The lab activists seem confident they’ll win but i don’t think so. I think it’s a very narrow con gain. Not 2000 though. Still doesn’t feel like a tory seat

Why have the tories picked a leaver here?

I’m not sure Tories picking candidates who were notionally “leave” or “remain” makes too much difference, since all Tories (bar Ken Clarke) are leavers now in the sense that they accept that Brexit must happen.

Incidentally I have a nagging feeling that Labour will hold on here, possibly even with an increased majority. Labour’s vote share is actually not too far where it was under Ed Miliband*, just one ortwo points down on the general election result, and yet you hear stories of mass Labour defections in the North, the Midlands and in Wales. That must mean that Labour are piling on votes in seats like this, surely? I’ve said it before, the most probable Conservative gain in London is Eltham, seats like this are not moving like the country is.

*Of course, we are comparing polls to an election result. If you compare Jeremy Corbyn’s polls to Ed Miliband’s there’s a bigger gap, but it doesn’t seem fair to do that when pollsters have changed their methodology.

What is key to this constituency is what happens to the Remain Conservative vote.

If the Remain Conservative vote remains loyal as many polls suggest the Conservatives will gain this seat. However, if a significant minority of the Remain Conservatives don’t turn out to vote or vote for someone else Labour will hold on.

@Plopwellian Tory

Whilst all that is true it was all pre-Brexit. In most seats I think the Con Remainers will stay largely loyal, but in a seat as small-l liberal as this one the Tory vote could take quite a big hit. Labour might take a hit too (many Remainers I know aren’t too happy with their stance either) but I don’t think we’ll see any big Lab>Con swing.

Turns out the tory candidate wasn’t a leaver hahaha. Jo Johnson was here today. His not famous brother lives here. This is going to be really tight but it isn’t trending Tory and JC isnt a liability here. As much as he can be.

Some interesting comments. Of course there doesn’t have to be a “a big LAB>CON swing” for the seat to flip.

If we look at (what I have calculated) from the recent yougov London polls we see the following shifts:
NET SWITCHERS
Amongst CON/LAB: LAB>CON approx 0%. So LAB > CON say, 500
Amongst LAB/LD: LAB>LD approx 3%. So 500 LAB > LD
Amongst LD/CON: CON> LD approx 2%. So 400 CON > LD

Ignoring all the other switchers and assuming turnout is similar then we would see a result approx :

LAB 23,000
CON 22,900

But Labour may get NET 700 or so from GREEN. Maybe negated by more Labour abstentions and slightly more UKIP> CON than UKIP>LAB.

So very close. TCTC. My own feeling is LABOUR HOLD. Maj < 300

Plop
You said this would be close back when the Tories had a 20 point lead, now that their lead has shrunk to single digits what makes you think they’ll win?

Even on a universal swing most of the latest polling wouldn’t have the Tories picking this up and most everyone (including you) have admitted at one point or another that the overwhelming Remain vote here will probably hamper the Tories somewhat.

LAB hold: majority 500

Tories are not going to be gaining London seats from Labour, they’ll be losing them.

“if it did then Battersea would be in danger”

Battersea is in play on current polling IMO.

“I’m not entirely convinced the middle-class Tory Remain vote will abandon the party”

Now it’s become a close race a fair few may do so. A hung parliament with either May or Corbyn dependent on the Lib Dems, Labour ultra Remainers and SNP is the best chance of forcing the government to row back on Brexit.

Although I am sceptical of Labour’s current standing in the polls, I don’t think they’ll get anywhere near 38%, I am fairly confident that they will hang on here. Siddiq is going strong on her opposition to Brexit and I’ve seen very little campaigning or leaflets coming from the Lib Dems, which means she should hoover up most of the disgruntled Remain vote. This is not a seat where May and her ‘getting on with Brexit’ or socially conservative agenda will go down well and so I can see Labour holding this with a majority around the 500 mark.

In retrospect, the comments and predictions here are quite funny (as they are for many seats of course).

I do hope the GE results will cure UKPR of its bad case of ‘the Plops’….. So much for this being a 1700 Tory majority, and Battersea not falling to Labour.

Oh dear, ‘Remoaners’. Is that the best you can do?

And silly forecasts are worse than no forecasts.

Serves May and the Tories right for completely disregarding and ignoring Remain voters as if they don’t exist at all.

Sturgeon is a much better leader than May.

Much as Plopwellian Tory appears to view May’s landslip as merely a kickback from Remoaners, it’s clear that the reality is much more problematic for the Tories. In short, the population has endured a decade of austerity and is fed up to the back teeth with it. There’s no answer to this IMO that isn’t going to end up with a populist left wing government taking power some time in the next 5 years….hopefully not for long.

HH
“There’s no answer to this IMO that isn’t going to end up with a populist left wing government taking power some time in the next 5 years….hopefully not for long”

That led to an amusing thought, apparently Lab have had another membership surge and are now approaching almost 1 million members!!! Is it perhaps folks like yourself deciding “hey if you can’t beat em join em” in the hope of electing a Blairite to replace Corbyn who won’t upset the apple cart too much when Lab do win.

I’m joking of course but still kinda shows how quick things can change in politics, its for that reason why I’m not taking anything fro granted going forward.

‘There will be a Labour government by 2022 I imagine.’

Unless an election is held before then. If that happened, it would depend on who leads the Tories and whether people feel like they can trust them after this shambolic mess.

HH is gonna disagree but a boris led Tory party will probably get a con majority

Quite possibly a lot sooner than that.

Whilst we’ve all been obsessing about Brexit, the public has been fretting about living standards and public services, much of it under the radar.

