Southgate and Wood Green

[stb12]

Southgate and Wood Green

[John Chanin]

Link to profile

[Pete Whitehead]

Notional results since 1945. The 2019 result is the 'official' (Thrasher & Rallings) notional - the others are my own work

	Con	Lab	Lib
1945	43.0%	36.7%	20.3%
1950	50.2%	36.9%	12.9%
1951	54.0%	38.9%	7.1%
1955	55.2%	36.5%	8.4%
1959	56.2%	33.7%	10.1%
1964	50.0%	36.8%	13.0%
1966	48.1%	39.8%	12.1%

	Con	Lab	Lib/LD	NF/BNP	Grn
1970	53.8%	37.9%	8.1%
1974	42.6%	33.1%	23.0%	1.4%
1974	42.0%	35.0%	18.1%	4.9%
1979	52.4%	33.4%	11.8%	2.3%
1983	49.2%	28.6%	21.1%	0.5%
1987	50.9%	29.0%	18.3%		1.8%
1992	49.9%	35.7%	12.7%		1.6%

	Con	Lab	LD	Grn	Ref/UKIP/ BXP
1997	33.7%	52.3%	9.8%	0.9%	2.3%
2001	29.9%	54.5%	11.4%	2.3%	1.0%
2005	32.8%	43.8%	19.2%	2.9%	0.9%
2010	35.3%	39.7%	20.9%	1.5%	0.8%
2015	33.1%	49.0%	9.5%	4.2%	3.8%
2017	29.6%	62.1%	6.0%	1.6%	0.3%
2019	28.6%	57.8%	9.9%	2.5%	1.3%

[stb12]

So the Tories would not have won this version of Southgate back

[Pete Whitehead]

May 2, 2024 18:36:09 GMT stb12 said:

So the Tories would not have won this version of Southgate back

About 40% of the voters of this seat are now in Haringey where the Conservatives now get a derisory vote, and they've replaced some pretty solid Tory areas in the old Southgate seat. Obviously the Conservatives used to be competitive in Wood Green itself up until 1992 while they were utterly dominant in Southgate. It's a bizarre seat really which includes Hadley Wood with The Roundway - the most unsatisfactory creation in London (where in general the new boundaries are pretty good to be fair)

[bjornhattan]

May 2, 2024 19:08:32 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

May 2, 2024 18:36:09 GMT stb12 said:

So the Tories would not have won this version of Southgate back

About 40% of the voters of this seat are now in Haringey where the Conservatives now get a derisory vote, and they've replaced some pretty solid Tory areas in the old Southgate seat. Obviously the Conservatives used to be competitive in Wood Green itself up until 1992 while they were utterly dominant in Southgate. It's a bizarre seat really which includes Hadley Wood with The Roundway - the most unsatisfactory creation in London (where in general the new boundaries are pretty good to be fair)

My modelling generally finds the core Wood Green wards (Noel Park, Woodside) to be incredibly strongly Labour - in some cases among their strongest in London with Labour votes well above 80% in 2017 and above 75% in 2019. I think this may be a slight exaggeration* but these very urban wards will still be huge sources of Labour vote - and as you say some of the areas lost around Winchmore Hill are pretty staunchly Conservative.

* The main issue with my figures is that Hornsey & Wood Green is a Labour-LD marginal, and a demographics based model like mine can find this sort of dynamic more challenging than a Labour-Conservative marginal. In particular I've consistently noticed it underestimating the Lib Dems in relatively working class areas (like Wood Green) - probably there are fewer Lib Dems than I think out towards Crouch End and Muswell Hill but more in the Wood Green parts of the seat!

[batman]

Historically those wards you mention were competitive between the Tories & Labour for a long while, even though you'd probably find it hard to credit now - same with White Hart Lane ward which was formerly in the Wood Green constituency. But of course those days are decades ago now.

[Pete Whitehead]

And indeed the Lib Dems themselves were very competitive in those wards in 2006 and 2010

[Peter Wilkinson]

It is really noticeable how the Conservative and Labour notionals go through a step-change between 1992 and 1997 - there's a swing of 15% or so from Conservative to Labour between the two elections which has never been more than very partially reversed. So the minimum Conservative notional from 1945 to 1992 is 42% and the maximum Labour notional 35%, both occurring in February 1974; but from 1997 to 2019, the pattern is reversed - the maximum Conservative notional is 35.3% and the minimum Labour notional is 39.7%, both occurring in 2010.

It is also noticeable that the same kind of step-change shows up, at least to some extent, in the notionals for many other constituencies in outer north London (and some in other parts of outer London. There are differences from Southgate and Wood Green, most notably that while there are similar gaps (in the same directions) between party performance between 1945 (or 1950) and 1992 and performance between 1997 and 2019, they usually don't result in a period of uninterrupted Conservative dominance followed by one of uninterrupted Labour dominance - a safe Conservative constituency in the earlier period may go Labour in 1997 but then become and stay marginal between the parties; or, if safe enough, stay Conservative through the entire later period but with measurably lower majorities. Or the difference between the two periods is not quite so blatant but still shows an overall shift from Conservative towards Labour. Or the pattern is there for much of the period, but at some point, some other factor intervenes.

[John Chanin]

May 3, 2024 13:34:17 GMT Peter Wilkinson said:

It is really noticeable how the Conservative and Labour notionals go through a step-change between 1992 and 1997 - there's a swing of 15% or so from Conservative to Labour between the two elections which has never been more than very partially reversed. So the minimum Conservative notional from 1945 to 1992 is 42% and the maximum Labour notional 35%, both occurring in February 1974; but from 1997 to 2019, the pattern is reversed - the maximum Conservative notional is 35.3% and the minimum Labour notional is 39.7%, both occurring in 2010.

