General Election 2019: The Tory battle to regain Battersea and Kensington
A little over a month ago, things looked bleak for the Conservative Party in London. With most of the party’s resources being directed towards Leave-supporting areas in the Midlands and the North, and the Liberal Democrats heavily targeting pro-Remain seats in the capital, it seemed possible that a clutch of west London seats could turn yellow.
Now, the dial appears to have reset. A poll put out this week by the Mile End Institute, part of Queen Mary University, suggests that at most four seats could change hands, with only two – Zac Goldsmith’s Richmond Park and Mike Freer’s Finchley & Golders Green – going to the Lib Dems.
“On paper, all the others are safer now than they were,” says Philip Cowley, professor of politics at Queen Mary. “Lib Dem support has clearly peaked and is fading, down in both of the last two polls now.”
Leader Jo Swinson’s ratings “have also taken a pounding”, he notes.
Perhaps more surprisingly, the other two seats identified by the poll, Battersea and Kensington, could see a swing from Labour to Conservative.
Both seats were lost in 2017: in Kensington’s case the numbers were so close that ballots had to be counted three times before the final result – a majority of just 20 to Labour’s Emma Dent Coad – could be recorded.
Sam Gyimah, a minister who joined the Lib Dems over Brexit, has opened the fight up in this seat, with many pollsters calling it a three-way race, but now it looks as though the Tories will edge it next week.
“The Lib Dems are making a lot of noise. They have sent out a ridiculous amount of literature. It feels very, very tight,” says Felicity Buchan, who is standing as the Conservative candidate. “Every vote is going to count. This is going to go down to the wire.”
Buchan, who voted Leave in 2016, is hopeful that Kensington’s well-heeled electorate has made its peace with the referendum sufficiently to back her over more “delay and indecision” with either Labour or the Lib Dems.
She also believes that 2017’s flirtation with Dent Coad after a “lacklustre national campaign” is over.
“Clearly we did not have a good campaign in 2017,” she says. “To be very frank I think we were complacent in Kensington. We sent off our activists to other places. We are not going to do that this time.”
Any challenge for a Conservative candidate will be the Grenfell Tower disaster, which Dent Coad has been hugely vocal over.
After the backlash to Gyimah’s eyebrow-raising comments last month seemingly blaming Dent Coad in-part for the ill-fated decision on Grenfell’s cladding , unsurprisingly Buchan dodges questions about where the responsibility lies for the “huge tragedy”.
She does however accept that ultimately there may be findings that are “uncomfortable”.
“It was an appalling tragedy,” she adds. “We need to support the community – the bereaved and the survivors – to help rebuild their lives. I don’t think Grenfell should be politicised.”
Buchan is hoping Boris Johnson’s decision to end austerity, with more funding pledged for schools, the NHS, police and housing, will help win back her divided constituency.
Ultimately, Buchan needs 2017’s shock swing to galvanise people, whatever the forecast next week. “People are aware this is the most marginal seat in the country apart from one in Scotland – and it’s one of the defining elections of a generation,” she says.
Also hoping that a mid-December election won’t dampen turnout is Kim Caddy, who is taking on Marsha de Cordova in Battersea.
She admits it is “incredibly tight… neck and neck” and the polls bear that out – although Mile End Institute thinks it could turn Tory, YouGov had the seat remaining Labour a week before.
Caddy, a Wandsworth councillor who leads on housing, says Corbyn is “really unpopular across the board”, despite the leader having launched the Labour campaign from the Battersea Arts Centre.
“I’ve not found many who have enthusiasm for him as a leader,” she says. “The damage his policies would do to this country – and Battersea in particular – would be devastating. They are not just bad for billionaires, but bad for ordinary people.”
She believes the constituency’s opinion of Corbyn, and on the viability of a second referendum, are both boosting her chances, but she is taking nothing for granted.
“There are so many people who are undecided, weighing up lots of issues, particularly here in London where it was heavily Remain… people are thinking about things very carefully, and that does make for a more complicated campaign,” she says. “But they recognise how tight it is and what is at stake – that motivates people.”
Main image: Getty