The City of London has been the centre of a global empire and one of the great hubs of globalised finance. But a Labour constituency? Not for nearly a century.
Yet on Friday morning, under a grey pall of cloud and heavy rain, the Square Mile was coming to terms with a new Labour MP, Rachel Blake, as part of a landslide victory led by Keir Starmer.
The win is part of a near wipeout of the Conservative party in the capital. In the affluent south-western suburbs the Liberal Democrats gained four seats from the Tories. Labour gained eight, including in traditionally blue suburbs. That left only eight Conservatives hanging on at the edges of Greater London.
“I actually like Rishi Sunak,” said Andy, 60, a director of a construction company on his way to his office in the City. He voted Conservative but acknowledged that the shift to Labour was hardly a surprise: his wife’s “protest vote” helped to deliver a switch from Tory to Labour in the constituency where they live, Eltham and Chislehurst.
“I think a lot of people have moved away from their spiritual position because of headlines,” he said. “People’s core beliefs remain the same.”
London utterly dominates the UK economy, an imbalance that remains little changed despite the levelling up agenda to boost other regions the former prime minister Boris Johnson espoused. But even though the city and its surroundings are still by far the wealthiest part of the UK, the Conservatives have haemorrhaged support in the capital.
“Generally delighted,” was the verdict of Sarah, a solicitor in her 40s, clutching an umbrella. She used to live in Greenwich, but now commutes into the centre from Woking, just outside Greater London’s boundaries. That seat flipped from Conservative to Lib Dems. Labour too has attracted the relatively wealthy, after assiduously courting the business community with a message of stability.
“Rachel Reeves seems sensible,” she said. “I’d hope so. They’ve got an uphill struggle. The economy is a mess.”
For the Lib Dems, almost everything that could go right in London did go right, but Labour did suffer some setbacks. That included the failure to take Chingford and Woodford Green from the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, because of a split vote after the party replaced its former candidate. The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also won as an independent candidate in Islington North after being kicked out by Starmer. And Wes Streeting, expected to be health minister, narrowly kept his seat after a challenge by an independent who strongly criticised Labour’s position on the war in Gaza.
The Green party did not win any seats in the capital, despite taking a record four nationally. However, it came second in several constituencies, particularly in the south-east, with increased vote shares.
Sophie, 39, who works in the finance department for a multinational IT company, said the record vote for the Greens was “amazing”.
“I don’t believe in Labour or the Conservatives,” she said. “One seems to be for the elite, and the other I don’t know where they’re going to get the money from.”
In the actual City of London, the ancient area once bounded by Roman walls, the last non-Conservative member was elected in 1931, according to Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester. Today’s constituency, the Cities of London and Westminster, also contains Mayfair and Belgravia – areas that are global bywords for the ultra-wealthy. The former Tory chair Greg Hands was also defeated in nearby Chelsea and Fulham.
Keith Bedford, 79, has worked for 40 years in the centre of the City, now in the reception of the London Chamber of Commerce. He speculated as to whether the party might now struggle to retain the wealthiest areas if it decides to raise personal tax such as inheritance or capital gains taxes.
Andy, the construction company director, said: “I’m a capitalist. I’m someone who believes we have to generate wealth. It’ll be my type of person that gets caught in the pinch.”
It could be five years before Labour’s hold on the new gains is tested. One suited banker working in the City, who declined to give his name or his vote, said he was “not naturally inclined towards Labour”, and the mood in his industry was “not positive”.
“I think we just needed change,” he said. “I typically vote Tory, but the Conservative leaders have no credibility any more.”
A big reason for that was the 45-day premiership of Liz Truss, when a tax-cutting “mini-budget” triggered the collapse of the pound and the Bank of England stepping in to stabilise financial markets. (Truss duly lost her seat in South West Norfolk.)
“That was the final straw because she ruined the financial credibility of the Tories,” the banker said.
