Dulwich & West Norwood Results

[DuncanW]

If the main factor in London returning more Labour MPs is self-interest then please could you explain this to me:

Our corner of se London has seen significant gentrification over the last 5-10 years, so one would assume a demographic shift in the electorate towards the better off. Yet Camberwell & Peckham, and Dulwich & West Norwood returned Labour MPs with an increased share of the vote and Bermondsey and Old Southwark voted in a new Labour MP. How does that work?

[Jeremy]

Duncan - you start with a flawed assumption that people are generally motivated by self-interest. And nevertheless, many people who would be financially better off under a Tory government have no interest in watching public services (which we all depend on to varying degrees) eroded for another five years.

[DuncanW]

Sorry Jeremy - I agree with you and was making the same argument in response to something Uncle Glen had said further up he thread. Not very clearly perhaps...

[Jeremy]

My mistake!

[James Barber]

C&P is still well below the national average in income etc. Southwark has moved from bottom 10 for deprivation to bottom 50. Huge progress but hardly gentrified.

Dulwich & West Norwood. Village ward is just about average for incomes etc and it's the better off 8th of the constituency.

[dc]

James Barber Wrote:

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> Dulwich & West Norwood. Village ward is just about

> average for incomes etc and it's the better off

> 8th of the constituency.

I'm not sure this is correct. GLA figures published last year showed Village ward to have the 6th highest median income in London putting it in the top 1% of wards across the capital on this measure (page 4):

https://goo.gl/y12ruZ

For what it's worth Dulwich & West Norwood does has the 11th highest proportion of residents in the country with a degree or equivalent:

https://goo.gl/64WUOl

[strae]

Well said - could not agree more.

Having said that, I also hope that Clegg is right, and that history judges them more kindly.

They could have chosen to govern with Labour 5 years ago but did the brave (and honourable) thing and went into coalition with the Tories. The gamble was alienating their existing base in exchange for actual time in government and potentially winning new supporters from policy making (however diluted) instead of continuing to be a (shrill) voice in opposition.

This has clearly not worked out for the LD party, but I do think the nation has benefitted from their time in government. While I am sure there are ideological purists out there who would have preferred a strictly Labour or Tory or even LD government, that is not how the votes shook out. We should be grateful that we had a coalition that survived and governed (and arguably well!) for a whole term instead of what could have been a succession of fractured and failed administrations like what we see elsewhere in the world (e.g. Italy...)

Penguin68 Wrote:

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> I suspect the Lib Dems were stuffed in Dulwich for

> the same reason they were stuffed across the

> country - people were polarised wanting either a

> conservative or a socialist (Lab/ SNP) government.

> We had all been led to believe that further

> coalition was likely and the Lib Dems had

> indicated that they could ally with either the

> conservatives or the socialists. That meant that

> in voting for them you couldn't know whether that

> would make a conservative or a socialist

> government more likely. If you lent more to Tory,

> or to Labour, then voting Lib Dem was voting for

> an unknown, you could be left leaning and make a

> Tory led coalition more possible, or right leaning

> and find the Lib Dems allying with Labour. So that

> forced electors to go for the main party of their

> choice - even if they would have preferred either

> a Labour government tempered by Lib Dem views, or

> a Tory one ditto. Because the Lib Dems tried to

> ride both horses, they found themselves riding

> neither.

>

> Frankly the quality and reputation of the actual

> candidates wasn't relevant - hence we saw great

> constituency MPs being knocked down. If the Lib

> Dems had been clear about where their sympathies

> lay they would certainly have lost seats, but not

> nearly as many. Clearly they upset their more left

> leaning electors by working in coalition for the

> last 5 years, but had they stuck to their guns

> their former Tory sympathisers might well have

> stuck to them. Or vice versa. By keeping their

> negotiating powder dry they found themselves with

> nothing to negotiate for.

[Blah Blah]

'Average' income always suggests that most people earn it when in fact most people in work earn below the average income. London is a kind a bubble in that wealth is relative to other wealth in London. It's why many feel wealthy politicians to be out of touch in their lack of understanding of the kind of income most people live on. James is right though in that Southwark is a poor borough as a whole. And it's not the only one in London. The London Boroughs that stayed or went blue demographically are higher in income. It's a clear divide.