It is also noticeable that the same kind of step-change shows up, at least to some extent, in the notionals for many other constituencies in outer north London (and some in other parts of outer London. There are differences from Southgate and Wood Green, most notably that while there are similar gaps (in the same directions) between party performance between 1945 (or 1950) and 1992 and performance between 1997 and 2019, they usually don't result in a period of uninterrupted Conservative dominance followed by one of uninterrupted Labour dominance - a safe Conservative constituency in the earlier period may go Labour in 1997 but then become and stay marginal between the parties; or, if safe enough, stay Conservative through the entire later period but with measurably lower majorities. Or the difference between the two periods is not quite so blatant but still shows an overall shift from Conservative towards Labour. Or the pattern is there for much of the period, but at some point, some other factor intervenes.

Yes, I've been following Pete's notionals, and there's a clear break in 1997 which marks a permanent shift in loyalties right across the city.

[redtony]

yes 1994 was the year until then TORYS won Hornsey with the 3 wood greenn wards being marginal from 1983 when the seat was created before then Hornsey was always a safe Tory seat in 1994 they lost all theit councilors bar the two Highgate ones

[hempie]

SOPN:
www.enfield.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0033/58695/Statement-of-Persons-Nominated,-Notice-of-Poll-and-Polling-Stations-Southgate-Wood-Green.pdf

7 candidates:
5 main parties plus Workers Party and TUSC

[norflondon]

Lab loses 6% here in my area. Greens up a lot. Reform UK 🇬🇧 did well. Turnout below 60%. Predictably a noticeable lack of enthusiasm for the Labour party

[Peter Wilkinson]

Jul 5, 2024 15:30:15 GMT norflondon said:

Lab loses 6% here in my area. Greens up a lot. Reform UK 🇬🇧 did well. Turnout below 60%. Predictably a noticeable lack of enthusiasm for the Labour party

Are you in the Wood Green end of the constituency? Because much of this is explicable for anyone who knows a little about the recent political history of Southgate.

In case you are unaware, the old Enfield Southgate constituency and its predecessor were always the most Conservative constituency in Enfield. When it was split off from Wood Green in 1950, the previous Conservative MP for Wood Green chose to stand in Southgate rather than Wood Green and remained MP for Southgate for the rest of his life, on very comfortable majorities. The constituency stayed that way until the famous Portillo moment in 1997, with Stephen Twigg then as Labour MP until 2005, with the Conservatives then taking the seat back until 2017. Meanwhile, areas of Labour support within the constituency were mostly confined to its southern edge, between the Wood Green boundary and the North Circular except for around New Southgate until the 1990s and the Palmers Green area, for which Bambos Charalambous became a councillor, from then on. Otherwise, the rest of Enfield Southgate remained solidly Conservative in council elections, even when Enfield council was under Labour control between 1994 to 2002 and from 2010, until 2014. However, Labour extended its majority on Enfield council in both 2014 and 2018, in the process getting seven councillors in three Enfield Southgate wards which it had never held previously. And Bambos Charalambous was elected as Labour MP for Southgate in the 2017 general election, and stepped down from Enfield council at the 2018 election.

However, there had been tensions building up within the Enfield council Labour group which rather exploded after the 2018 elections, with a change in group and council leadership and subsequent difficulties between a number of Labour councillors and the new leader, which resulted in several councillors resigning, and rather more defecting from Labour to form a rebel group. Among the rebels were no fewer than five of the seven councillors representing the newly-Labour Enfield Southgate wards. Most of the rebels did not stand again in the 2022 council elections, though at least a couple did, for the Green party. The 2022 council elections were fought on new ward boundaries, so exact comparisons with 2018 cannot be applied, but while Labour retained control of Enfield council, it effectively lost almost all of its post-2010 gains.

Apparently quite separately, Bambos Charalambous was suspended from the PLP last July, on allegations whose details I am completely unaware of (and which were never publicly specified) but cleared of them, reinstated to the PLP and confirmed as Labour candidate for Southgate and Wood Green this April, only a few weeks before the general election was called.

Turning to the results, Charalambous was standing in a constituency which, while substantially overlapping with his previous one, was on very different boundaries and, during most of the period when he might have hoped to be familiarising himself within his new constituency, was facing a disciplinary process which at least potentially threw his prospective candidacy into considerable doubt. All of this will undoubtedly not have helped build enthusiasm for Labour in the new constituency. Moreover, the Green candidate was one of the ex-Labour rebel Enfield Southgate councillors, who seems to have an appreciable though not necessarily substantial personal following. (For that matter, the TUSC candidate was apparently a Labour candidate in what was then an Enfield Southgate ward, though a safe Conservative one, in 2022.) The Reform UK candidate's showing to me looks distinctly ordinary - this part of north London is in general certainly not one of the better parts of the UK for Reform, but their vote was lower here than in the other two Enfield constituencies, even though higher than in the other two Haringey constituencies (but again, based on how it did elsewhere, I would expect Reform to have done marginally better in Enfield than in Haringey). Considering all of this, Charalambous was undoubtedly mildly lucky to have a new constituency which was rather safer for Labour than his old one, and an opposition which was sufficiently split to have posed little danger even if he had still been fighting his old one.

[norflondon]

I didn't know half of that. Brilliant stuff thanks