Post by Pete Whitehead on Nov 22, 2023 18:40:18 GMT
Brent East is a revived name for a constituency, there having been a seat so named from 1974 to 2010. This is not really a recreation of that seat however, rather this is a heavily modified form of the current Brent Central seat. Originally the Boundary Commission had proposed to call this seat Willesden but, in the end, (as with Wembley/Brent West) opted for the more prosaic borough plus compass point formulation. This will be disappointing to some although unlike the Wembley/Brent West situation, this seat is not confined within the boundaries of the old borough of Willesden and there are many communities included besides the core of Willesden itself.
When Brent Central was created in 2010 it took in the greater part of both Brent East and Brent South, with the former losing its Southern end (Brondesbury Park, Kilburn and Queens Park) and the latter losing its Western end around the centre of Wembley. Brent Central drew its voters almost equally from these two seats, with Brent South providing slightly more voters (though less than half overall as a few thousand also came in from Brent North).
Brent South had always been a very safe Labour seat which for 18 years had returned Paul Boateng – initially a radical and controversial figure, now very establishment. He was replaced by Dawn Butler in 2005. The part of Brent South which moved to Brent Central was the most heavily Labour part thereof, centred on the community of Harlesden with its large Black population (as opposed to the more heavily Asian Western end of the seat), though it also included Tokyngton on the Western or Wembley side of the Brent, including the area around Wembley stadium.
Brent East was also historically a safe Labour seat but never so much as South. The Conservatives had won the old Willesden East in 1959 and when Ken Livingstone first won election here in 1987 they ran him quite close. He subsequently built up his majority and handed over an apparently safe seat to Paul Daisley in 2001. Though only in his 40s he sadly died only two years later, occasioning a by-election which took place at the height of the controversy surrounding the Iraq war. The result was a spectacular gain by the Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather, on a swing of nearly 30%. The Lib Dems had never been strong in this seat previously and at the time of the by-election had no councillors in the seat, but Sarah Teather was able to hold on at the following general election.
Thus, the scene was set in 2010 for a rare contest between two sitting MPs. Sarah Teather might have followed the substantial minority of her seat which went into Hampstead & Kilburn which looked like a much better prospect.
It included probably her strongest areas in Brondesbury Park and Queens Park and there was already strong Lib Dem potential in Hampstead itself. In the event the Lib Dems missed out there and she narrowly won in the new Brent Central – in many ways this was a more impressive achievement than her initial victory in Brent East.
The voters of Brent Central had probably not bargained on contributing to the election of a Conservative led coalition government and the swing back to Labour in 2015 was huge as Dawn Butler returned with a majority of nearly 20,000 – Sarah Teather declined to defend her seat and the Lib Dem vote evaporated, back down to less than 10%. In 2017 Butler achieved a vote share of 73% - equal to that achieved by Paul Boateng at his peak in Brent South. Though that was reduced a bit in 2019, Brent Central was now confirmed as an ultra-safe Labour seat, as it should always have been given the demographics.
The boundary changes which translate Brent Central into Brent East are significant and make this seat slightly less monolithic for Labour without in any way making it marginal. The ex-Brent South element is greatly reduced while the ex-Brent East and Brent North sections are increased. In the West, the Tokyngton and Wembley Park wards are donated to Brent West while in the South the Harlesden and Kensal Green ward is added to the new Queens Park & Maida Vale seat. In their place the Brondesbury Park ward returns from the abolished Hampstead & Kilburn and the seat extends further North to gain Kingsbury ward from Brent North as well as parts of Welsh Harp ward not already included.
Harlesden & Kensal Green is a massive Labour stronghold. Harlesden has been the core of one of London’s oldest and largest Black communities and was always a very working-class area, originally with a large Irish population. Although this includes the centre of Harlesden, much of Greater Harlesden remains in this seat, contained within the Roundwood and Stonebridge wards. These are both very deprived wards with large percentages of Black residents and social housing and are monolithically Labour (Labour won almost 80% of the vote in both wards at the most recent local elections). Roundwood has some superficially attractive housing around the park but behind this façade is dominated by grim estates. Stonebridge is even more dominated by social housing – over 55% in 2021. This includes the once notorious Stonebridge estate itself (like others of the worse estates in Brent now redeveloped, the brutalist blocks gone) and the older Brentfield estate and the St Raphael’s estate. This must be one of the least picturesque wards in London as in the far South it includes the vast Park Royal industrial estate and in the North the Brent Park retail park. The ward is bisected by the North Circular, here lined with pollution-stained council houses. Against all this though, in the centre of the ward is the huge, splendid and rather incongruous Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (AKA the Neasden Temple).
