Why Labour lost in Uxbridge and South Ruislip
JVL Introduction
Everyone is blaming Labour’s failure to take Uxbridge on Sadiq Khan’s anti-Ulez policy.
Adam Ramsay in openDemocracy challenges this easy explanation.
It is clear that the ULEZ scheme in place in central London since 2019 has been a success in reducing pollution and associated disease. And there is broad consensus on the need to tackle air pollution.
Instead of making the case for Ulez and supporting London’s mayor, Labour candidate Danny Beales (a councillor in Starmer’s constituency) looked for easy votes by opposing it.
It didn’t work. As Ramsay puts it, “voters hate few things more than politicians who look like they’ll say anything to get elected.” Labour offered nothing positive.
The defeat was followed soon after by the resignation of the chair of Uxbridge and South Ruislip Constituency Labour Party (as chair and from the Party) saying politics needs “principles” and praising former party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
RK
This article was originally published by OpenDemocracy on Fri 21 Jul 2023. Read the original here.
What Uxbridge does (and doesn’t) tell us about ULEZ and Labour’s strategy
Both Labour and the Tories blame Sadiq Khan’s anti-pollution strategy. But are they right about what voters want?
In the hours since Labour failed to take Uxbridge and South Ruislip from the Tories in Thursday’s by-election, the talking point from both parties has been near-identical: the expansion by Sadiq Khan of London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) into the outer boroughs is to blame.
What’s certainly true is that the Tory campaign focused heavily on opposition to the proposal. Leaflets framed the now MP Steve Tuckwell not as a Conservative, but as the “anti-ULEZ candidate”. More than one voter told openDemocracy in the run-up to the vote that they were only bothering to show up so they could register opposition to the scheme.
ULEZ, of course, was originally announced by then-mayor Boris Johnson, although it was eventually introduced in central London by his successor Sadiq Khan. Under the policy, drivers of vehicles that breach certain pollution limits – less than 6% of inner London’s daily traffic, rising to 15% of vans – are charged £12.50 each time they drive in the designated area. Amid overwhelming evidence both of the success of the scheme, and that air pollution levels breach World Health Organisation guidelines right across Greater London, Khan plans to expand the rules to the rest of the capital next month. Polls consistently show a majority of Londoners support the measure – and even that the more car-dependent outer boroughs are evenly split on it – but there has been vocal opposition from the car lobby, and tabloid culture warriors.
openDemocracy understands that senior advisers to Keir Starmer are furious about this life-saving policy, and that Khan was banned from visiting Uxbridge in the run-up to the vote. Danny Beales, the Labour candidate, spoke out against the measure.
In reality, almost all of the data – and the evidence of the by-election itself – suggests that Khan is right to push ahead. Here’s why.
What happened in Uxbridge
Labour hasn’t won Uxbridge since 1966, but the broad phenomenon of millennials moving to outer London boroughs, combined with the general collapse in the Tory vote, led some in the party to hope they could overturn a Tory lead of 15% in 2019. Indeed, local polling before the vote showed they would.
To understand why they failed – and what ULEZ has to do with it – we need to start by looking at the results in a little detail.
The media tends to report the ‘swing’ in a by-election, because it sounds dramatic. But this is often deceptive, leaving us with the impression that thousands of people who previously voted for one party have changed their minds, and backed another.
While, of course, people do sometimes switch, the more common phenomenon is that turnout falls. That means the primary goal for any party is simply to persuade its usual voters to show up.
In Selby, despite an enormous percentage swing, Labour’s actual number of votes only increased modestly – from just under 14,000 to around 16,500. Some, if not all, of those votes may have come from Lib Dems, whose vote fell by more than Labour’s rose (whether tactically or otherwise). On the other hand, only a third of those who backed the Tories in 2019 appear to have voted Tory this time.
In Somerton and Frome, where the Tories lost to the Lib Dems, little more than a quarter of 2019 Tory voters bothered to turn out. Again, their opponents won the seat simply by turning out their own vote, and perhaps winning tactical backing from Labour people. The combined Lib Dem and Labour vote in 2019 was 25,000, and the Tory candidate won. Yesterday, it was 22,000, and the Lib Dems won.
Which brings us to Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and by extension ULEZ. 48,000 people voted there in 2019. This time, that fell to 31,000. The Tory vote fell from 25,000 to just under 14,000 – meaning around 55% of 2019 Tory voters showed up. But the Labour vote also fell, from about 18,000 to around 13,500. Had Labour managed to turn out its 2019 vote – as it did in Selby and Ainsty – it would have won. And had the Tory vote collapsed as much as it did in the other two seats, Labour would have won.
So why did these things not happen?
The thing that was emblazoned across every Tory leaflet – ULEZ – is clearly a factor. And it’s certainly true that some of the people I spoke to on a trip to the area last week mentioned it.
But all that tells us – as Russell Warfield, a campaigner with the environmental group Possible says – is that there is a “hardened rump” of Conservative, anti-ULEZ, pro-car voters in the outer-London boroughs. And we already knew that: polling shows that, while a majority of Londoners back ULEZ expansion, most Tories oppose it.
