour's very clear victory in the Barnet council elections in 2022 was influenced by the national swing of the pendulum, and must have been assisted by a very large vote from people of all sorts of other ethnicities including White British non-Jewish, it seems that for the most part Labour has regained much lost ground within the Jewish community, which is a very important minority of the electorate here, even though it varies in character considerably from ward to ward. Berger herself has now been reconciled with Labour, and it was that party which was unequivocally expected to, and indeed did, provide the main threat to the Conservatives in 2024. Sitting Conservative MP Mike Freer did not seek re-election, deciding that in the face of threats and harassment not totally dissimilar to that previously suffered by Berger he could not continue; his retirement made life a little tougher still for his party here. Labour chose a candidate who is well-known in the Jewish community, Sarah Sackman, who had also stood here in the past, and with the party enjoying very large leads in East Finchley, West Finchley, Woodhouse and Cricklewood wards it proved to be impossible for the Tories to hold on despite the large on-paper swing needed by Labour. Major boundary changes were originally proposed here, but in the end the changes were minor and had only a very small partisan effect. Sarah Sackman's win for Labour, with a majority of 4,581, is their best result yet in this constituency and it will be no easy task for the Conservatives to retake the seat. Meanwhile, upon her election to Parliament and Labour's accession to government, she was appointed Solicitor-General for England & Wales. 

[Robert Waller]

2021 Census New Boundaries (ranks England and Wales)

Age 65+ 15.2% 441/575
Owner occupied 50.9% 494/575
Private rented 38.4% 12/575
Social rented 10.8% 487/575
White 60.5 % 506/575
Black 5.9% 122/575
Asian 17.2% 74/575
Other 11.2% 7/575
Religion Jewish 20.8% 1/575
Managerial & professional 42.8% 73/575
Routine & Semi-routine 12.8% 556/575
Degree level 53.0% 28/575
No qualifications 14.4% 448/575
Students 8.5% 140/575


General Election 2024: Finchley and Golders Green

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Sarah Sackman 21,857 44.3 +19.9
Conservative Alex Deane 17,276 35.1 –8.7
Liberal Democrats Sarah Hoyle 3,375 6.8 –25.0
Green Steve Parsons 3,107 6.3 N/A
Reform UK Bepi Pezzulli 2,598 5.3 N/A
Rejoin EU Brendan Donnelly 486 1.0 N/A
Party of Women Katharine Murphy 318 0.6 N/A
Independent Michael Shad 272 0.6 N/A

Lab Majority 4,581 9.2 N/A

Turnout 49,289 63.6 –9.5
Registered electors 77,500

Labour gain from Conservative
Swing 14.3 C to Lab



General Election 2019: Finchley and Golders Green

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Conservative Mike Freer 24,162 43.8 −3.2
Liberal Democrats Luciana Berger 17,600 31.9 +25.3
Labour Ross Houston 13,347 24.2 −19.6

C Majority 6,562 11.9 +8.7

Turnout 55,109 71.0 −0.4

Registered electors 77,573

Conservative hold

Swing 14.2 C to LD
Swing 8.4 Lab to C
Swing 22.4 Lab to LD
(yer pays yer money and yer takes yer pick!)



Boundary Changes
Finchley and Golders Green consists of
99.5% of Finchley and Golders Green
0.7% of Chipping Barnet

Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/london/London_139_Finchley%20and%20Golders%20Green_Portrait.pdf


2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)

Con	24267	43.8%
LD	17638	31.8%
Lab	13500	24.4%
Green	7	0.0%
Majority	6629	12.0%

[sirbenjamin]

Sept 10, 2023 10:27:00 GMT Robert Waller said:

Owner occupied 50.9% 494/575
Private rented 38.4% 12/575

Religion Jewish 20.8% 1/575

This feels like a bit of a disconnect - I guess that there's not necessarily a huge overlap between the two demographics and it might be indicative of a highly polarised seat, but I'd instinctively expect Jewish areas to be pretty big on home ownership.

