Sam Griffiths: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of The Better Places podcast from concilio. I'm Sam Griffith from Concilio, your host today. Today we are going to be discussing the upcoming local elections in London, which are scheduled for Thursday, the 7th of May next year, and how the possible results could impact planning and development in the capital.

At Concilio, we are now launching our monthly election reports, which will give you all the latest news and polling analysis each month all the way up to may. Make sure you sign up to receive our first report by going to our website or clicking the link in the description. My guest today is Professor Tony Traverse.

From the London School of Economics, Tony is the leading academic expert on London and its governance, and he has written numerous books on the city, including his superb history, which he edited of the first 20 years of London's mayor, uh, which I highly recommend. So thank you for joining us, Tony.

Tony Travers: Very kind.

Thank you.

Sam Griffiths: Um, so I wanted to start with, uh, a little bit of history really. [00:01:00] Um, looking back, it was less than 20 years ago to the, to the 2006 local elections. The conservatives won the popular vote and actually controlled twice as many councils as labor. Um, and now fast forward to 2022 and labor won. The Tory strongholds of Westminster and Wandsworth, um, and at that point looked pretty dominant in the capital.

So what do you think explains this, this shift that's taken place in the last 20 years in broad terms, um, and the decline of the conservatives and the dominance of labor?

Tony Travers: Um, it's a really interesting question because up till almost the end of the 1990s. Over the full cycle at the national level. 'cause you know, we all, we all, we know that when there are, uh, parties in power for a particular length of a long time, uh, their party tends to do less well in local elections.

But up to the end of the 1990s, the conservatives and labor, the. Did really in a, did equally well over [00:02:00] time. And in fact their vote share in London over the long term was very close to the Great Britain average. So London, despite being strange in other ways, was very like Great Britain when it came to voting.

So the average for Britain and what happened after the end of the 1990s is that labor. Other things being equal pulled ahead and the conservatives fell behind. This is partly suspect for demographic reasons. The population of London changed radically. It became even younger than it had been. More immigration, uh, sort of really just a change to the demography of London.

So it doesn't mean the conservatives couldn't win in some places, but they fell behind in others. So, you know, as we know, Onesworth and Westminster are still, uh. Marginals between those two parties, almost as if it was the 1950s, whereas elsewhere in, say, Lambeth next door to Onesworth and Camden next door to Westminster, in those boroughs, which used to be competitive between labor and the conservatives, the conservatives have effectively [00:03:00] almost died out.

So, uh, it, it's a mixture of demography. Different varies from place to place. And I think where the conservatives have held on, they're still competitive, but overall, they're not as competitive as

Sam Griffiths: they once were. Thank you. Yeah, that's really interesting. And then we're gonna try and focus on some of those boroughs a bit later on.

But I guess just looking at the elections we had last year in London, both the um, mayoral elections and then the general election, obviously Sad Khan secured a pretty successful re-election. Third term as Mayor, um, and Labor One, an enormous majority in the general election. Um, so, but what explains the sort of rapid.

A decline in support labor have seen there. Not just the national issues that we all know about, but local issues. And do you think that those results in 2024 were sort of the first warning sign for labor that cracks in their London dominance was really starting to show? Yeah, so I mean actually in the

Tony Travers: general election, London.

Sam Griffiths: [00:04:00] It

Tony Travers: was very good for labor. They won more seats. Although it's true, there were a number of constituencies last year in the general election where they did far less well, and that was a longer leading indicator of what's likely to happen in the borough elections. And they did badly in places where there was an insurgent.

Vote to their left. So we're talking here about a mixture of greens. Um, well, they didn't exist at the time. The ref, you know, the new, uh, Jeremy Corbin party. Yeah, they're new. But also the pro-Palestine independence and that sort of group to the left, or collection of politicians to the left of labor has proved.

Capable of winning substantial number of votes, even in the Prime Minister's constituency, uh, you know, in ho and St. Pancreas last year, but also in the number of East London boroughs and actually outside London in places like Birmingham. So you've got here, uh, a fragmenting of politics, which is a national phenomenon, but which has a, will have a particular, is already [00:05:00] having, will soon have a particular London manifestation.

It'll vary from borough to borough, but over the city as a whole. There's gonna be a fragmentation of what used to be a fairly block conservative plus labor vote.