Specific polling in a group of London boroughs where councils are taking legal action against Sadiq Khan over the scheme – including Hillingdon, which overlaps with Uxbridge and South Ruislip – found a majority of people in these areas who are deeply concerned about air pollution.
Just as there is a block of anti-ULEZ people capable of being mobilised by the Tories, there is a group of pro-ULEZ people that Labour could have mobilised had they tried. But instead, the party’s candidate came out against the scheme, Starmer sat on the fence, and the potential Labour voters sat at home.
Nationally, Tories in the media have claimed that their opposition is to detail or timing. Party chair Greg Hands told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme that Khan’s expansion of ULEZ was too quick and that the Tories’ own plan to ban the sale of petrol cars by 2030 was more proportionate. But local leaflets made no such distinction, or any attempt to engage in the detail of the scheme, merely repeating the ‘Stop ULEZ’ slogan almost endlessly.
According to TfL’s own research, just 10% of cars being driven in outer London are not currently ULEZ-compliant. It’s possible this message didn’t filter through to voters; 45% of whom voted for the Tories’ anti-ULEZ candidate.
Timing
There are two more reasons why Labour’s equivocation on the issue may prove to be a mistake.
Firstly, voters hate few things more than politicians who look like they’ll say anything to get elected. Where the Tories had a clear position and hammered it in all of their communications, successfully turning out a big enough chunk of their vote base, Labour looked like unprincipled opportunists, willing to throw their own mayor under a 1990s Range Rover rather than take a principled stance or make a case for a policy that will benefit most people.
And secondly, it’s plausible that people will come to support ULEZ after it’s been implemented. Most people opposed London’s congestion charge in the weeks leading up to its implementation. Now, support is overwhelmingly high.
Transport expert professor Philip Goodwin looked at public attitudes to traffic reduction measures around the world, and found they tend to follow a very similar pattern – with generally high support dropping immediately before it’s implemented as people panic about details, only to rally once it’s in place.
ULEZ expansion is due to take place next month, meaning the by-election happened at the lowest ebb of this curve. Starmer could have positioned himself as someone who took a principled stance for something that then turned out to be – as it almost certainly will – popular.
The ULEZ scheme has been in place in central London since 2019. The results have been impressive – one study, for example, has associated the measure and similar ones like it in other cities with a reduction in heart disease. A study in Japan showed that introduction of a similar scheme was associated with an 11% reduction in cardiovascular deaths.
Ultimately, the lesson from Uxbridge isn’t that Labour is wrong to introduce moderate, sensible health measures like ULEZ. It is that the Tories and their outriders in the right-wing press can whip any policy to make lives better into a culture war. And if Labour is too cowardly to argue for its own, good policies, then it will give those who support them no reason to show up and vote.
And if Starmer isn’t brave enough to argue for something as boring and sensible as a mild measure to reduce the number of people dying of heart attacks, strokes, cancer and asthma – a measure that most people support – can you blame people if they can’t be bothered to show up for him?
Perhaps most profoundly, if Keir Starmer is so weak that he abandons support for gentle environmental measures already being introduced by his own party as a result of a small amount of pressure from a few fringe Tories, do we really think he’s got the leadership skills to be a successful prime minister in the era of climate crisis?
In short, the Tories successfully mobilised the Mr Toad element with the result that their vote fell by less than it otherwise would have done.
Note also that while this factor will fall away at the GE (not least because the Tories will be fighting 600+ seats, not three), it’s more likely than not that the GE will be held during the academic year, in which case the student vote at Brunel University will be in play
400-odd votes the other way and you can guarantee Starmer would have been strutting around some park in Uxbridge with the candidate he himself selected in front of a band of adoring party functionaries before climbing onto a platform to claim credit for a triumph of Starmerism. As it was he had to go all the way to north Yorkshire for this grisly little ceremony. In Uxbridge, though, Labour’s defeat was nothing to do with the party leader — it was unquestionably the fault of Mayor Sadiq Khan. After all, Starmer and the candidate he parachuted into the constituency had publicly opposed the ULEZ extension — a flagrant act of disloyalty to Labour’s London mayor. Secretary David Evans may well be checking through Khan’s social media back catalogue with a view to suspension. Perhaps the mayor enthused about I Daniel Blake or Kes, or even went to see The Old Oak!
The candidate was imposed after the local Party was effectively shut down. The candidate they imposed was from Starmer’s own CLP, a sectarian and corrupted Party which effectively blocked and removed all non-compliant Labour Councillors and potential Councillors from the selection process. There’s a grim justice in seeing a corrupt and corrupting influence on the Party and the movement defeated by their own connivance.
hold ones nose and vote Labour?? Sadly no longer a member after many,many years.
Well argued and convincing.
The more I see of Starmer, the more I wonder WHO is his puppet-master; How many hours a day do they have to spend directing him; and WHAT their goals are …
The next few years will be very scary and uncomfortable I fear.
