The seats at risk for London Tory MPs if Boris Johnson calls a snap election
| Published date | 30 June 2022 |
On Wednesday night June 29 the Prime Minister appeared to dismiss the possibility of an Autumn election repeatedly when quizzed by the travelling press pack, saying: “I don’t comment on those sorts of things. The idea hadn’t occurred to me.” You’ll notice it isn’t a world-beating denial, though, in part as rumours of an early election could knock rebellious, anti-Johnson Tory MPs into line. Few of them want to put their jobs at risk just now.
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Conservative peer and election expert Lord Robert Hayward is reluctant to read too much into the by-election defeats, saying: “I’m never a fan of saying ‘this is what would happen on the basis of a by-election’. You finish up with ludicrous positions where you predict a number of Tory MPs losing off the back of Tiverton and Honiton.” B ut it is clear which seats are under threat: “We knew that before the local elections that seats like Carshalton and Wallington, Beckenham, the three Barnet seats and so on [are at risk].”
Emma Dent-Coad was the MP for Kensington between 2017 and 2019, a seat the Tories took back in 2019 but with a majority of just 150 votes. It is one of the slimmest in the country. She is hoping to be Labour’s candidate once again, and tells me she believes an early election is coming.
"A lot of commentators think when there’s a change in leadership -presumably imminently -whoever takes over would want to settle in and have a confirmatory election," she said. "A lot of people are also thinking about [an election] next year.”
If there’s no snap election, things are in some ways worse for the Conservatives -from 2024 elections will be held under new boundaries that lose two Tory-voting wards, and gain the largely-Labour areas around the Brunel Estate and Mozart Estate. Either way, then, this seat is high-risk for the Tories. Early GE this year, and you have a backdrop of partygate chaos. Wait it...
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