The point about the tube is an important point and also explains why much of inner south London will remain poor territory for the Tories. Areas like Streatham, Dulwich, Croydon and much of Lewisham only have direct and slow access to Victoria although some parts also have quicker access to London Bridge where city folk can transfer to the Jubilee line for Canary Wharf. Even so, problems with crime and poor schools will cancel out this slight advantage for these people.

“Streatham will need years more of the type of change that is very slowly overspilling from Wandsworth (borough) before the Tories can become competitive here again.”

A bit of gentrification has spilled over into the Lambeth bit of Clapham (Clapham Common ward), but it still remains quite grotty in totality. The key difference is the huge amount of high-rise council housing which, being managed by left-wing Lambeth council rather than Tory-run Wandsworth, there is no chance of it being sold off and gentrified en masse as in Battersea.

As to the rest of Streatham, I’m sorry to say that there is absolutely no chance of it gentrifying even marginally along the lines of Wandsworth. Even if the political conditions were favourable – and as described above they are not – key geographic factors also work heavily against Streatham being attractive for city professionals.

Most important is that Streatham isn’t on the tube, and its rail service is slow, infrequent and mostly heads to Victoria which makes the city quite hard to access. Absolutely key to the gentrification of Clapham and Balham has been the Northern Line running right through it.

So I’m afraid the future for most of Streatham is a continued decline into squalor as the few remaining middle calss families move out. Indeed in some ways it is a direct by-product of the gentrification of Wandsworth, as the poorer former residents have to move out somewhere. Many will have come to Streatham.

The decision to align Battersea with Vauxhall certainly seems like a crude exercise of number crunching rather than any desire to create a cohessive constituency

Hemelig is right about Streatham – like many of its neighbouring seats to the South – Croydon North for example – demographic change has rendered the seat unrecognisable from its former Tory guise and I’d suspect that a great many voters who helped the Lib Dems challenge Labour in 2010 were ex-Labour voters themselves

While I would imagine that by 2015 the number of Tory voting folk here will probably see an increase due to slight demographic change the LD votes will return to Labour. The Tory voters that kept this seat marginal 20 or so years ago have moved further afield helping the Tories to stack up votes in Surrey instead.

Labour are very safe here Joe

Most of it is trendy media professionals etc who became disillusioned with Labour from the left. Look at Labour’s majorities in Streatham in 1997 and 2001 and try to say that these people weren’t mostly former Labour voters. The Tory vote in Streatham has not existed for a very long time and it is not coming back.

No way at all

I would have thought Clapham Common a seat which Labour would have won in 1997, 2001 and possibly 2005 too

Obviously much of the new constituency comes from the current Battersea seat – but where does the rest of it come from – Tooting, Streatham?

Inevitably yes, because in the Lambeth wards it was quite close between Lab and LD in Streatham constituency. Clapham Common ward was close 3 ways.

My estimates for the seat were Con 42% Lab 34% LD 22%. That would be a Con maj of about 5000. Vulnerable however to a squeeze on the LD vote back to Labour, which is where most of the LD vote in Streatham came from in the first place.

Perhaps not very much.

Anthony’s figures IIRC had a reasonably high Tory majority, but I didn’t look all that closely. Perhaps as HH says, there was a division between Lab and LD on the notional figure making it look safer than it is.