I agree strea. Coalition for the Libdems alienated their core vote. But we have no way of knowing what would have been the outcome had they not done that. All economies recover after a deep crash. Greece and Italy have other problems not relevant to the UK, problems that go back a long way. Greece on Tax, Italy on consensus. And of course, the biggest lie of the Tory campaign has always been blaming Labour for an economic mess. No, the global banking crash caused the recession, and the economy had started to recover by the 2010 election. Labours first mistake was their silence in opposition during the first two years of the coalition reign. And they are about to make the same mistake again whilst they look for a new leader.

I think the Libdems will recover in time. All the the main parties have been down at some point. It just takes time. And the Tories are in for a rocky time. Coalition gave them a overwhelming majority. Their jubilation in a single majority may well be short lived once the real business of keeping every Tory MP under a whip gets going - because that's what it's going to take to get anything through parliament. The SNP have won their share of seats as a party opposed to austerity and they have the energy of the new kids on the block. They will be working hard to lobby opposition form all the parties I'm sure.

[DuncanW]

James, my point was that there has been a move towards gentrification and corresponding shift in demographic. YOu're not arguing that's not the case surely?

[DaveR]

"The London Boroughs that stayed or went blue demographically are higher in income. It's a clear divide."

Not quite so clear. Bexleyheath, Romford, Chingford = Tory, Hampstead, Ealing and Dulwich = Labour. The demographic profile of London has changed considerably in the last 20 years, so that many outer London boroughs have become comparatively poorer while inner London areas have extreme variations pretty much next door to each other. The Tories have always been strong in the suburbs and Labour in the inner city and that has persisted to a great extent, but it's obviously about more than income.

http://londondatastore-upload.s3.amazonaws.com/instant-atlas/gla-household-income-estimates/atlas.html

"And of course, the biggest lie of the Tory campaign has always been blaming Labour for an economic mess. No, the global banking crash caused the recession, and the economy had started to recover by the 2010 election."

Interesting that every credible Labour figure since the election has said that one of the reasons for defeat was a refusal to face up to the economic failures of the previous Labour govt, most particularly that net borrowing increased year on year from 2000 to 2006 despite tax receipts rising and the economy apparently healthy. This is the famous accusation that Labour failed to "fix the roof when the sun was shining", and, like it or not, the figures back it up. GB claimed that this was 'investment' and thus his infamous golden rule remained in place, but the reality is that a large proportion of the borrowed money disappeared in a public sector hiring spree that has been in the process of being reversed since 2010.

[Charles Martel]

DuncanW Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> If the main factor in London returning more Labour

> MPs is self-interest then please could you explain

> this to me:

>

> Our corner of se London has seen significant

> gentrification over the last 5-10 years, so one

> would assume a demographic shift in the electorate

> towards the better off. Yet Camberwell & Peckham,

> and Dulwich & West Norwood returned Labour MPs

> with an increased share of the vote and Bermondsey

> and Old Southwark voted in a new Labour MP. How

> does that work?

Many ?better off? people believe that they are ?better off? today than their parents or grandparents were because of the structural changes in society over the last century driven by the Labour movement. Free secondary education, comprehensive schools and expansion of access to university have all driven massive social mobility.

It is now completely normal for white collar professional people, from the kind of ordinary office workers who live in East Dulwich to Emily Thornberry et al. in their large north London houses, to come from industrial working class or similar blue collar lower class backgrounds. Because of the role the Labour party played in creating the social changes these people as individuals, and their communities, have benefited from there is still a great degree of loyalty to the party. This is a loyalty based on a century of history, often oral family history, not whether there would be a tax cut after the next election. I was a Labour party fund raiser in 1991 and talking to donors then the impression I got was that they were ideologically committed to the Labour party as a means of social change.

I am not sure what is supposed to have happened in East Dulwich over the last 5 ? 10 years that had not happened over the previous 10 or 20 years. The first ?middle class? person to buy a house, renovate it and then have a baby did not do so in the last 5 ? 10 years. Most of the change in this area actually consists of more and more of the same rather than anything very different. In the 1970s this was a Conservative Labour marginal, held by Labour, but with a very high profile Conservative candidate Eric Morley, founder of Miss World. The Conservatives were very active and had a much, much higher profile than they do now. When Gerry Bowden won the seat for the Conservatives in 1983 I can recall that they had dozens of activists walking down our road with him, knocking on doors and getting people to come out and shake his hand. The seat was still marginal when he lost to Tessa Jowell in 92, but with the boundary changes by 1997 it had become a safe Labour seat. The only real change since then has been the LibDems becoming the second party in the constituency, until last week.