[nyx]

Will be interesting to see how much the Lib Dem vote holds up here. Some residents would probably consider them the better tactical option thanks to the 2019 results, and there's no other Lib Dem target seat in north London so some resources will probably be targeted here.

Expecting a Labour win, but the Lib Dems might stay over 15%.

[bjornhattan]

Sept 10, 2023 19:34:31 GMT sirbenjamin said:

Sept 10, 2023 10:27:00 GMT Robert Waller said:

Owner occupied 50.9% 494/575
Private rented 38.4% 12/575

Religion Jewish 20.8% 1/575

This feels like a bit of a disconnect - I guess that there's not necessarily a huge overlap between the two demographics and it might be indicative of a highly polarised seat, but I'd instinctively expect Jewish areas to be pretty big on home ownership.

I've had a look at the census stats (for the old boundaries) and constructed a breakdown of tenure vs religion for the seat and you're right to suspect polarisation:

Jewish population - 75.3% owner occupiers, 22.4% private renters, 2.3% social renters
Non-Jewish population - 45.4% owner occupiers, 42.7% private renters, 11.9% social renters

In particular, that social renting figure for Jewish residents is extremely low - less than half the figure of the least socially rented seat in the UK.

[batman]

Sept 10, 2023 19:51:01 GMT nyx said:

Will be interesting to see how much the Lib Dem vote holds up here. Some residents would probably consider them the better tactical option thanks to the 2019 results, and there's no other Lib Dem target seat in north London so some resources will probably be targeted here.

Expecting a Labour win, but the Lib Dems might stay over 15%.

I don't think the Lib Dems will target it. They know they have no chance.  There are seats not far away even if over the county boundary where they are much more likely to win.

[batman]

It is rare to find Jewish people in council-built homes. It does happen occasionally. In olden days of course it would have been different. I have had many relatives in the past who have been council tenants but that was 2 generations before me, in most cases.

[No Offence Alan]

Sept 10, 2023 19:51:01 GMT nyx said:

Will be interesting to see how much the Lib Dem vote holds up here. Some residents would probably consider them the better tactical option thanks to the 2019 results, and there's no other Lib Dem target seat in north London so some resources will probably be targeted here.

Expecting a Labour win, but the Lib Dems might stay over 15%.

If you look at the mayoral and borough elections here since 2019 there is no sign of any LD grass-root support here unlike, say, in Wimbledon.
If the LDs work a seat in North London it will be the successor to Hornsey and Wood Green.

[finsobruce]

Sept 10, 2023 21:53:46 GMT No Offence Alan said:

Sept 10, 2023 19:51:01 GMT nyx said:

Will be interesting to see how much the Lib Dem vote holds up here. Some residents would probably consider them the better tactical option thanks to the 2019 results, and there's no other Lib Dem target seat in north London so some resources will probably be targeted here.

Expecting a Labour win, but the Lib Dems might stay over 15%.

If you look at the mayoral and borough elections here since 2019 there is no sign of any LD grass-root support here unlike, say, in Wimbledon.
If the LDs work a seat in North London it will be the successor to Hornsey and Wood Green.

By which you presumably mean Hornsey and Friern Barnet.

Although they'll have lost the Highgate ward (which goes to Hampstead and Highgate) it also detaches the Wood Green wards which weren't much good for them. But the Barnet wards aren't great either.

[Peter Wilkinson]

A few historical background notes (much of it derived derived from stuff I was looking at when I prepared the draft Chipping Barnet entry for the 2020 version of the Almanac - unless someone else preempts me, I'm meaning to sit down and get that updated/revised and posted here sometime soon sometime soon, but haven't found the time for it yet). These are certainly not intended to be added verbatim to batman 's draft, but I'd hope they cast some light on points in it:

Firstly, while most of the borough of Finchley up to 1965 was more or less what is still habitually thought of as Finchley, the borough had relatively narrow extensions which stretched considerably further north and south - the southern boundary was Hampstead Lane on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath, while the northern edge was where the Great North Road crossed from Middlesex into Hertfordshire, just a mile or so south of High Barnet. The borough had inherited these boundaries from the previous urban district and, before that, the medieval parish of Finchley.