No, he hasn’t. Totally unprincipled. Excellent article thanks
If the Conservatives claim ULEZ won them the seat then that doesn’t say much for the Conservative candidate, his policies and how he intends to serve the community as the MP. The Conservatives would do well to think of positive policies for the looming general election as opposition to ULEZ won’t win them that election. Starmer and the Labour candidate were exposed as charlatans and opportunists and deserved not to win. The alleged massive swing to Starmer and Labour is an illusion but they may still win in 2024, particularly if Sunak’s main electoral winning policy is opposition to clean air – what next, opposition to clean water?
He has no parliamentary skills whatsoever, and, when he inevitably becomes PM, will be exposed as a chancer, a liar and in the pocket of the US government. The only hope for us all is that that exposure comes sooner rather than later.
Worth recalling that real traditional redistributive Labour in the guise of Ken Livinstone’s led GLCs, ‘Fare’s Fare’ policy subsidised London transport tickets in order to positively price people out of their cars.
As usual entryist Blairite fake Labour deals with issues by attacking the working class on low-incomes, here pricing them out of full participation in London. And it was the working-class who founded the Party.
Also once again the comparison with traditionalist Corbyn and Blairites voter turnout reveals a lot about the issue of genuine Labour representation. In these 3 local elections Labour turnout was down – often by thousands – on the last two election outings.
Uxbridge & South Ruislip Labour 2023 – 13,470 votes, 2019 – 18,141 votes, 2017 – 18,682.
Somerton & Frome Labour 2023 – 1,009 votes, 2019 – 8,354 votes, 2017 – 10,998 votes.
The only exception being Selby & Ainsty where Labour got more votes in 2023 than it did in 2019 but even here this is 3,000 less votes than it did in 2017.
It would seem if the Tories get their core vote out they might still come back, because Starmer has no chance of getting Labour’s core vote out in numbers. Nor does he really deserve to!
I think the ULEZ issue is very much about “it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it”. The large majority of old cars and vans that are unsuitable for an ULEZ are owned by poorer people, who might normally be expected to vote Labour. Most can’t afford either to pay £12.50 a day or to get a newer vehicle.
I understand that there is a scrappage scheme, but it goes nowhere near covering the cost of replacement – if it did, there would be no problem!
ULEZ had little to do with Labour’s loss in Uxbridge & South Ruislip. It was Labour London Region’s / Starmer HQ’s decision to abandon principle and its own principled Mayor that lost voters who might have voted Labour if a principled campaign had been fought. Electors are rumbling the triangulation turpitude that marks Keir Starmer and his dictatorial clique. As a lifelong Labour voter, for the first time I will not be voting Labour at the next General Election for this reason – and because the cause of principled politics may be better advanced by a hung Parliament.
What a truly fantastic article.
Many thanks for tracking it down for us.
It does not matter how good a policy is, if you do not argue for it then you will probably lose because somebody will misrepresent it.
The £12.50 daily ULEZ charge on old cars is a vicious attack on working people.
This article rests on the condescending premise that opponents of the ULEZ extension are either reactionary or don’t care about pollution. And conversely, that anyone who wants to live in clean air, supports the ULEZ extension. This makes no sense. Living in clean air is very much a working-class issue: that’s why we talk of “living in leafy, green areas” as an indication of wealth and privilege.
ULEZ is a regressive tax, disproportionately penalising the very people least able to replace their cars, and at £12.50 a day it is a swingeing tax that hits people working long hours and often living in areas poorly served by public transport.
There is a glaring omission in this article: any kind of discussion about public transport. Khan failed abysmally to fight the Tories and secure proper funding for TFL. He instead chose to make swingeing cuts to public transport.
This article is simply green hogwash – a reactionary defence of attacks on the working class, dressed up to look radical.
Starmerites feeling confident about this constituency might also note that Laurence Fox’s Reclaim took 714 votes off the Tories.
Come the GE these voters might be less willing to punt with an experimental vote?
Khan either didn’t listen or didn’t care about the impact on the Working Class. Public Transport in London is inadequate and expensive for the majority of the Working Class. When Ken Livingston expanded Public Transport and made it much more economical, people used the Buses, Trains and Tube Trains and left their cars at home, 50 people on one bus = at least 30 extra cars travelling on the Roads. I lived in Mitchum and worked in the Euston Rd, I cycled to work and would beat anyone using public transport, I switched once Ken’s policies were fully in operation. Starmer, by repeating, in a BBC interview that he would have to reflect on ULEZ, showed 2 things we already knew, he has no political nouse whatsoever and is being primed by the likes of Mandelson (a Rightwing, Anti Socialist). It’s only his Dictatorial Rightwing Policies of getting rid of the Socialists in the Party that are stopping Labour winning the majority of by-elections and hovering just above the Tories in the Polls.
Excellent article.
I suppose a pertinent question to ask the Sir Kid Starver devotees would be: “If you’re going to adopt so many Tory policies in order to get Tories to vote for you, then who do those of us who don’t want Tory policies vote for?”