Further East the territory is more mixed. Here is the core of the old Brent East seat in Willesden Green. This is a very ethnically diverse area, more Asian than Black, but where the largest group now are ‘White Other’. There has been some gentrification of the Edwardian houses in this area but it is still mostly a grotty area and, notwithstanding some Lib Dem inroads in the Teather years, a very safe Labour ward.
South of Willesden Green is the most upmarket ward in this constituency – Brondesbury Park which encompasses the ‘posh’ ends of both Willesden and Kilburn. This is the only ward in the constituency where White British are the largest ethnic group – reaching the extraordinary heights of 29% here. There is a 5% Jewish population, but it used to be much larger – there are more Arabs here now than Jews. Parts of this ward are very wealthy indeed. There is more modest housing in the West towards Harlesden. This was the kind of area that enabled the Conservatives to win Willesden East and to run Livingstone close in 1987. Since its creation in its current form in 2002 this ward has been won by all three main parties, starting with the Conservatives. It was marginal then although one councillor, Carol Shaw appeared to enjoy a large personal vote. This was significant as she defected to the Lib Dems following the by-election and won re-election easily in 2006, bringing in two more Lib Dems on her coattails. The ward was held easily in 2010 before Carol Shaw re-ratted and it was fully back in the Conservative column by 2014. But in 2018 Labour narrowly gained the ward and in 2022 (when the ward boundary changes were negligible) they won by two to one over the Conservatives.
Brondesbury Park has a small frontage on the Edgware Road, between Brondesbury and Kilburn stations. North of here and covering a long stretch of that thoroughfare is Cricklewood & Mapesbury ward. This bears some resemblance to Brondesbury Park – there are some pleasant areas, with Edwardian villas predominating. But these are also interspersed with council estates – there is a large tower block estate by Kilburn station for example. Cricklewood is known as an area with a large Irish population, like Kilburn down the road, but it is not exceptionally high now in either place.
This is a very ethnically diverse area with still significant numbers of White British but outnumbered by other Whites and with sizeable Black, Asian and other groups too. The Conservatives got a councillor elected here as recently as 2002 (this is another area that would have voted Conservative in 1987) but this ward too fell to the Lib Dems between 2006 and 2014 and they even held one of the seats in the latter year. By 2018 though Labour were fully back in control and in 2022 they outpolled the Conservatives by almost four to one.
Moving further North from here is Dollis Hill. This is a bit of a misnomer as much of Dollis Hill itself is in Willesden Green ward and this ward is really dominated by Neasden. There are some pleasant areas in Dollis Hill itself, especially around Gladstone Park, but Neasden, crammed between the A5 and the North Circular, is grim consisting mostly of small terraced inter-war houses, both private and social. There are both large Black and Asian populations here and a very low White British population. This ward followed a familiar electoral pattern, although the Conservatives were never really competitive. The Lib Dems made the ward split in 2006 before gaining all the seats in 2010 and then losing them four years later. Strangely their vote held up much better here in 2014 though and they even retained a significant vote in 2018. In 2022 however, when the ward was expanded to include more of Neasden, the Lib Dem vote belatedly collapsed, and Labour again won very easily.
The remaining two wards are somewhat different to those already discussed, not least that they lie wholly or largely North of the Brent and therefore their provenance is in the borough of Wembley rather than Willesden. This is not abstract as the character of the areas is quite different.
Welsh Harp ward in fact crosses the Brent to include areas from both former boroughs. In the South it includes the parts of Neasden North and West of the North Circular. This is as grim as the rest of Neasden with dingy Victorian terraced houses and inter war council housing. Across the river the character of the ward changes rapidly as one enters the Southern extremity of Kingsbury. There are still some good residential areas here around Salmon Street with more modest housing further East. The Kingsbury element was strengthened at the expense of Neasden in the recent ward boundary changes and is now clearly dominant. This is a much more suburban area than the core of the constituency with inter-war private housing predominating and, typically for the Northern part of Brent, a much larger Asian population. Welsh Harp has always been safely Labour (although the Conservatives were close in 2002) and the Lib Dems never made the kind of advances here that they did elsewhere (because a large part of it was not included in Teather’s original Brent East seat). The Conservatives had a respectable vote here though and achieved a swing in their favour in 2022.
The new ward of Kingsbury itself (which does not include the centre of Kingsbury, nor most of the Kingsbury area) saw the highest Conservative vote in the constituency in 2002 at 30%. This is even more suburban and even more Asian. It is effectively the old Fryent ward which had been safely Labour since the 1990s. It consists of mostly fairly modest inter ward semis and is quite grotty toward the Edgware Road frontage. That this is the Conservatives’ best ward in the constituency speaks to how safe a Labour seat this is. In 2022 Labour still outpolled the Conservatives by around to two to one in Kingsbury and Welsh Harp but in most of the other wards they did so by four to one – in Roundwood and Stonebridge by five to one.
