The Economist 07Dec2019

34 Britain The EconomistDecember 7th 2019

W

hen greg hands, the Conservative

mpfor Chelsea and Fulham, stood in

the general election of 2017, he had only a

dozen Tory disciples helping him deliver

leaflets. Back then the Conservatives were

focused on scooping up the votes of north-

ern Leavers, rather than worrying about

stucco-fronted houses in central London.

“There was a bit of complacency,” he ad-

mits. His majority halved in a bruising

night for the Tories across the capital,

where they lost four seats to Labour. This

time Mr Hands has about 100 volunteers at

his disposal, spreading the Tory gospel.

The Conservatives are determinedly

clinging on in London. A couple of months

ago the consensus was that the Tories’ full-

throated enthusiasm for Brexit would re-

sult in the party being hammered in the Re-

main-backing capital, making the path to a

majority tricky. Yet there is little evidence

of this happening. YouGov has the Conser-

vatives on 30% in London, roughly where

they were in 2017, while Labour has dipped

to 47%, down from 55% at the last vote.

There are three reasons the Tory vote is

holding up. For starters, the Conservatives

have a low bar to clear. Their performance

in London in 2017 was the fourth-worst

since 1955. By contrast Labour enjoyed its

best-ever night. And so whereas it needs to

repeat a record-breaking performance, the

Tories simply need to avoid falling on their

face again. So far, they are managing it.

Second, the Conservatives’ most vul-

nerable seats have become bitter three-

ways. In Kensington, where seven out of

ten voters backed Remain, contradictory

urges rub against each other. On paper it is

a straight marginal between Labour, which

won by 20 votes in 2017, and the Tories. Yet

in a constituency where the average home

costs £1.5m ($2m), fear of Jeremy Corbyn’s

plans to tax the rich is rife. Smelling an op-

portunity, the Liberal Democrats are at-

tempting to squeeze through the middle,

placing Sam Gyimah, a high-profile Tory

defector, in the seat. Local polls suggest

they are splitting the Remainer vote down

the middle.

A third factor is that the capital may not

be as hostile to the Conservatives as many

assume. Tory strategists used to regard

London the same way Soviet generals

thought about Afghanistan. It is a difficult

environment for the party, filled with peo-

ple whom the Conservatives increasingly

struggle to reach: the young, graduates and

ethnic minorities. Inner-London seats vot-

ed overwhelmingly for Remain. Yet it is

also the richest part of the country and

stuffed with voters who end up with more

in their wallets if they vote Tory. Once this

stage of Brexit is over, the Tories’ path is

clearer still.

Relentless optimism is the modus ope-

randi of Labour activists in the capital. Mr

Hands may be able to call on 100 pairs of

helping hands, but Labour recently mus-

tered several times as many during an

event in Chingford and Woodford Green,

where it has launched a noisy attempt to

knock out Iain Duncan Smith, a Conserva-

tive Brexiteer. Swarms of activists may

swing some surprising seats. Zac Gold-

smith, who lost his seat in 2016 after a self-

imposed by-election before regaining it in

2017, is likely to complete his political hok-

ey-cokey and be voted out again. But most

Conservative candidates will start sweat-

ing only if the local Remain vote shows

signs of coalescing around a single candi-

date. Until then, the predicted Tory col-

lapse in the capital is some way off. 7

A predicted Tory wipeout in the capital

may end up a washout

Politics in the capital

Down but not out

in London

A

s alex phillipsmakes his case to a

burgher of Liverpool Walton, in the

city’s north, peals of laughter sound a few

doors up. “You’re asking me to vote

Conservative,” chortles a local resident to

an activist. “Are you having a laugh?” It is

a fair question. At the election in 2017 Mr

Phillips’s party came second with 9% of

the vote, to Labour’s 86%, making Walton

the safest seat in the country. So weak are

its opponents, Labour doesn’t campaign

much either. “In all the years we’ve lived

here you’re only the second person to

come around,” says another local.

During elections, journalists and

politicians flock to constituencies that

are up for grabs, creating an illusion of

frenetic activity. Elsewhere the first-

past-the-post electoral system, which

ensures there is next to no chance of

some seats changing hands, means little

happens. That is especially true of Liv-

erpool, which is home to the five safest

seats in the country, all held by Labour.

Although the Tories used to vie for

control of the city, the party lost its grip

in the 1970s. The next decade saw run-

ning battles between the Militant Labour

local council and the Conservative gov-

ernment in Westminster, during which

time “an anti-Conservative identity

became quite ingrained in what it meant

to be from Liverpool,” says David Jeffrey

of the University of Liverpool. This

bunching of Labour voters—in Liverpool

and other urban areas—helps explain

why the party will need more votes than

the Tories to win a majority.

Its dominance in Walton means the

battle to be Labour’s candidate is more

fiercely contested than the election. In

2017 Dan Carden, a former union wallah,

went up against Joe Anderson, Liver-

pool’s mayor, for the nomination. Having

lost, the mayor vowed never to work with

Mr Carden again. Mr Phillips, the Tory

candidate this year, has done his home-

work, but admits he is building experi-

ence, hopefully for a run at a more win-

nable seat. He spends one day in seven in

Walton, and most of the rest with the

nearby Tory campaign in Southport,

which is a marginal constituency.

There is little chance of Liverpool

changing hands any time soon. Boris

Johnson is known in the city for pub-

lishing a leader while editor of the Spec-

tatorwhich accused Liverpudlians of

seeing themselves “whenever possible as

victims”, and wrongly blamed drunken

Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough

disaster. Lib Dems are tainted by having

gone into government with the Tories in

2010. Thus the city is likely to remain a
      training ground for Tory candidates, and
      a tough one at that. Voters “were hor-
      rible”, recalls one former candidate.
      “Someone did a big poo on my election
      address.” Then they sent a photograph of
      the act to make their displeasure known.

You’ll always walk alone

Super-safe seats

LIVERPOOL

Life as a Tory candidate in a deep-red city

Safe as scouses