Election: UKIP’s Target Areas in London

Many voters believed that  the United Kingdom Independence Party was a spent force when the Brexit referendum succeeded and Nigel Farage retired as its leader with a sense of “job done”. UKIP, with only MP Douglas Carswell, has also resigned and Farage’s emotive charisma has not exactly been replaced by Paul Nuttall, who reportedly barricaded himself in a room when pressed to answer whether he would run in this election.

But the snap election could breathe new life into the party will once again be the dominant issue in the ballot box. Nuttall tweeted quite accurately on April 25 that UKIP “is the only party with a policy for leaving the EU quickly, cleanly and completely.”

The first map shows the winners of London’s 73 seats at the 2015 election, with Labour’s 45 red seats overwhelming the blue of the 27 Tory MPs. There was just one yellow Lib Dem victory down south in the seat of Carshalton & Wallington but  not a hint of UKIP’s purple.

Nuttall’s plan for changing that this time around is built on the belief that many of the 52% of voters who backed Brexit in last year’s referendum will now flock to UKIP to prevent Theresa May from going soft and delivering anything less than a “hard Brexit”, with full withdrawal from the single market and customs union.

UKIP may be a single issue party but this election is all about that single issue. The second map (below) shows where UKIP’s greatest hopes are. There were five constituencies in the far east of the greater London metropolitan area where the party came second in 2015. That will be the key London battleground ground for them on June 8.

Targetting the Far East

The collapse of Labour’s support under Jeremy Corbyn is especially useful for UKIP in the two seats where UKIP came second to Labour. White working-class Dagenham & Rainham was fertile territory for the British National Party before it imploded, and Labour MP Jon Cruddas had grave fears of being unseated by UKIP in 2015. He held on for a 41.5% to 29.8% victory but knows that UKIP could pick up support from hardline Brexiteers among Labour voters and among the 24% of people who voted for the Conservative Party last time. After focussing on 30 target seats around the nation in 2015, UKIP has named Dagenham & Rainham as its main London target for June 8 and one of just five national priority seats for resources and campaign efforts.

In neigbouring Barking UKIP (22.2%) overtook the Conservatives (16.3%) for second place in 2015 but its vote of 22.2% poses little threat to Labour’s former Minister Margaret Hodge, who has held the seat for 23 years and last recorded 57.7% of the vote.

There were three Conservative seats in 2015 where UKIP came second. Straddling the M25 motorway, Hornchurch & Upminster is a more affluent and middle-class area, which includes some small villages and farmland around Upminster. The party believed that Tory MP Dame Angela Watson’s  49% to 25.3% lead was vulnerable this time around given that she had angered Brexit supporters among her own voters by backing the Remain campaign last year. The day after the Prime Minister called the snap election Watson, 75, announced that for health reasons she would not be recontesting the seat.

The working-class Conservative seat of Romford is a tougher challenge for those who align with team Nigel. The Tories won by 51% to 22.8% in 2015 and MP Andrew Rosindell has strong support among Right-wing Brexiteers as a long-time prominent Eurosceptic, populist patriot and champion of closer ties with Commonwealth nations.

Affluent and leafy Orpington in the south-east corner of the metropolitan region is the sort of ultra-safe constituency that ambitious young Conservative MPs dream about. Jo Johnson, a product of Eton, Oxford and then journalism at the Financial Times, won this prize by becoming its MP in 2010, and is a now the Minister for Universities sitting on a 2015 election lead of 57% to UKIP’s 16.7%. The only reason that UKIP officials have their own dreams about Orpington is that unlike his big brother Boris, Jo Johnson was a firm Remainer during the Brexit referendum. In UKIP’s dream scenario a third of Johnson’s 2015 supporters will break away in disgust at his opposition to Brexit, allowing them to squeak to victory. .

Why the East?

What do we know of typical UKIP demographics compared to those of the outer east of London? Brexit opinion is now infamously divided by age with YouGov finding over-65s more than twice as likely to vote Leave as under 25s. YouGov has also reported that 71% of UKIP voters were over 50.

Education has also been identified as a major factor in support for both Brexit and UKIP. According to YouGov’s website “just 13% of UKIP’ers supporter have university degrees – half the national average (though this partly reflects the age profile: older people generally were less likely to attend university when they were young).”

UK Data Explorer maps the 2011 census age information, which shows a strong correlation between areas with older average ages and areas recording strong UKIP support. Regions where UKIP votes were high have a mean age of just over 41, and the average age in Orpington was 41.7.

Introduce education through a map of the 2011 census by DataShine and it’s the same story, as key UKIP grounds like Dagenham, Romford and Hornchurch have just 10-20% of their populations holding Level Four qualifications or higher. There is also a correlation of low educational qualifications with a cluster of support around Bexleyheath.

by Stewart Vickers @VickHellfire

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