Sam Griffiths: Okay? So, um. In terms of the splits on the left, um, one of the, the green parties making a lot of headlines recently with their energetic, new, new leader, uh, Zach Polanski.

Um, so what do you think, what borough do you think the green should be focusing on looking at the elections next year? Um, and where do you think they have a real chance of, uh, actually winning seats and perhaps taking, even taking control of a borough of labor?

Tony Travers: Well, I mean the greens, but I think the greens will have to think long and hard about how they work with the Corbin.

Your party. Party. It hasn't got a name yet, but when it gets a name. Yep. And other independents, because otherwise they'll just fight each other. And minimize their capacity to unseat labor. But to answer your question, [00:06:00] question directly, they clearly, the greens definitely think they've got a really good chance in Hackney.

Mm Uh, so that's one place. Uh, I think Islington, which after all is Jeremy Corbin's. Uh, own borough, uh, where he won as an independent in the general election last year. So possibly in Camden and Lambath and South in some parts of the borough. And then for other parts of this sort of left of, left of Labor Coalition, you'd expect them to win seats in boroughs, like Newham.

Not sure about Ta Hamlets. Ta hamlets is a different thing altogether, but possibly in Newham, possibly in Red Bridge. So, um. They won't win everywhere, so they're not gonna do very well in Bexley or Kensington and Chelsea. But there are borough where labor has been powerful in the past, where their dominance is going to be threatened, partly because in some borough they're seen as too dominant, and partly because this new grouping to the left of labor is.

I wouldn't say it's ex, it's not [00:07:00] only present in London, but it's particularly present in London because of the young voter

Sam Griffiths: base.

Tony Travers: Hmm.

Sam Griffiths: And I guess focusing specifically on the, on this, uh, new left grouping, call it, whatever you want to call it, um, do, do you, you mentioned, uh, Newham and Red Redbridge and in the general election.

They came pretty close to unseating, lots of high profile labor mps. Like west treating. West treating. Yeah. Um, and so, so what, what do you think is the difference in the appeal there between, um, the, this left wing group that is obviously, um. In large part motivated by international foreign policy issues, particularly around Israel and Gaza.

Um, and then someone like Zach Polanski, who is, uh, and the Green Party, who are obviously much more interested in climate change issues, and particularly in, in terms of. In terms of London politics, more interested in active travel, uh, public transport, cycling, um, whereas it seems like lots of the other left [00:08:00] grouping you could call it mm-hmm.

Um, are a bit more conservative on that, on that issue. So, so what do you think is the driving the two different parties and, and where are their voters different from one another? Well, that is a,

Tony Travers: in sense, a question that is fascinating to unravel, not just in London, because you're absolutely right. Uh, greens of course, they're more than an environmental.

Party, they have to have other policies. They have MPS now, so they've got to go broader than purely the environment, which is their starting point. And it's the thing I think that motivates their most motivated members and activists. Um, the, uh. Corbin party, which is coming into existence is in some ways like momentum, but in some ways has roots back in the radicalism of the seventies and sixties, you know, and some of its members like Jeremy Corbin have been around since then, so that's slightly different.

Um. Probably concerned about the environment, definitely concerned about, uh, Gaza and Palestine. And then you've got these [00:09:00] independents who have particularly fought on the issue of Palestine. Um, and so they're an uneasy coalition. They're, you know, they're sort of. Fragmented and uneasy coalition, but I understand that they are trying to get their game to get their, to work together for the, uh, borough elections in order that they don't fight each other.

So it'd be very interesting to see how they decide who should fight where. But that's a general issue relating, I'm sure will get to, to tactical voting, which won't only apply. In relation to them and the Labor Party, but elsewhere between the conservatives and the liberal Democrats, for example. So the, you know, in, in our voting system, tactical voting as we saw in the 2024 election is now hugely important.

So people have learned who to vote against or who to vote for to get their second preference result.

Sam Griffiths: We're gonna see a lot of that in future. Exactly, and I, I think it's really interesting that, um, as you mentioned, there are already divisions within the Jeremy Corbin party. Um, [00:10:00] the Green Party leadership election got a bit nasty as well, didn't it?

