Nearly 5% more Londoners cast their votes on 8 June than did so in 2015: a bigger increase than anywhere else in England and nearly twice the percentage increase that brought the UK turnout to the highest level since 1997. In London as elsewhere, there was a clear sense that this election mattered.

In last year’s referendum, Londoners voted largely to remain in the EU. By respecting the Brexit vote and building unity across it, Jeremy Corbyn has evidently caught the popular mood and outmanoeuvred Labour’s ‘Remoaner’ MPs, mainly critics of the leadership, who are now increasingly out of touch with the party’s expanded membership and reduced to sterile gestures.

Nothing better illustrates the maturity of London’s electorate compared with some pro-Remain MPs than the Labour surge that re-elected prominent Labour Leave MP Kate Hoey in Vauxhall, even though Lambeth, where her constituency is located, returned London’s highest Remain vote in the referendum. Many Corbyn-sceptic Remain MPs in constituencies that voted that way last year told their voters this year how passionately they cared about local issues and the EU cause, and said as little as possible about Labour’s manifesto or leader, at least until, on June 9th, it became expedient to do so. [Note 1]

In retrospect, there was no clear way of accounting for which way the votes had gone, except that Labour’s principled UK-wide campaign benefited both Remain and Leave constituencies and MPs/candidates almost equally well. [Note 2] Theresa May had claimed that the election was about Brexit, on which basis she hoped to win a hundred-seat majority. It was not and her hopes were dashed.

The swing to Labour in London was more than twice the increased turnout and cannot therefore be explained by the support of new voters or previous abstainers alone. Conservative and Lib Dem shares barely changed (Conservatives down 1.7%, Lib Dem up 1.1%).  Although it seems clear that many Green and some Lib Dem votes came Labour’s way, and that the Conservatives were better at collecting former UKIP votes, there are too many exceptions and uncertainties to cover in a short article.

The new political map of London features a fat and rather wonky central red cross of Labour constituencies against four blue quadrants of less crowded Tory strongholds out towards the corners.  This corresponds to a tally of 49 seats (4 gains) to Labour, 21 (1 gain, 6 losses) to the Conservatives and 3 (2 gains) to the Lib Dems. [Note 3]

What this map doesn’t show is that increased support for London Labour not only gained new seats and raised majorities where it retained those already held, but also, with only two exceptions, the Labour surge improved the party’s vote share even where another candidate won, especially when it was a Conservative: see table below.

Party

Labour

Conservative

Liberal Democrat