The reason why the compass directions in the names of various parts of Finchley look rather odd seems to be that they were named, at various times, at least as much in relation to the geography of the parish/district/borough as a whole as to the parish's original main settlement, Finchley Church End - which was so much on the western edge of Finchley parish that the current Finchley Church End ward extends a short way into the historic Hendon parish. Most of the parish of Finchley was not good agricultural land, and apparently much of the east and centre of the parish (known at the time as Finchley Common) was kept deliberately undeveloped for use first as woodland, then as grazing land until the early 19th century. The Great North Road crossed Finchley Common, and East Finchley (originally Finchley East End) apparently started at its southern exit from Finchley Common as a meat market, for selling local (and not-so-local) produce for consumption in London. In the 18th century, the main other local economic activity using the Great North Road seems to have involved "gentlemen of the road" - which may explain why Finchley Common did eventually get enclosed. Meanwhile, a turnpike road starting at Marylebone was built along the western edge of Finchley Common - North Finchley then started at the point where the new turnpike joined the Great North Road. West Finchley seems to have come later still, as part of a tripartite division of the urban district into East, North and West wards - the West ward would have included Church End, so the name West Finchley started being used mainly for the northern part of West ward.

The Finchley constituency was first formed in 1918, covering the then urban districts of Finchley and Friern Barnet, and (according to ParlConst) the boundaries remained unchanged until 1974 (I'm not entirely convinced, but any changes would have been small and might even not have affected any electors). However, they did change in 1974, consequent on the formation of the London Borough of Barnet a few years earlier. Barnet was allocated four constituencies, which might have seemed to have been a no-change situation, seeing that there were already separate Barnet, Finchley, Hendon North and Hendon South constituencies. However, the old Barnet constituency was losing a large section still in Hertfordshire (and about to become part of Hertsmere); and the two Hendon constituencies were both significantly smaller than Finchley. This resulted in Finchley losing about 15,000 voters, at the southern end of the old Finchley borough to Hendon South (in what was now Garden Suburb ward - Hampstead Garden Suburb had previously been split between Finchley and Hendon) and at the northern end of the old Finchley borough to the new Chipping Barnet constituency (basically, Woodside Park and the previously Finchley part of Whetstone had become part of the then-new Totteridge ward). Neither of these areas, I believe, had a history of significant Labour votes (though the area transferred to Hendon South may well have had a high Liberal vote in the early 1960s), and they haven't shown much sign of one since. The transfers are highly likely to have played a significant part in the drop in Thatcher's majority between 1959 and 1974, though they are somewhat unlikely to have accounted for all of it.

I have previously done an analysis in the old Finchley and Golders Green thread of the history of Liberal and Liberal Democrat voting in the area - briefly, there is no obvious connection between the Liberal successes on Finchley council in the late 1950s and early 1960s and their later period of dominance in Childs Hill between 1986 and 2014 - Childs Hill was (and still is) in the Golders Green half of the constituency, with no geographical overlap with the former borough of Finchley. Though that does not exclude the possibility of Liberal activists in Finchley (and particularly Garden Suburb) having moved their activities across into Childs Hill in the 1970s and 1980s.

[Peter Wilkinson]

Sept 10, 2023 21:55:58 GMT finsobruce said:

Sept 10, 2023 21:53:46 GMT No Offence Alan said:

If you look at the mayoral and borough elections here since 2019 there is no sign of any LD grass-root support here unlike, say, in Wimbledon.
If the LDs work a seat in North London it will be the successor to Hornsey and Wood Green.

By which you presumably mean Hornsey and Friern Barnet.

