I’m rather surprised that a northern Conservative like Votedave makes references to northern inner cities - sounds like someone from the BBC

In fact the best Conservative performances in 1979 were among the angry white working class - outer London and the new towns, constituencies like Birmingham Northfield and Erdington and surprise gains in Scunthorpe and Newark. Basically among voters whose concerns were the economy and immigration.

I expect a similar situation in 2010 and would say that every 95+% white Labour constituency with a majority of below 10,000 is potentially at risk.

The high marginal swing in 1992 was partly caused by tactical voting, I think a similar effect will occur in 2010 but of the anti-Labour variety.

London 2008 results - Westminster North (new boundaries):
{Excluding postal votes}

Mayor:
C - 11,845 (46.22%), Lab - 9,728 (37.96%), LD - 2,186 (8.53%), Green - 839 (3.27%)

Constituency Vote, (West Central):
C - 10,959 (43.23%), Lab - 7,720 (30.45%), Green - 2,829 (11.16%), LD - 2,458 (9.70%)

List:
C - 9,806 (38.45%), Lab - 7,121 (27.92%), Green - 2,402 (9.42%), LD - 2,278 (8.93%)

POSTAL VOTES for whole of Westminster:

Mayor: C - 6,115 (58.76%), Lab - 2,679 (25.74%), LD - 908 (8.73%), Green - 329 (3.16%)

Constituency: C - 6,082 (58.93%), Lab - 1,933 (18.73%), LD - 968 (9.38%), Green - 908 (8.80%)

List: C - 5,627 (54.28%), Lab - 1,849 (17.84%), LD - 919 (8.86%), Green - 728 (7.02%)

Westminster North represented 50.99% / 51.08% / 51.07% of non-postal Westminster votes for the 3 sections respectively.

All things considered, that was a surprisingly good performance by Labour.

Given the solidity of Labour’s core here, I doubt they’d fall too far behind (this constituency does include Livingstone’s old GLC seat at Paddington, but I doubt it made a difference). Labour might have hung on Regent’s Park & Kensington North with a narrow Tory majority in the country. They’re likely to lose this seat, but it will never be safe for either.

Labour continued to win comfortably in Church Street, Harrow Road, Queens Park, and Westbourne wards in all 3 sections. Since there are 10 wards in total in the constituency, having 4 relatively safe wards means Labour will always put in a decent performance as Tangent says.

But that same argument could have been used in other London seats, Croydon Central for example, where Labour were absolutely thrashed. Labour’s core vote here stayed much more loyal than a lot of places elsewhere

The explanation is probably due to the heavy ethnic minority presence in northern Westminster, mainly black, which is part of the same general community as north Kensington. They tend to be very loyal to Labour regardless of circumstances.

Yes I think that’s right. The Labour core vote in a seat like this is very different to that in Croydon Central eg. New Addington which consists far more of a white working class of the type much disillusioned with Labour. This kind of seat has relatively few swing types of voters so swings will always be low. It consists to an unusual extent of two blocs - the very wealthy in St Johns Wood etc who are heavily Tory and the very poor in north Paddington and Lisson Grove.

Croydon Central for example, where Labour were absolutely thrashed

But in Croydon Central, the Labour core, I think, has stronger white-working class representation (and is possibly more prosperous, which is a bit speculative). I also think, in councils like this, where one dominant party holds the vast majority of the wards confortably, but a minority party has a secure berth in one or two wards, the minority party’s vote in these wards is pretty solid - reinforced by concentrated resources, and perhaps the sense of a different ethos to the rest of the area.

Looking at the two results, the difference in the constituency section between Croydon Central and Westminster North was significant but not all that huge. Westminster North has a notional Labour majority of 6.6% which was transformed into a Tory lead of 12.8%. In Croydon Central, the respective figures were 0.7% Labour and 24.6% Tory. So the “swing” in WN was 9.7% and in CC 12.7%.