[DaveR]

"Many ?better off? people believe that they are ?better off? today than their parents or grandparents were because of the structural changes in society over the last century driven by the Labour movement. Free secondary education, comprehensive schools and expansion of access to university have all driven massive social mobility.

It is now completely normal for white collar professional people, from the kind of ordinary office workers who live in East Dulwich to Emily Thornberry et al. in their large north London houses, to come from industrial working class or similar blue collar lower class backgrounds. Because of the role the Labour party played in creating the social changes these people as individuals, and their communities, have benefited from there is still a great degree of loyalty to the party. This is a loyalty based on a century of history, often oral family history, not whether there would be a tax cut after the next election. I was a Labour party fund raiser in 1991 and talking to donors then the impression I got was that they were ideologically committed to the Labour party as a means of social change."

And if you believe that santimonious, self-serving romantic drivel you'll believe almost anything (though if you speak mainly to well off Labour donors it's easy to see how you might go astray).

Public sector workers (including teachers, central govt civil servants, NHS staff etc) are effectively Labour's 'payroll vote' and are significantly over-represented in inner London, alongside more traditional Labour voters, and the clasic left intelligentsia. The aspirational working classes have traditionally voted Tory, hence their dominance in those part of outer London, Essex etc.

NB - free secondary education goes back pretty much to Balfour (1902), although many would credit RAB Butler (a Tory) as the real founder of modern secondary education.

[LondonMix]

I find it really hard to follow the tribal loyalties in UK politics. In the run up to the election, every cab driver I spoke to (I take a taxi for work most days to get around) was against Labor and were staunchly Conservative. Someone once explained this to me as the legacy of Maggie Thatcher who was popular for right to buy (no idea if this is true).

My husband?s grandparents are very London working class and are lifelong Tory voters. His parents are very working class and lifelong Labour supporters. Of the three brothers (all of who are now white collar university educated professionals), one voted Labor the other Tory (because he found Ed Miliband totally uninspiring) and the last voted Tory because he actually thought Cameron was quite a good PM.

Won?t tell you which one I?m married to!

I?m not really sure what the true demographic of Tory and Labor voters is in London. My working class Welsh friends are all Labour but they get riled even at the mention of Margret Thatcher because of what she did to Welsh mining communities (is that right?)

Why are the Scottish so left leaning as a block?

[Blah Blah]

I agree DaveR that public spending went up under labour (they created a million public sector jobs I think) but that's the cost of repairing the underfunding of public services from the Thatcher era. Labour did get NHS waiting lists down, they did employ more doctors, nurses, police etc. We can't have it both ways on that. Either we want public services or we don't. Which is why I keep banging on about wages and jobs. When the Tories find a way to eliminate the need for the state (i.e. tax payers) to subsidise jobs, when they find a way to regenerate the economy nationwide and tackle the real areas of unemployment etc then I'll buy this idea that they are better for the economy than Labour. The truth is that both parties have little answer to any of that, which is why we get into idealogical debates about who should get what share of the economy there is.

[Blah Blah]

Tribal loyalties are complex LondonMix because they are a mix of die hard generational loyalty, some of it glavanised by bitter experience and class, and increasingly shaken up by the widespread aspirational culture that has emerged over the last 30 years. I suspect there are far more floating voters than there were 30 years ago too.

[LondonMix]

I think so too. While young people are ideological, I don't think the traditional left-right paradigm is the natural fit. I think more people are centrists that can swing depending on the candidate and policies.

That's just based on anecdotal experiences of course

[HelBel65]

Just spent a frustrating half hour trying to contribute to this thread, editing and editing so the EDF software would accept my post but giving up now. Particularly interested in responses to the post by LondonMix. Nothing controversial or weird - just keeps blocking my post. Anyone else have a problem with ipad and EDF? Annoyed!

[HelBel65]

And that one worked fine! Eh? :(

[Otta]

You have probably used a perfectly innocent word which is on the banned list due to some spam attack on the forum.

[HelBel65]

Apparently so and I have experienced it in the past when trying to sell a lawnmower (!) but no amount of editing has worked!

[Sue]

I've had similar problems in the past, editing and editing, trying to find the word-or-part-of-a-word which is not allowed, and still unable to post.

I feel your pain :))

[HelBel65]

Thanks, Sue. Annoying cos I was quite pleased with my post! :))

[LondonMix]

K!tchen is on the banned list (or was)