Changing demographics of UK capital mean the city is on course to be as dominated by Ed Miliband’s party as Scotland is by the SNP

If Ed Miliband wins the election in two weeks’ time, a big part of Labour’s victory will be explained by its strength in London.

According to recent polling by ICM and YouGov, Miliband’s party enjoys a double-digit lead over the Tories in the capital. Labour is on 42% and 45% with the two pollsters, while the Tories are on 32% and 34%.

To put that in perspective, Labour is almost as well supported in London as the SNP is in Scotland (Nicola Sturgeon’s party is averaging 47%), and the party is nearing the levels of support that it enjoyed under Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001 when Labour amassed close to half the capital’s vote. The figures are sure to cheer the party amid huge expected losses in Scotland.

Labour’s renaissance in London is by no means inevitable

In the 2005 election, the party saw its share of the vote fall by 8.4 percentage points to 38.9% in the wake of the Iraq war. In comparison, Labour dropped by 5.5 percentage points nationally.

However, the Conservatives – the largest party in the capital in the 1980s until a 14 point collapse in their vote in 1997 – were never quite able to capitalise on this and remained stuck on around 31% until 2005.

At the last election, in 2010, the Conservatives were on 34.5%, within just two points of Labour’s 36.6%.

Since then, the Tories have dropped about two points both nationally and in London while Labour has increased its support by four points nationally and seven points in London.

Politically, London has moved at a different pace compared with the rest of the country.



It’s down to the demographics

One of the key factors explaining these differences is the rapidly changing demographics of Britain’s capital.

Labour is strongly supported by migrant voters and ethnic minorities, who make up a far bigger slice of the electorate in London than in most of the rest of the UK. The share of the capital’s voters with migrant background is increasing, which suggests London’s political preferences will not change any time soon.

For example in 2010, 60% of non-white voters backed Labour, while 16% favoured the Conservatives. According to academics from Manchester University, people born overseas are likely to make up the majority of the electorate in two London seats (Brent North and East Ham) – the first time this has happened in UK constituencies.

A second factor is the distribution of the population, which, because of increasing house prices, has gone from being relatively concentrated in specific areas to being distributed across the city.

In fact, the rise in house prices has forced people out of the centre of London and transformed the demography of some of the outer regions of the capital.



In other words, what are usually Tory constituencies are increasingly looking like Labour ones because of their demographic composition, particularly in east London.

The impact of these changes is already tangible in this election. One such bellwether seat is Margaret Thatcher’s old stomping ground of Finchley and Golders Green – a Lord Ashcroft constituency poll published earlier this month had Labour in the lead there.

There are also other important demographic differences between London and the rest of the country.

Londoners rent more. In 2011, 50.4% of residents in London were renting, 15 points ahead of any other UK region.

Londoners are younger. Almost one in four Londoners are 16-29, more than in any other UK region – and Labour does better than the Conservatives with younger voters.

The established narrative that under-30s move into London and over-30s move out is still true to some degree – however it does not hold for ethnic minorities, many of whom remain in their properties once they enter their 30s.

Labour-friendly Londoners conceive more children. The birth rate in London is increasing compared with the rest of the country, particularly among non-white voters, which further skews the capital towards a more Labour-friendly electorate.

However, the Conservative strongholds in the largely wealthy constituencies in south-west London and in the eastern belt of the city will stay blue for some time, although the demographic trends are moving away from the Tories.

One antidote to all this could have been David Cameron’s project to modernise the party and grow its voter base by appealing to more progressive and liberal-minded voters.



Evidence suggests that this has not worked and the party is now almost as disliked as Nigel Farage’s Ukip.

Ben Page, Ipsos MORI (@benatipsosmori) To me this is CENTRAL to stalemate Tory brand remains toxic - despite lead on economy #GE2015 pic.twitter.com/GijgoxvvHd

And you can see why the Conservatives’ position on issues such as immigration does not play well with voters of a migrant background.

But the branding issue is not just true of ethnic minority voters either. As Janan Ganesh writes in the FT:

In polls, in focus groups, on doorsteps, the Tory party encounters people who are quietly admiring of its work in government and still cannot bring themselves to mark a ballot in its favour. As long as there are conservatives who are not Conservative, the party will fall short of its electoral potential.

As former Conservative peer Ashcroft puts it, on two issues over which people went for Labour instead of the Conservatives at the last election – the NHS and whether the party was on their side – the Tories score no better now than in 2010.

An exception to the rule is the capital’s Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson. Although some of his victory was due to mobilising the party base in London’s commuter belt, it was also down to building an individual brand detached from his party’s that attracted London’s swing voters.

Yet, an ongoing failure to rebrand the party, not just individuals, coupled with London’s increasingly Labour-friendly demographics will probably mean the capital will remain electorally out of bounds for the Tories for many elections to come.

In terms of this election, the Guardian’s latest projections show gains for Labour, with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats on course to lose seats. Miliband’s party would increase its share of London’s seats by nine, winning in 47 of the capital’s 73 constituencies.

London is set to become as much of a single-party system as we expect Scotland to be after 7 May. As Paul Mason puts it, Britain is now divided into tribes of voters and the divisions are only getting stronger.