Brockley By-Election [results announced]

Anyone else following the upcoming by-election in Brockley Ward, polling date 13th October?

BrockleyCentral is the best local source, and it has postings from both the Lib Dem and Labour candidates.

If you look in the comments, you’ll see that I’m interested by the Lib Dem’s claims to represent Generation Rent - and find his answers less slippery than most on the matter of the need to increase housing supply. Maybe this isn’t quite as electorally toxic as it once was - let’s hope so.

The Labour candidate doesn’t say very much by comparison, her special subject being how men and women spent their time 200 years ago. Completing a PhD at Cambridge, it feels as if she is Labour Party HQ candidate being placed on the first step of a political career in the assured Labour territory that is LB Lewisham. But under Corbyn, will that conveyor belt break down? I see nothing about her party leader on her Twitter feed, so I’m assuming she’s not one of the born again.

I don’t suppose the individual candidates will make that much difference to the result, which is likely to turn on general attitudes to the Labour Party. A good Twitter account to follow here is Britain Elects, from which the Lib Dems seems to be doing well, e.g. this

but London is probably more Corbynist than the rest of the country.

I like that the Lib Dem candidate is joining in forum discussion - regardless of his policies, that’s a very positive thing and would influence the way I voted.

I see he wants to increase regulation of letting agents and landlords. Sure this will please the populists who see this as an “us vs. them” scenario - but what they don’t seem to appreciate is that hurting landlords and agents will reduce the supply of rental property.

With housing, we have a peculiar and unsustainable demand-side problem in London. We should be looking to give a boost to other major U.K. cities to kickstart the process of agglomeration elsewhere, sector-by-sector (e.g. media in Manchester). We should also reduce the scale of immigration and ensure we only get people with the skills we lack in this country, and where there are available jobs.

Ignoring the demand side problem and focussing on supply means building more miserable dense housing blocks over precious remaining open space in London, causing more pressure on transport infrastructure, public services, ecology and society in general. Not an acceptable option.

I thought he just said of letting agents, although of course that impinges on landlords, and then tenants.

My impression is that letting agents could be better regulated, but there is always scope for new regulation to be counterproductive. Of course it’s a bit of populism, but we have to live with that.

Supply, however, is what really matters, and it is frustrating when any discussion of Generation Rent fails to focus on this - and most do fail to

Bobby Dean:

That Evelyn ward result must rank as quite an unusual result for a few reasons:

• Winning party got more than 50%
• People Before Profit came second with 16% (possibly one of their best ever results)
• Conservatives appear to have gone from no candidate last time to 10% of the vote
• An Independent candidate beat the Greens and Lib Dems and came close to the Conservatives

Brockley is interesting because a number of parties increased their share of the vote, possibly because this time there wasn’t a People Before Profit candidate.

• Women’s Equality Party did well with 7%
• UKIP almost wiped out
• Greens dropping back a little in a constituency that used to be their stronghold and is still the only constituency in Lewisham with a non-Labour (Green) councillor

Of course the whole system is ridiculous, requiring three councillors to represent each ward, and a single party having more than 90% of councillors (hardly representative of the borough as a whole).

My preference would be to get rid of 1/3 of councillors (to save money), have 1/3 elected on a constituency basis - directly representing each ward, and 1/3 selected on a borough-wide party list system.

I believe that such a system would increase the quality of councillors (some are great, others are next to useless - and that is true for all parties). And it would increase the scrutiny on our directly elected mayor (who is entitled to make most decisions himself).

Interesting ideas, @Michael

Do you think there is any point trying to push them? An online petition, maybe?

@TimLund
No point. Just saying.

It would require a nationwide change and there are too many vested interests from the incumbents running the councils up and down the country. Just because it would be a better system doesn’t mean there is any chance of it happening.