So Well, and these, these parties are a bit divided already inside themselves. The left

Tony Travers: is famously factional. It always has been, and even the far left of the Labor Party. And it is interesting. There's another group we haven't quite touched on, which is people who won't leave the Labor Party. We're talking about people like John McDonald and Diane John McDonald and Diane Abbot here, who are long-term labor members, but who will have many of the sympathy, lots of sympathy with these groups we're talking about, but I mean, famously the left has always been very, very, very factional.

And one of the intriguing things about the British Party system is that that factionalism, which was always present on the far left. And therefore on the edge of the Labor Party has now broken out on the right because the Conservative Party was a famously coherent block over time that it's now got a problem on.

I mean, reform are not purely on their right. They're sometimes on the rights, but. To their right, so they've now got, now got the same kind of problem on [00:11:00] the right with factionalism because of reform. So that's why the whole system is moving from a two and a half system party system to potentially a five party

Sam Griffiths: system according to the polls at the moment.

Okay, so why don't we, um, come on to talk about what's happening on the right of politics in London. Um, the conservative Party, um, are probably not expecting a great set of local elections next year, I think it's fair to say, but they might be hoping for a bit of good news in London, possibly winning Westminster and Wandsworth, as you mentioned, winning back those, um, sort totemic flagships they, they held for so many decades.

Um, how, how likely do you think that is at the moment in those particular boroughs?

Tony Travers: I think

Sam Griffiths: it's a reasonable chance.

Tony Travers: I mean, um. If you look at where the polls were and the run up to the 2022 elections when these borough elections were last fought, and look where they are now and strip everything else out of it, uh, IE all these new parties, the, the conservatives are doing less well than they were doing in 2022, but labor is doing much less well than [00:12:00] in 2022, and that's in conventional.

Political, Ceph, logical, not a word we should really use much. Uh, terms is a shift. So it's a swing from labor to the conservatives if you take everything else out. So in Burris is a labor conservative, competitive Barnett, Wandsworth Westminster most obviously, but also actually places like Enfield and Redbridge, which have all been very dominated by these parties really continuously.

Then few. Look at what, what will happen there. It's hard not to imagine there'll be a swing to the conservatives, even though it's all this noise going on, because just 'cause of the relative positions they start from back in 2022. We weren't expecting, I'm sure you weren't expecting in this pilot, in this um, uh, podcast and broadcast to talk about.

Uh, Trafford, but actually there was a byelection in Trafford, uh, just yesterday when, um, last [00:13:00] week, uh, when, uh, it was very like some parts of London. So about 80 plus percent of the vote was conservative, all labor and the conservatives won it from labor, and that is a little straw in the wind I think about the conservative versus labor, um, fights, contests that still exist.

Won't be like this in

Sam Griffiths: Bey, but it'll come onto to that. Okay. So, um, you mentioned Enfield. That's a really interesting case study where the conservatives have a good chance of winning back control from labor, but are obviously worried about losing a large part of their vote reform and the effect that could have.

Um, do you, do you think in, in outer London the conservatives. Uh, should be, should be worried about reform taking off a large part of their vote, or do you think they should, um, consider it as they would've in years ago? Uh, a more traditional conservative versus labor contest? Well,

Tony Travers: uh, I think. Here we've got to rely, look, we've got some evidence, a bit of [00:14:00] evidence.

First, the most obvious piece of evidence is what happened in the local elections outside London, right on the border, uh, in May this year. And that gives us a clue, um, in places like Bexley and Bromley where Reformed did enormously well just over the boundary. And in, you know, Bexley and Dartford are continuously built up, so.

I think we will see reform do well in some boroughs, but not in all. Uh, so we come back to Enfield and other parts of outer London. I think there'll be some wins for reform there, but not comprehensive wins. Mm-hmm. So you'd expect on the sort of Hartford and Essex border, some wins and the outer part of those boroughs, but not, um, not in the way, I think in, in places like Havening and Bexley, where on the basis of, uh.

Earlier factors about voting of which were in a moment, you'd expect reform to do very well. The earlier factor is, of course, [00:15:00] how people voted in the referendum back in 2016, and whether it's a large leave vote. It's a not bad predictor of where reform will likely to do well, and that immediately gives you clues about Havening, Bexley, uh, Sutton rather more surprisingly, uh, lip dem council of which more later perhaps.

Yeah. And then Bexley, uh, which I mentioned as well. So, you know, so we need to look to some evidence, particularly the leave vote, to give us clues about where reform's likely to do well. Okay. Or badly Indeed.

