Keir Starmer's parties failed to win by-elections in Uxbridge and South Ruislip as Ulez's controversial policies were ignored. by-election lips.
The political expansion potential of Ulez Sadiq Khan was not taken into account in the forecasts. The Conservatives will now be analyzing the results to find out what this means for general elections not only in London but also in other cities where low emission zones are increasingly being installed.
Thursday's result was by no means a disaster for Labour. With 43.6% of the vote, it is the party's best performance since the London constituency was created in 2010. The Tory majority has now dwindled from over 7,000 to just 495 votes.
But London Labor activists need only look north to see what could have been. In the Selby and Ainsty by-elections, Labor saw a huge 23.7% lead over the Conservatives, enough to not only take a seat, but set a record for the largest majority ever driven back in a by-election.
2207 swings against the government
In the South, the Liberal Democrats' swing was even more impressive during their victory at Somerton and Frome, at 29 percent.
However, in Uxbridge, Labor is not even in double digits: just 7.4% of voters appear to have moved away from the Tories.
Ulez, who will take effect throughout Greater London from August, offers an explanation for this exclusion – not least because it has cropped up on the voters' doorstep again and again.
Danny Beals, the Labor Party candidate, foresaw its approach and tried to distance himself from the expansion of mayor and London, criticizing its timing during a cost-of-living crisis.
Climbed Forward: multiple
It was useless, and now Angela Rayner, Deputy Labor Leader, is already starting to repair the damage to Ules. She told the BBC this morning: “The Uxbridge results show that when you don't listen to the voters, you don't win the election.”
One sign of Ules' influence in the race is that turnout was highest in Uxbridge at 46.2%, compared to 44.2% in Somerton, 44.8% in Selby and well above the 40% turnout seen in the recent by-elections.
It may be only a few percentage points difference, but in light of the proximity of Uxbridge's results, even a small but mobilized contingent of voters against Ules could block a Labor victory.
There is good reason to believe that a vote against Ules would have been significant in size.
Vehicle registration statistics in the wider London Borough of Uxbridge, Hillingdon, suggest that around 30 per cent of car owners in the area own winning cars. not match Ulez – either because they have a petrol car first registered before 2006 or a diesel car registered before 2016.
2207 car owners
Combined with the latest 2021 census, which showed that 77% of households in Hillingdon own a car, this means that around 25% of Uxbridge residents could face a new £12.50 daily fee for non-compliance with Ulez.
One in four voters would certainly be enough to dampen Labor's hesitation sharply, although of course some could vote Conservative anyway, even without Oulez.
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But this influence on elections is heightened in the British context. First-come, first-served elections and their propensity to split votes mean that mobilized groups of voters on the same issue can have a lot of influence, even if they are in the minority.
The Ulez poll is pretty clear: the majority of Londoners, taken together, support air pollution regulations in general.
But digging deeper into specific geographies or specific policy implementations, the picture becomes much more fragmented.
The Redfield & Winton discovered in early July that Ules had, in principle, the net support of 15% of Londoners.
2207 Opinions on Ules
Among Londoners living outside of London, the number fell sharply between supporters and opponents. The poll also showed that 37% of Londoners said they would prefer to keep Ulez in central London only, compared to 32% who want to expand it and 22% who want to leave it.
This lack of a clear consensus provides wide opportunities for conservatives in elections, which will undoubtedly now think about how to even more benefit from schemes with a low level of emissions in both London and throughout the country.
and that is especially nightmare for the Laborists is that the opposition of Ules does not correspond to the political lines.
in 2021, in 2021 Ougov showed that 58 percent of conservative voters would be against a similar scheme in their region. However, a large proportion of Labor voters – about 31% – were also opposed.
Across England, the RAC lists 11 other cities that currently have low emission zones, including Birmingham, Nottingham and Newcastle.
Including London, these cities and their larger suburbs make up about 141 (a quarter of the total) constituencies in which the Conservatives will now feel empowered with a new front line.
>Only 41 of these are currently held by the Conservatives, but if the next election is about keeping the party, rather than winning it, as in the case of Uxbridge, these new zones will be a useful starting point to strengthen the base.
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