8 Monday May 2 2022 | the times
News
Labour and the Liberal Democrats
have denied forging a secret electoral
pact for Thursday’s local elections.
The Conservatives argued that
Labour’s decision to stand fewer candi-
dates in some parts of southern
England where the Liberal Democrats
are strong was “far too substantial to be
a mere coincidence”.
Oliver Dowden, the co-chairman of
the Conservative Party, claimed the
Liberal Democrats were “returning the
favour” in northern areas being fought
between Labour and the Tories.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader,
said: “I wouldn’t take anything Oliver
Dowden says particularly seriously.
The fact that he is spending his Sunday
... attacking Labour... why doesn’t he
say something about the cost-of-living
crisis?
“There is no pact, everybody knows
there is no pact. We will put a candidate
up when there is a by-election [in Tiver-
ton & Honiton], obviously after the Neil
Parish resignation.”
Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat
leader, told the BBC: “There isn’t a pact
... In fact if you look at what we are
doing in these local elections, we are
fighting Labour in many areas, in Hull,
Sunderland, Sheffield, Haringey,
Southwark, I could go on.
“This is pretty desperate from the
Conservatives. I’m not surprised
because lifelong Conservatives are
switching from them because they are
really upset we have a prime minister
who is not decent to run our country.”
In a letter to Starmer, Dowden wrote:
“I note that in the southwest, you are
standing candidates in 61 per cent of
seats compared with 97 per cent in 2018.
And in the southeast there is a similar
pattern with Labour standing candi-
dates in 88 per cent of seats compared
with 99 per cent in 2018.
“In the north of England it appears
that the Liberal Democrats are return-
ing the favour. In the northeast they are
standing in just 56 per cent of seats,
down from 78 per cent four years ago.
Labour are, however, standing in 99 per
cent of seats in the area. These shifts are
far too substantial to be a mere coinci-
dence... It now appears that your plans
to deny the voters a proper democratic
choice are coming to fruition.”
Labour in fact have more candidates
than the Conservatives across Britain
at 5,324 and 5,273 respectively. The Lib-
eral Democrats have 3,623 candidates.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats
will compete against each other in the
Tiverton & Honiton by-election. While
Labour finished second, albeit distantly,
to Neil Parish at the past two elections,
the Lib Dems believe the seat’s West
Country location and rural character
make them best-placed to challenge.
Davey’s party has already made two
eye-catching gains from the Conserva-
tives in this parliament. The party
achieved swings of 25 per cent in
Chesham & Amersham and 34 per cent
in North Shropshire.
In North Shropshire, Labour finished
second in 2019, rather than the Liberal
Democrats.
Party sources hope that Labour will
be preoccupied by the forthcoming
Wakefield by-election, caused by the
resignation of the Conservative MP
Imran Ahmad Khan after he was
convicted of child sexual assault.
A Lib Dem source said: “The Lib
Dems have shown we can take rural
seats off the Conservatives. People
across the West Country have a strong
tradition of voting Liberal Democrat as
the main opposition to the Conserva-
tives. As we saw in North Shropshire,
there is a real backlash against Boris
Johnson from rural communities who
are fed up of being taken for granted.”
The Conservatives have controlled
Wandsworth borough council since a
year before Margaret Thatcher became
prime minister. At this week’s local
elections, however, Boris Johnson risks
becoming the first Tory leader in 44
years to lose the Iron Lady’s “favourite
council” as voters are given the first
chance to express their opinions on the
No 10 parties scandal.
Wandsworth is not only unrecognis-
able from 1978 — it looks utterly differ-
ent from when Johnson ended his term
as mayor of London six years ago, such
is the pace of change. The borough had
been a willing partner in Johnson’s City
Hall drive to transform run-down parts
of the capital with foreign investment.
Over the course of a decade, a futuris-
tic district emerged from the dismal
stretch of river between Vauxhall
Bridge and Battersea Park. Mirage-like,
a swimming pool hangs 115ft in the air
over former industrial scrubland.
For local residents, the transforma-
tion of Nine Elms has been encapsulat-
ed by Embassy Gardens, a housing
development where flats sell for up to
£4.5 million and residents can swim in a
glass-bottomed “Skypool” that spans
two tower blocks. Thomas Ddumba, 37,
a solicitor who has lived in the area for
more than 20 years says the new money
is edging out long-term residents.
“We are surrounded by blocks of con-
crete and cement,” he says, surveying
the towers from the estate where he
lives. Ddumba says his brother’s old
school was removed to make way for a
luxury block. “We can’t all go to the
private schools,” he says.