We’ve had a decade of right-wing reaction to the financial crisis of 2008 and people have grown disillusioned with it, now perhaps we’ll try a period of left-wing reaction, hopefully not long enough to cause too much damage.

I’m not qualified to disagree with you Alex F. If Boris saves us from PM Corbyn then I’ll put my dislike of him aside.

Lol.

If you’re not prepared to “take any lectures” despite achieving both ubiquity and a bizarre level of wrongness, might I suggest you at least have the humility to phrase things as ‘most polls suggest Battersea will stay Tory’, rather than the self-proclaiming and dogmatic ‘Battersea is not going to fall to LAB’ a week before it does indeed fall. it’s not being wrong that is the core issue: it’s being all over the site and wrong all over it, then saying you were just going on polls, when you kept presenting it as your personal oracular pronouncement.

Must admit I had to look up ‘oracular’.

DW is right. It’s silly giving seat totals several weeks before polling day and also projecting seat winners months /years out.

Boris being PM is a genuinely terrifying thought!

Can’t find it but a poll in one of the Sundays is very favourable to Boris. But HST is brand Boris no longer there?

Most extraordinary evacuation of approximately 4,000 from an estate in Swiss Cottage following Grenfell Tower deaths. I’m sure that there’ll be little electoral impact though.

”I’m sure that there’ll be little electoral impact though.”

Depends if the voters are rehoused in the ward/constituency. If they aren’t it will probably help the Tories a lot in their efforts to hold the Swiss Cottage ward in the council elections next year.

I suspect, if the GE is anything to go by, the Cons are facing pretty much a wipe out on Camden regardless.

Agreed. They all ought to be back by May 2018.

The tenants I mean back in a safe building. What an absolute unbelievable cock up and another reminder how poor and w.c people are ignored/shunned/threatened by the ruling elites.

It’s good to see some action taken

It’s all gone a bit wrong for the Tories in Camden, and it’s not hard to see why.

They have still only won outright once there (inevitably in 1968) and 2006 was the only other occasion when Labour has failed to win an overall majority, despite Tory dominance in Hampstead for so long.

I met the Tory candidate here canvassing & she was very confident; a bit bullish. She was pushing the CON manifesto as her side’s biggest selling point & twice urged me to read it. As I said goodbye,I told her I thought she would lose – & she laughed.

Re: the evacuation. It is the biggest since WWII.

I forgot to add that the conversation took place while the Tories were 10%; 14% ahead in the polls.

Tulip Sadiq has been accused of threatening a pregnant journalist at the end of a very tetchy interview indeed.

The delights from her included:

“I’m a Member of Parliament. You better be very careful what you say.”

“Are you calling me Bangladeshi?” and ended with:

“Hope you have a great birth, ‘cos child labour is hard.”

I’ve heard of small man syndrome (usually applied to Bercow), but hadn’t realised this MP is yet another female MP to add the list of McVey, Soubry, Perry, Allen, Rudd et al who appear to ‘kick off’ almost without warning.

Your being a bit unfair Lancs, the journalist in question was asking a rather irritating question assuming that because Siddiq is related to the PM of Bangladesh she should have the leverage to get her to pardon political prisoners there. I agree Siddiq’s response was a bit dramatic (thankfully she’s apologised for it) but it was another pretty dismal avenue of questioning from a journalist in what was already a charged highly emotive rally.

“the journalist in question was asking a rather irritating question assuming that because Siddiq is related to the PM of Bangladesh she should have the leverage to get her to pardon political prisoners there.”

She is a close relative and as such probably has as much leverage, if not more, than Boris Johnson has with the Iranian government.

As such, though undoubtedly she found the question “rather irritating”, it is therefore a perfectly acceptable point to raise with her….why is she lambasting the government on this case without lifting so much as a finger on a case where her influence is likely to have much more effect? I’m afraid it’s our old friends virtue signalling and faux outrage as usual. It will not have done Siddiq’s name any good to have her links to the highly repressive regime in Bangladesh publicised, certainly not in this muesli belt constituency.

“It will not have done Siddiq’s name any good to have her links to the highly repressive regime in Bangladesh publicised”

If she had been an adviser or something it might be different, but people don’t choose their own families.

HH
“why is she lambasting the government on this case without lifting so much as a finger on a case where her influence is likely to have much more effect?”

Cos Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a constituent of Siddiq’s while the Bangladeshi journalist channel 4 was banging on about isn’t even a British citizen. Essentially channel 4 are demanding why doesn’t Siddiq comment on everything bad the Bangladeshi government ever does at which point you might as well just demand she becomes a Bangladeshi MP.

As you know, I yield to no-one in my dislike of Boris.

But “going on holiday to Iran” is a terminally stupid thing to do, especially for a joint citizen who presumably was well aware of the risks.

The role of the British foreign office is not and should not be to rescue people from their own stupidity, even if they are citizens. The FO indeed make this repeatedly clear to everyone arrested abroad, from drug mules to drunken yobs.

This is true.

Equally it is not the role of the foreign office to get British citizens into trouble with foreign governments because of its own stupidity. Which is what Boris has done.

“Equally it is not the role of the foreign office to get British citizens into trouble with foreign governments because of its own stupidity. Which is what Boris has done.”

No surprise that Boris’s diplomacy was and is awful.

Nevertheless it is obvious to anyone that there is much more to this story than meets the eye, a truth which Boris seems to have inadvertently let slip.

Speaking of BoJo did peeps see the story that apparently the foreign office has been telling foreign governments to completely ignore everything he says when he meets them. That’s utterly tragic if true.

Tories still have 7 cllrs here , 3 each in Frognal (the only ward in this seat where the Tories won the popular vote last year), 3 in Hampstead Town and 1 in Belsize where the the LDs gained two.

Could have been worse.