Sam Griffiths: Yeah, exactly. Um, and at the, at the local elections last year, which obviously didn't take place in London, but I should say this year, sorry, in May this year, um, reform did incredibly well elsewhere in the country.

One control of 10 councils and a really. Seem to be, uh, reshaping local government in those kind of areas. Um, if there is possibility that reform could win control of a borough in London or form a coalition with the conservatives perhaps in somewhere like Havening [00:16:00] or Bexley, um, how do you think that would change London's governance?

How do you think that would. Impact how other councils work with Reform Councils, how the GLA works with the Reform Council. Um, how, how would that dynamic shift with a whole new party coming in? Well, I mean, the local government's association

Tony Travers: nationally has already had to deal with this issue because it represents councils across England.

And as a result, they now have to, they have a reform group inside, uh, the LGA. So I think that. If reform were to win a council outright or to get the largest, be the largest party and have to form some sort of agreement, that begs an interesting question, of course, of whether other parties would try to put together a coalition to keep reform out.

That's another possibility. But in the end, uh, London Councils representing the boroughs. City hall, the mayor would have to deal with a reform council in just the same way they do. Others, they'd have been legitimately elected. And [00:17:00] um, you know, in terms of demo, uh, liberal democracy, they'd have to be given exactly the same treatment as any other party that was represented.

And presumably, and this begs an interesting question. They'd have policy views. And they'd have policy views on development, for example, and those would become immediately interesting, uh, to everybody who's involved in the construction and development

Sam Griffiths: industry. Fantastic. I should give a plug to our, uh, reform reports that Concilio put out every month analyzing what the, uh, reform led councils are doing around the country.

And, uh, we might be, uh, seeing a lot more of that in London, maybe after May. Um, so why don't we move on to the liberal Democrats now. Um, they seem to be in a strong position nationally. Of course, they're led by a proud Southwest Londoner. Ed Davy, um, do you think. The traditionally, they, they're strong stronghold has been in the Southwest.

Um, do you think we are likely to see a serious push from the Lib Dems in May into more central labor boroughs, possibly Southern Camden and Haringey, where they've had a good base in the [00:18:00] past? I mean, the most of all, the most obvious

Tony Travers: place for them to look to win a council outright is Merton. Um, so, uh, you know, you'd have to say on the basis of their success in the general election than Wimbledon last year, that Merton must be a top target for the Liv Dems, and they'll undoubtedly put everything there.

But your question points to the fact that they've done far better in the past and still have a base in, let's say, Haringey, uh, the tower Hamlets in the. Passed as well. You know, I mean, that's just more distant and different. Um, so, and, and they did win a by-election in Camden recently in West Hamstead. So I think yes, the, the Lib Dems who are, you know, they did incredibly well at the general election last year are for years and years and years and years of moaning about how, uh, the first pass the post, uh voting system gave them too few seats for the number of votes they won.

The general election last year, they got entirely proportionate, they targeted their votes so well that they [00:19:00] managed to get 11% of the votes and 11% of the seats, I think it was gen at the national level. And I think something like that will happen in London. So they will target their efforts in places like Westham to, but not across Camden.

Uh, they'll do it in, in the west part of Haringey. But not the whole of Haring Gay, hoping that they can build, begin to build back inroads to, you know, winning three or 400 seats as they have in the past, but they didn't last time. So I think, yes, I would expect them to start. And Southern, of course, is another place where they control the riverfront, but not so far.

So I think you'll see quite a lot of lib dem action at the margin to push either south or west, depending on where they are, or east in Camden, to try to extend

Sam Griffiths: the way they can win seats. Yeah. And thinking about the Lib Dems sort of Southwest stronghold that we mentioned in the context of, um, the conservatives, uh, losing their flagship [00:20:00] councils that we've mentioned, labor looking increasingly worried about councils that they previously would've considered very safe.

What do you think makes. The Lib Dems or Southwest London base, so durable, uh, for them compared to other parts of London and, and, and, and the country. Well, it,

Tony Travers: it's interesting, it, it's worth remembering that the liberal Democrat vote in southwest London, so in Kingston, Richmond and Sutton. Was a labor vote.

Originally it was back in the 1960s and seventies. It was a labor vote that migrated to the liberal Democrats and that allowed moderate conservatives to migrate to this sort of centrist party. It's what, you know, it's the sort of ideal version of politics that many, you know, in the center of politics, always wi, always wished happened.