The man who spearheaded the de-streets swept and bins emptied on a
budget will help Wandsworth stay blue.
“If we are always going to see local elec-
tions as some kind of equivalent Amer-
ican midterms, we will lose the real
importance of what local government
is all about,” he says.
Govindia wants to focus on the issues
that affect Wandsworth residents every
day, and the Tory party has rebranded
itself on ballot papers as the “Local
Conservatives”. The framing of the
contest as a local affair makes sense
when Labour has a six-point lead in the
polls nationally and 65 per cent of
people think Johnson is doing badly asTotemic Tory council senses a shift in power
velopment of Nine Elms was Eddie
Lister, Tory leader of Wandsworth and
later a deputy mayor to Johnson at City
Hall and Downing Street chief of staff.
Now Lord Udny-Lister, he says the
regeneration of Nine Elms was based
on the Thatcherite development of the
Docklands in the 1980s and points to
the developer-funded extension of the
Northern Line to Battersea Power Sta-
tion that has brought connections to
central London at no cost to taxpayers.
Udny-Lister admits that the money
flooding in from Saudi Arabia and
China and elsewhere has changed the
local area. “People don’t have the same
roots they would have had under Mag-
gie Thatcher’s right-to-buy,” he says.
However, the legacy of Thatcher — a
belief in small government, and sound
public finances — is alive and well, he
insists. The council is the only London
borough to cut council tax this year.
“Right back to the 1970s and 1980s, the
council has always had a philosophy of
keeping the costs down,” he says.
He remembers how Thatcher came
to admire Wandsworth’s can-do atti-
tude. “There were massive savings you
could make when you looked at doing
things differently. That came with a
price — it came with union action and
strikes,” he says. “Local authorities
were crumbling the first time someone
shouted at them, while Wandsworth
just went charging ahead.”
Despite the history, a demographic
shift towards a younger, more cosmo-
politan electorate has been catching up
with the Conservatives in Wandsworth.
The council, including the “nappy
valley” of Clapham, Balham and Toot-
ing, was the eighth most heavily
Remain-voting area in the EU referen-
dum and the entire borough is repre-
sented by Labour MPs.
Labour’s sole gain in the otherwise
catastrophic 2019 general election was
in Putney, in the west of the borough.
Ravi Govindia has been Tory leader
of the council since Lister left in 2011.
He hopes that a reputation for keepingprime minister. In Wandsworth his face
appears only on Labour leaflets.
Govindia admits that the parties
scandal is still angering voters. “It
comes up on the doorstep. People ago-
nise over what’s happened. They share
their pain, they share their anger, they
share their agony, but they’re still stick-
ing around,” he says.
That analysis is not shared by Simon
Hogg, the leader of the Labour group.
Ordered by Labour HQ to focus on the
cost-of-living crisis, he has found that
all the residents of Wandsworth want to
talk about is parties. “These are voters
who were very comfortable with David
Cameron’s Conservative Party —
groovy, liberal, metropolitan. They just
feel that the Conservative Party has
turned its back on them,” he says.
The sky is grey, threatening rain, as
residents go about their shopping on
Wandsworth high street. Anne Keelan,
76, has lived in the borough for half a
century and is old enough to remember
the time when Labour ran the council.
“I like Ravi. He’s a very good leader. He
runs the council as if it were a business
and he replies to my emails,” she says.
However, putting down her bags out-
side the town hall, the retired teacher
says she will not be voting Tory and
tends to lean to Labour anyway. “I think
Boris Johnson was a big mistake for the
Conservative Party,” she says.
Waiting at a bus stop, Pat Kane, 80, is
not shy to express his frustrations with
the government. The lifelong Conserv-
ative voter is switching to Labour this
week and it has nothing to do with the
performance of the local council. “It’s
one cock-up after another with Boris
Johnson. The Conservatives always
provided me with policies I liked. Not
this guy. He’s lost everyone’s trust.”
A retired employee of Tate & Lyle, he
compares his own experiences during
lockdown with what he thinks was a
cavalier attitude in No 10. “My own sons
couldn’t come to the house but the
people in Downing Street were doing as
they liked,” he says.p
as
c
nWandsworth has voted
Conservative since 1978.
The parties scandal may
be about to change that,
George Grylls writes
Anne Keelan thinks the Tories made a
mistake in choosing Boris JohnsonNews Local elections
Labour and Lib Dems deny secret pact
Henry Zeffman Associate Political Editor Battersea Power
Station has been
regenerated with
multi-million pound
flats, but some local
people feel priced
out by new money
JOSHUA BRATT FOR THE TIMES