Although they'll have lost the Highgate ward (which goes to Hampstead and Highgate) it also detaches the Wood Green wards which weren't much good for them. But the Barnet wards aren't great either.

On the current wards, that is just the new Friern Barnet ward. In the 2022 council election, they propped up the bottom of the poll, with single-figure percentages and behind the one Green candidate. Before that, since 2002, Coppetts ward had something like a 90% overlap with the current Friern Barnet ward - they achieved a fairly good result in 2010 (about 18%), but even that was little more than half the votes that the Labour and Conservative candidates each got in what ended up as a split ward. Other results were distinctly less impressive. Before that, from 1968, rather over half of the current Friern Barnet was part of the then Woodhouse ward, and the rest was in a previous version of Friern Barnet ward which, however, only overlapped by about 40% with the current ward. They achieved 20% or so of the vote in both wards in 1982 and 1986, with a narrow second place in Friern Barnet in 1982, but far lower in other years (single-figure percentages in Woodhouse, mostly just into double figures in Friern Barnet.

From memory, the Liberal wave in the borough of Finchley in the early 1960s scarcely produced a ripple on Friern Barnet Urban District council - certainly (IIRC) no seats.

Of course, Friern Barnet Conservatives will have little experience of fighting elections in a seat where they can't reasonably expect even to get second place - the LDs may well reckon that that is reason enough to hope that there are Conservative votes to be picked up.

[Pete Whitehead]

Sept 11, 2023 2:55:07 GMT Peter Wilkinson said:

Sept 10, 2023 21:55:58 GMT finsobruce said:

By which you presumably mean Hornsey and Friern Barnet.

Although they'll have lost the Highgate ward (which goes to Hampstead and Highgate) it also detaches the Wood Green wards which weren't much good for them. But the Barnet wards aren't great either.

On the current wards, that is just the new Friern Barnet ward. In the 2022 council election, they propped up the bottom of the poll, with single-figure percentages and behind the one Green candidate. Before that, since 2002, Coppetts ward had something like a 90% overlap with the current Friern Barnet ward - they achieved a fairly good result in 2010 (about 18%), but even that was little more than half the votes that the Labour and Conservative candidates each got in what ended up as a split ward. Other results were distinctly less impressive. Before that, from 1968, rather over half of the current Friern Barnet was part of the then Woodhouse ward, and the rest was in a previous version of Friern Barnet ward which, however, only overlapped by about 40% with the current ward. They achieved 20% or so of the vote in both wards in 1982 and 1986, with a narrow second place in Friern Barnet in 1982, but far lower in other years (single-figure percentages in Woodhouse, mostly just into double figures in Friern Barnet.

From memory, the Liberal wave in the borough of Finchley in the early 1960s scarcely produced a ripple on Friern Barnet Urban District council - certainly (IIRC) no seats.

Of course, Friern Barnet Conservatives will have little experience of fighting elections in a seat where they can't reasonably expect even to get second place - the LDs may well reckon that that is reason enough to hope that there are Conservative votes to be picked up.

A majority of the seats and a plurality of votes in 1962 oldukcouncils.freeforums.net/post/9483/thread
They were still winning around 40% in the East and West wards in the first Barnet elections in 1964. However I think Coppetts/Friern Barnet was mostly contained in the Central and South wards
That said, in 1962 the Liberals carried every ward in Finchley oldukcouncils.freeforums.net/post/21389

[heslingtonian]

One wonders how the current war in Israel will impact on voting here along with Hendon in particular. The Conservative Government's robust support for Israel may help the Party to hold both seats despite a relatively low majority.

[rcronald]

Oct 12, 2023 7:17:34 GMT heslingtonian said:

One wonders how the current war in Israel will impact on voting here along with Hendon in particular. The Conservative Government's robust support for Israel may help the Party to hold both seats despite a relatively low majority.

Most of the Jewish vote in Hendon and F&GG are inelastic conservative voters, but I guess it can help increase turnout.