So you get this great big centrist block and then it becomes dominant yet oddly. Uh, it never worked like that. And in Cross Britain as a whole, you had a left-wing party and a right wing party or left to center, right or center party, and they would just block parties that kept out the center. [00:21:00] So that's, so in the sense that they've managed to do this sort of ideal version of Centris politics, I think the answer to why they're so powerful is that the conservative party.

Um, has been pretty unpopular in recent years and they're their main competitors. So in Richmond and Kingston in particular, it's a conservative or lib dem versus conservative fight lib Dems. Uh, did well when the conservatives were in power and as the longer they were in power, the better they did to the fact that Richmond has virtual.

I don't think there's any opposition now, so the conservative will come back there eventually here and there. But, uh, and of course the, the liberal Democrats in the. Places, um, are endlessly trading off trying to hold conservative voters whilst also having center left voters in the centrist block.

They've been successful at it. My guess is they'll continue to be successful, successful at it next year because both the Labor Party and the Conservative Party are unpopular at the same time. And if [00:22:00] that continues, it's great

for

Sam Griffiths: the Lib Dems. And so I wanted to, um, finish off by thinking about, uh, in a broad sense how the results next year could impact, um, decision making for planning and development.

Um, it seems likely that we might have more boroughs under no overall control compared to what we have. I think we, it's fair to say we probably have a historically, fairly low number of boroughs under no air control at the moment. 2006, there were many more. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, um. Obviously that that leads to coalitions and horse trading and that kind of thing.

So how do you think, um. More, more, more Noa rule control would change how boroughs run, um, and how they would particularly work with the GLA and the and the national government. Do you think that's gonna be a good thing for London or do you think it would just lead to more sort of division and. A weaker voice for London when talking to the, when talking to the government.

Tony Travers: Well, and that's a, it's a cool question. I'll answer it, but it's just, I think, worth pointing out that whatever happens is [00:23:00] happening against the backdrop of this major reform to the planning system that the government's. Proposing, which if I know what I read in the, the media generally is going to be quite radical when it comes to changing the regulations and demands for social and affordable housing and so on.

So that's gonna be a sort of countervailing force to what I'm about to say, which is there's no question that in many parts of London, um, labor councils have been more pro-development than conservatives and liberal Democrats. Yep. Other things being equal, not true ever, but generally. So the weaker labor are.

Uh, the more their opponents, not just the conservatives and liberal Democrats, other parties I think, are likely to pick up on where there's anti-development sentiment as a good cause to run with in the lo local elections next year. And there are plenty of places in London where. Anti-development sentiment is powerful, particularly amongst, uh, voters, owner occupiers, often older owner occupiers who, [00:24:00] uh, are the same people who vote a lot.

They're, they're, you know, they're there. There's a complete overlap there between people who are interested in these issues and people have a view on them and voting. So I think that not only the risk of them being more, no overall control councils making it more difficult to, for decision making, but the fact is that the.

anti-Labor coalition, if you can call it that, involving the conservatives, the lib doms, the greens, um, the Corbin party and the independence, they'll all beat to some extent. I think looking for votes and opposing labor on, um, development issues in some places will be popular. So, uh, with that in mind, I think that the.

Impact of not only the outcome of the election, but the election itself is going to make development slightly more difficult. But then we've got to go back to this issue of what the government's doing to liberalize planning, which may override councils more than in the past, and where that all [00:25:00] comes, where it settles.

We'll discover in

Sam Griffiths: about three years time. Fantastic. Thank you Tony. Um, that was absolutely, absolutely fascinating discussion and, um, hopefully we'll get to talk to you, uh, again in the future, perhaps to pick over these, how wrong I was. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure not how wrong you were, but, uh, certainly, uh.

London politics. It doesn't look like it's gonna get any, any less. Interesting anytime soon. We hope not. Well, thank you very much for your time. Um, and we hope, uh, you enjoyed this edition of the, uh, better Places podcast from concilio. Uh, don't forget to sign up for concilio monthly election reports on the upcoming London elections.

Uh, we'll give you all the latest news and polling analysis each month up until the elections in May. You can sign up to receive. Our first report by going to the website or clicking the link in the description. Uh, so thank you very much once again, Tony for joining us, and thank you for watching and goodbye.