Yes Brent Central will be a very different animal although could move back into the top few safe Labour London seats an election or two after Teather has been banished. West Ham as peter says is affected by Respect intervention (as is East Ham) and Camberwell/ Peckham and Tottenham are afflicted with poor turnout.
This does differ from those other seats named in that it still does contain an area of reasonable Tory strength in Northfields and West Ealing/Hanwell. There are no Tory councillors in the other four seats mentioned.

Apart from the 1997 election the Labour majority in Ealing/Southall has never been that big(it was lower than 8,000 votes in 1987 and less than 7,000 in 1992 when the outgoing MP stood as an independent). Though the seat should remain solidly Labour it may not be the biggest Labour majority in London.The Southall influence on the local Conservative Association may not be that long lasting;I suspect that there won’t be many Labour councillors in Southall after the next council elections.

Do you mean you suspect there won’t be many Conservative councillors left in Southall?

I’ve been studying the ward results for the last set of GLA elections. The highest Labour share in all three elements of that election was in Southall Brodway. This was not a freak result either as often the old Northcote ward which is the same area provided a Labour share of up mto 90% in local elections. Southall Green is simialr and the other three SOuthall wards not much less so. Ealing Southall on these boundaries also provided the highest vote share for Livingstone for Mayor of all 73 constituencies and also the highest Labour vote in both constituency and list sections.
Southall in terms of wards is now 5/7ths of this seat compared with 5/9ths on the 1997-current boundaries and the strongest Tory area in Ealing Common is removed. This leaves only Northfield and to a lesser extent Elthorne to offset an almost monolithic vote in Southall itself

Labour could have polled 70% with these boundaries in 1997 and 2001.

yes well spotted Pete.I mean there won’t be many Conservative councillors left in Southall;probably not any.I blame last night’s bottle of red wine.The new seat will remain solidly Labour but I doubt the majority will be that huge.I well recall in days gone by that Labour would pile up huge majorities in the old wards of Glebe and Northcote(Indeed over 90%).The monolithic Labour block vote was largely created by most of the inhabitants coming from districts in the Punjab.There were a lot of family and other interconnections.The heads of particular families could be guaranteed to bring all their relatives out to vote Labour.Those days are passing over(despite what David Aaronovitch claimed in last year’s “Times”).A lot of Punjabis have moved away and there are a number of disparate communities here now and the old tribal loyalty to Labour is not as strong as it once was.I suspect Labour’s majority will be held down by a low turn out.

Yes indeed a not entirely positive development especially bearing in mind one or two items which appeared on Youtube during the by-election.Don’t forget either that the sitting MP is Hindu not Sikh.However as I’ve said the politics of the Punjab won’t mean much to many of the new arrivals into Southall.

I take Dave’s points about the changing population of Southall, although the newcomers also arent likely to be Tory voters either (except possibly East Europeans if they become voters). The key is whether there is a shift in the voting pattern of the south Asian communities and there was some evidence of that in the last round of local government elections, but not much sign of it in the by-election.
Paradoxically the settled immigrant communites here could be receptive to a robust line on immigration since they are not the least likely to resent the impact of certain groups of newcomers especially when accompanied by increases in crime (ofcourse we must say that the overwhelming majority of Somalians are decent, lawabiding etc etc). Again there is no evidence as yet of such considerations effecting voting behaviour.

Incidentally i had thought there was a contest going on between Solihull and Sheffield Hallam for the thread with most posts. As it happens they are both now listed under ‘Recent comments’ and it turns out Solihull is ahead with 535 to 509, but this seat beats them both and is not far off 600. I wonder if that is the highest. I think Watford must be in the running too

Pete you are indeed right about settled immigrants having robust views on immigration judging by what many Asian friends have said to me in recent years.Views I could not possibly repeat here! You’re right about newcomers not being Tory voters though the Lib Dems might have more chance.I do think the Southall Labour Party reflects the community of twenty years ago and is still dominated by the politics of the sub-continent e.g.Virendra Sharma’s numerous trips to India since he became MP.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the influx of Eastern Europeans serves to reduce slightly the percentage of Asian people in this seat and seats like it. The 2011 census will obviously be an opportunity to assess that question. I’m not sure how many Eastern Europeans will actually end up on the electoral register despite their numbers.

Or how many Eastern Europeans intend to remain in the UK.There is some evidence of people returning back to their country of origin.I’m not sure just how many Eastern Europeans have settled in Southall(my old house is I’m told occupied by Poles)but the largest groups of new immigrants are very clearly from Somalia and Sri Lanka.However I was told at a meeting a couple of years ago that over 100 different languages are now spoken in the town which gives you some idea of how diverse the community now is compared to say twenty years ago.

London 2008 results - Ealing Southall (new boundaries):
{Excluding postal votes}

Mayor:
Lab - 12,339 (53.65%), C - 6,777 (29.47%), LD - 1,758 (7.64%), Green - 768 (3.34%)

Constituency Vote, (Ealing&Hillingdon):
Lab - 10,402 (44.78%), C - 5,941 (25.57%), LD - 2,902 (12.49%), Green - 1,681 (7.24%)

List:
Lab - 10,672 (45.86%), C - 5,482 (23.56%), LD - 1,982 (8.52%), Green - 1,755 (7.54%)

POSTAL VOTES for whole of Ealing:

Mayor: C - 4,155 (41.79%), Lab - 3,777 (37.99%), LD - 1,034 (10.40%), Green - 352 (3.54%)

Constituency: C - 4,129 (41.44%), Lab - 2,878 (28.88%), LD - 1,241 (12.45%), Green - 828 (8.31%)

List: C - 3,752 (37.66%), Lab - 2,923 (29.34%), LD - 1,023 (10.27%), Green - 736 (7.39%)

Ealing Southall represented 27.54% / 27.95% / 27.89% of non-postal Ealing votes for the 3 sections respectively.

These figures confirm that however badly Labour may do elsewhere at the next general election they will continue to hold this seat quite comfortably as they have done now for generations.Not much more to be said,is there?