The by-election in the previous incarnation of Brent East 20 years ago shows that no seat may be taken for granted in all circumstances. But it is difficult to foresee the circumstances now when Labour will have cause to worry about this seat.
When Brent Central was created in 2010 it took in the greater part of both Brent East and Brent South, with the former losing its Southern end (Brondesbury Park, Kilburn and Queens Park) and the latter losing its Western end around the centre of Wembley. Brent Central drew its voters almost equally from these two seats, with Brent South providing slightly more voters (though less than half overall as a few thousand also came in from Brent North).
Brent South had always been a very safe Labour seat which for 18 years had returned Paul Boateng – initially a radical and controversial figure, now very establishment. He was replaced by Dawn Butler in 2005. The part of Brent South which moved to Brent Central was the most heavily Labour part thereof, centred on the community of Harlesden with its large Black population (as opposed to the more heavily Asian Western end of the seat), though it also included Tokyngton on the Western or Wembley side of the Brent, including the area around Wembley stadium.
Brent East was also historically a safe Labour seat but never so much as South. The Conservatives had won the old Willesden East in 1959 and when Ken Livingstone first won election here in 1987 they ran him quite close. He subsequently built up his majority and handed over an apparently safe seat to Paul Daisley in 2001. Though only in his 40s he sadly died only two years later, occasioning a by-election which took place at the height of the controversy surrounding the Iraq war. The result was a spectacular gain by the Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather, on a swing of nearly 30%. The Lib Dems had never been strong in this seat previously and at the time of the by-election had no councillors in the seat, but Sarah Teather was able to hold on at the following general election.
Thus, the scene was set in 2010 for a rare contest between two sitting MPs. Sarah Teather might have followed the substantial minority of her seat which went into Hampstead & Kilburn which looked like a much better prospect.
It included probably her strongest areas in Brondesbury Park and Queens Park and there was already strong Lib Dem potential in Hampstead itself. In the event the Lib Dems missed out there and she narrowly won in the new Brent Central – in many ways this was a more impressive achievement than her initial victory in Brent East.
The voters of Brent Central had probably not bargained on contributing to the election of a Conservative led coalition government and the swing back to Labour in 2015 was huge as Dawn Butler returned with a majority of nearly 20,000 – Sarah Teather declined to defend her seat and the Lib Dem vote evaporated, back down to less than 10%. In 2017 Butler achieved a vote share of 73% - equal to that achieved by Paul Boateng at his peak in Brent South. Though that was reduced a bit in 2019, Brent Central was now confirmed as an ultra-safe Labour seat, as it should always have been given the demographics.
The boundary changes which translate Brent Central into Brent East are significant and make this seat slightly less monolithic for Labour without in any way making it marginal. The ex-Brent South element is greatly reduced while the ex-Brent East and Brent North sections are increased. In the West, the Tokyngton and Wembley Park wards are donated to Brent West while in the South the Harlesden and Kensal Green ward is added to the new Queens Park & Maida Vale seat. In their place the Brondesbury Park ward returns from the abolished Hampstead & Kilburn and the seat extends further North to gain Kingsbury ward from Brent North as well as parts of Welsh Harp ward not already included.
Harlesden & Kensal Green is a massive Labour stronghold. Harlesden has been the core of one of London’s oldest and largest Black communities and was always a very working-class area, originally with a large Irish population. Although this includes the centre of Harlesden, much of Greater Harlesden remains in this seat, contained within the Roundwood and Stonebridge wards. These are both very deprived wards with large percentages of Black residents and social housing and are monolithically Labour (Labour won almost 80% of the vote in both wards at the most recent local elections). Roundwood has some superficially attractive housing around the park but behind this façade is dominated by grim estates. Stonebridge is even more dominated by social housing – over 55% in 2021. This includes the once notorious Stonebridge estate itself (like others of the worse estates in Brent now redeveloped, the brutalist blocks gone) and the older Brentfield estate and the St Raphael’s estate. This must be one of the least picturesque wards in London as in the far South it includes the vast Park Royal industrial estate and in the North the Brent Park retail park. The ward is bisected by the North Circular, here lined with pollution-stained council houses. Against all this though, in the centre of the ward is the huge, splendid and rather incongruous Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (AKA the Neasden Temple).
Further East the territory is more mixed. Here is the core of the old Brent East seat in Willesden Green. This is a very ethnically diverse area, more Asian than Black, but where the largest group now are ‘White Other’. There has been some gentrification of the Edwardian houses in this area but it is still mostly a grotty area and, notwithstanding some Lib Dem inroads in the Teather years, a very safe Labour ward.
