Londoners, eh, walking around like they rent the place. Indeed, as of 2017, private renters are now the most common form of housing tenure in the capital. This group of nearly 900,000 are young, have migrated, are concerned with housing availability—and what’s more, they’re starting to vote about it. In fact, capturing the imagination of this voting bloc will have serious implications for this week’s local elections
Much has been made of the ‘youthquake’ that toppled the seemingly inevitable prospect of a large Conservative majority at the last general election. But post-election analysis by the British Election Study has since quashed this theory and replaced it with a more specific 25-40-year-old-quake.
Less attention has been given to the ‘renterquake’. Yet private renters turned out in larger number, and swung heavily toward Labour, as compared to the 2015 election.
The renterquake visualised
Here it is, explained in two graphs, courtesy of Ipsos MORI:
Now the heroes amongst you will be falling off your chairs in your eagerness to type “correlation doesn’t equal causation.” But, Matt Singh, of Number Cruncher Analytics, has twice written of the ‘renterquake’ phenomenon, reaffirming his position that this is no spurious correlation.
These trends are nationally-based, but they will become nowhere more pertinent than in London when renters go to the polls this week. Housing is now cited as the joint third biggest issue for voters nationally at 22 per cent—its highest position since 1974, sitting on a par with the economy and only behind Brexit and the NHS. In London, the figure is 36 per cent.
This trend is of no surprise: in the last two decades, the number of jobs based in London has grown by 40 per cent, the number of people by 25 per cent, but the number of homes by only 15 per cent.
Housing was the top issue facing Londoners at the 2016 Mayoral election—in 2012, it was 4th—and nearly three times as many Londoners say they would look favourably on candidates who promise more housebuilding.
Who will benefit?
We know why private renters find housing a bigger issue than their homeowning counterparts—that’s as engrained as disliking Nick Clegg. But despite Labour’s being more trusted with housing issues, there is no room for complacency. In particular, issues like estate renewal pose the largest threat to Labour hegemony in boroughs like Lambeth, Southwark and of course Haringey.The Conservatives have more to gain in London than they do lose. Lest we forget, London’s private renters are still the aspirational 20-40 somethings that the former Conservative leadership prided itself on attracting: Cameron voters that backed Remain.
Yet the extra £2bn announced for affordable homes at party conference comes nowhere near the £50bn figure quoted by the newly branded Minister of Housing, Communities & Local Government.
With the polarisation of under-45 non-homeowners away from the Conservatives becoming more entrenched, it is confusing that the natural party of homeowners is doing next to nothing in order to win them back.
The issue of marginals
What should be really alarming is the effect that private-renter voting had on key marginal seats at the 2017 general election. Shelter found that the number of private renters in an area correlated even more strongly than age to a fall in the Conservative vote.Of 52 English marginals where there is a disproportionate representation in what Shelter labels “harder pressed private renters,” the Conservatives lost eight of the seats they held, and made no gains.
In London, the latest GLA figures of private renters by borough has the Conservative flagship of Westminster, along with Tower Hamlets and the Labour stronghold of Newham, in the top three positions.
The latest data available at ward level places the highest proportion of private renters in the affluent neighbourhoods of Inner West London, with more than half of all households renting privately in eight wards within the Conservative battlegrounds of Westminster, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (where housing issues have been highlighted post-Grenfell).
Crunching the numbers
In the list of wards with the largest percentage of private renters, the top four are all in Westminster, each at over 50 per cent. The quartet of Bryanston and Dorset Square, Lancaster Gate, Marylebone High Street, and Hyde Park all returned three Conservative councillors in 2014.These neighbouring wards are shared between the constituencies of Westminster North, and the Cities of London and Westminster, both of which experienced swings of over 11 per cent to Labour in the 2017 General Election. If they experience this same shift in votes this week—together with 9th on the list of wards, West End—suddenly, Westminster Council moves being a Conservative council to one where no party has overall control.
Similarly, Queen’s Gate, Courtfield, Brompton and Hans Town, and Abingdon are 5th, 6th, 7th and 11th on the list respectively. If won by Labour, they would alone reduce the number of Conservative councillors to 25 in the council, and also turn the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea grey.
Ominously, for the Conservatives, these wards all sit along the Southern boundary of Labour‘s shock General Election gain: Kensington.
Safe as houses…?
However, buck this trend, harness these votes, and who knows, we could even see Newham turning blue.But then again, I think there's more chance of a national holiday being named after Nick Timothy. With the polls projecting a map that is very much red and grey, the votes of private renters could go a long way in explaining how this happened.
