Rishi Sunak should be very concerned about the threat of political “Londonisation” of the South-East, a leading expert warned on Wednesday.
Professor Tony Travers, from the London School of Economics, highlighted some of the shock results in the region outside the capital in last week’s town hall elections.
“It looks as if people are leaving London and some of them are taking their Liberal Democrat and Labour-voting habits with them,” he told the Standard.
“There is a risk to the Conservative Party of ‘Londonisation’, particularly in the South-East. It appears to have started to the west of London. As you look west from London there is a large and growing patch of Lib-Dem councils.”
Professor Travers, an expert in local government, stressed that swathes of the South-East had been the “bedrock” of the Conservative Party “even in bad years”, so party chiefs should be “very concerned” at the latest apparent shift in voting patterns.
He believes the changes are down to the trend of people leaving London as they grow older having accelerated during the pandemic; that many of these areas were pro-Remain and the harm of Brexit is becoming more evident; some Tory policies aimed at wooing former “Red Wall” voters were likely to alienate others in the “Blue Wall” in the south; and the fact that the Conservatives have now been in power for 13 years.
On Friday, the Lib-Dems won Windsor and Maidenhead council (where the MP is ex-Prime Minister Theresa May), Surrey Heath (Levelling-up Secretary Michael Gove), Chichester (Education Secretary Gillian Keegan), gained seats in Elmbridge (Dominic Raab), as well as seizing control of South Oxfordshire, West Berkshire, Horsham, Guildford, and Dacorum to the north of London. The Tories were wiped out in Lewes in East Sussex.
To the east of the capital, Labour gained Medway, Dover, Gravesham and Thanet, and, in possibly one of the biggest shocks, Bracknell Forest to the west, where tactical voting is believed to have played a significant role.
The Lib-Dems gained 192 councillors, Labour 130, and the Greens 67 while the Tories lost 380 in the South-East, more than a third of their total across England.
The largest swing in the country was in the south, with the Tories down four percentage points, and Labour up 5.2.
The Conservatives still hold Reigate and Banstead, Sevenoaks, Dartford, Thurrock, Basildon, Epping Forest, Braintree, Harlow, Broxbourne and Rushmoor.
A string of councils in the South-East are now under no overall control.
Labour took three flagship Tory councils in London last year — Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet — but lost Croydon, Harrow and Tower Hamlets.