South of Willesden Green is the most upmarket ward in this constituency – Brondesbury Park which encompasses the ‘posh’ ends of both Willesden and Kilburn. This is the only ward in the constituency where White British are the largest ethnic group – reaching the extraordinary heights of 29% here. There is a 5% Jewish population, but it used to be much larger – there are more Arabs here now than Jews. Parts of this ward are very wealthy indeed. There is more modest housing in the West towards Harlesden. This was the kind of area that enabled the Conservatives to win Willesden East and to run Livingstone close in 1987. Since its creation in its current form in 2002 this ward has been won by all three main parties, starting with the Conservatives. It was marginal then although one councillor, Carol Shaw appeared to enjoy a large personal vote. This was significant as she defected to the Lib Dems following the by-election and won re-election easily in 2006, bringing in two more Lib Dems on her coattails. The ward was held easily in 2010 before Carol Shaw re-ratted and it was fully back in the Conservative column by 2014. But in 2018 Labour narrowly gained the ward and in 2022 (when the ward boundary changes were negligible) they won by two to one over the Conservatives.
Brondesbury Park has a small frontage on the Edgware Road, between Brondesbury and Kilburn stations. North of here and covering a long stretch of that thoroughfare is Cricklewood & Mapesbury ward. This bears some resemblance to Brondesbury Park – there are some pleasant areas, with Edwardian villas predominating. But these are also interspersed with council estates – there is a large tower block estate by Kilburn station for example. Cricklewood is known as an area with a large Irish population, like Kilburn down the road, but it is not exceptionally high now in either place.
This is a very ethnically diverse area with still significant numbers of White British but outnumbered by other Whites and with sizeable Black, Asian and other groups too. The Conservatives got a councillor elected here as recently as 2002 (this is another area that would have voted Conservative in 1987) but this ward too fell to the Lib Dems between 2006 and 2014 and they even held one of the seats in the latter year. By 2018 though Labour were fully back in control and in 2022 they outpolled the Conservatives by almost four to one.
Moving further North from here is Dollis Hill. This is a bit of a misnomer as much of Dollis Hill itself is in Willesden Green ward and this ward is really dominated by Neasden. There are some pleasant areas in Dollis Hill itself, especially around Gladstone Park, but Neasden, crammed between the A5 and the North Circular, is grim consisting mostly of small terraced inter-war houses, both private and social. There are both large Black and Asian populations here and a very low White British population. This ward followed a familiar electoral pattern, although the Conservatives were never really competitive. The Lib Dems made the ward split in 2006 before gaining all the seats in 2010 and then losing them four years later. Strangely their vote held up much better here in 2014 though and they even retained a significant vote in 2018. In 2022 however, when the ward was expanded to include more of Neasden, the Lib Dem vote belatedly collapsed, and Labour again won very easily.
The remaining two wards are somewhat different to those already discussed, not least that they lie wholly or largely North of the Brent and therefore their provenance is in the borough of Wembley rather than Willesden. This is not abstract as the character of the areas is quite different.
Welsh Harp ward in fact crosses the Brent to include areas from both former boroughs. In the South it includes the parts of Neasden North and West of the North Circular. This is as grim as the rest of Neasden with dingy Victorian terraced houses and inter war council housing. Across the river the character of the ward changes rapidly as one enters the Southern extremity of Kingsbury. There are still some good residential areas here around Salmon Street with more modest housing further East. The Kingsbury element was strengthened at the expense of Neasden in the recent ward boundary changes and is now clearly dominant. This is a much more suburban area than the core of the constituency with inter-war private housing predominating and, typically for the Northern part of Brent, a much larger Asian population. Welsh Harp has always been safely Labour (although the Conservatives were close in 2002) and the Lib Dems never made the kind of advances here that they did elsewhere (because a large part of it was not included in Teather’s original Brent East seat). The Conservatives had a respectable vote here though and achieved a swing in their favour in 2022.
The new ward of Kingsbury itself (which does not include the centre of Kingsbury, nor most of the Kingsbury area) saw the highest Conservative vote in the constituency in 2002 at 30%. This is even more suburban and even more Asian. It is effectively the old Fryent ward which had been safely Labour since the 1990s. It consists of mostly fairly modest inter ward semis and is quite grotty toward the Edgware Road frontage. That this is the Conservatives’ best ward in the constituency speaks to how safe a Labour seat this is. In 2022 Labour still outpolled the Conservatives by around to two to one in Kingsbury and Welsh Harp but in most of the other wards they did so by four to one – in Roundwood and Stonebridge by five to one.
The by-election in the previous incarnation of Brent East 20 years ago shows that no seat may be taken for granted in all circumstances. But it is difficult to foresee the circumstances now when Labour will have cause to worry about this seat.
