As a south Londoner, I’m not suddenly going to jump to the defence of north London.
So, please don’t misunderstand this for what it is not. It’s definitely not a defence of north London, with its over-priced coffee and football teams which promise so much but so often fail to deliver.
Instead, it’s exploring whether the Tories are wise or foolish, impulsive or strategic, in repeatedly bashing north London, a section of it, or a particular group of professionals who happen to inhabit the lands north of the river.
No-one would deny the extraordinary power that Labour figures who have made their home in north London have had over the party, governments and Britain.
Sir Tony Blair, Sir Keir Starmer, Alastair Campbell, Lord Mandelson, Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, Emily Thornberry, Ed Miliband and the list goes on and on...
So, you can see why it was an obvious target for the Tories.
Boris Johnson took a swipe at the Islington set in his Tory party conference speech three years ago (even though he had previously lived in the borough) and this line of attack, with his other jibes, “Sir Beer Korma”, “Captain Hindsight” may well have proved fruitful for the Conservatives at the time.
But now this is looking increasingly doubtful.
Bizarrely, the latest iteration of Conservative north London-bashing was sparked by a sovereignty deal over the Chagos Islands some 5,800 miles away in the Indian Ocean.
“This naive show of FCDO left/liberal cod-internationalism may appeal to right-on North London salons but will stun Brits outside the M25. Sell out. Shameful. Dangerous. #SameOld Labour,” fumed South West Wiltshire MP Andrew Murrison on X, also known as Twitter.
A stiff drink please for Mr Murrison after that fizzler of an outburst.
Or he may have had several before fingers hitting the keyboard and flying into such a startling invective against those north of the river.
The latter, though, is doubtful given Mr Murrison is a serious individual and a former defence minister which makes the north London jibe all the more puzzling, and shows how deeply engrained this barb now is in the Tory Party.
Yes, you might expect it from the likes of Liz Truss who in her first (and only) Tory conference speech as Prime Minister in the autumn of 2022 railed against the “anti-growth coalition’…adding: “They taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo.”
You can see why Rishi Sunak did it as Prime Minster as he attacked Sir Keir Starmer, MP for Holborn and St Pancras, remarking in October 2022 in their first exchanges at the Despatch Box: “I know the Right Hon. and Learned Gentleman rarely leaves north London, but if he does, he will know that there are deprived areas in our rural communities, in our coastal communities…”
Robert Jenrick is in the Tory leadership contest so why not also have a pop (also relating to the Chagos Islands): “We have just handed sovereign British territory to a small island nation that is an ally of China, and we are paying for the privilege, all so the Foreign Secretary can feel good about himself at his next north London dinner party.”
From the then Levelling-up Secretary Michael Gove, though, it was more disappointing: “It might be hard for a North London lawyer to notice what’s going on across the country, but any fair observer would recognise the scale of transformation we are delivering as part of our plan,” he remarked in March in a row over devolution.
And far more surprisingly from even a London MP.
“North London Leftie lawyer and top flip-flopper Sir Keir is one of the @conservatives trump cards in the Selby By-Election!” tweeted Greg Hands in June 2023, who was then Chelsea and Fulham MP and went on to become London minister.
PS: Labour overturn a Tory majority of more than 20,000 to win the Selby and Ainsty by-election.
So, it’s not the odd swipe at north London, it is clearly a more coherent, if possibly counter-productive, plan.
But there is nothing inherently wrong in attacking London, and Parliament, from a political perspective, and it makes perfect sense for the Scottish National Party.
However, for the Tories it is different and they should also be alert to attacking a particular city.
Just switch the word London with Liverpool, can you really imagine a Cabinet minister bad-mouthing lawyers from North Liverpool?
No, you couldn’t, and especially for Liverpool, which Tory party leader Michael Howard ordered Mr Johnson in 2004 to visit to apologise for an editorial in The Spectator, edited by him at the time, which suggested that people in the city were wallowing in disproportionate grief over the killing of an engineer in Iraq.
The portrayal of “north London”, which has also been used as a shorthand slur on the Jewish population in this area, is also wrong.
Unlike many European capitals, notably Paris, north London and central London more generally are not enclaves overwhelmingly of the well-heeled, with one of the city’s strength being its social diversity in nearly all constituencies.
Despite, all these facts, it doesn’t necessarily mean that bashing north London is politically bad for the Tories, especially in a post-truth world, where depictions increasingly do not match reality.
But the political logic of such a strategy looks questionable, to say the least, when you look at the numbers, and numbers in politics are ultimately everything.
The Tories now have zero MPs left in Inner London, which includes the north London swathe of the capital that they deride.
The City, the King’s official residence of Buckingham Palace, and Parliament, are now in a Labour constituency for the first time ever, the Cities of London and Westminster.
You can count the number of Conservative MPs across the whole of north London, including the furthest stretches of Outer London, on one hand.
The party’s overall total number of MPs in the capital is now at just nine.
So, if you want to win back hearts and minds in Chipping Barnet, Hendon, and Finchley and Golders Green, bashing north London seems an odd approach.
You could still, though, make an argument that as cities increasingly go Left, the Tories should sacrifice seats in London and appeal more to the regions.
But the electoral maths has got even stickier for the Tories, and this may be the crucial point why bashing north London now makes far less sense for them, by their loss of so many seats just outside the capital where an anti-London message will have negative resonance.
It will not play well with at least some of the residents of Hitchin, High Wycombe, Chesham and Amersham, Welwyn Hatfield, and Aylesbury, some of who will have moved out from north London, or commute into the capital for work – and all seats which the Tories failed to win at the July general election.
Some south Londoners may also be non-plussed about political bashing of north London, so you can mirror the above picture to some of the constituencies south of the capital lost by the Tories, including Esher and Walton, Surrey Heath, Guildford, Epsom and the list continues.
So, bashing north London looks likely to hamper the Conservatives as they try to win back a swathe of constituencies not only in the capital, but also beyond.
And could it even already have cost them seats?
They lost Hendon to Labour by just 15 votes, the smallest margin in the country. There’s one to ponder.
