As a former London Tory MP, I know why Wandsworth and Westminster turned red in the local election

Local elections always see councils changing hands between parties. But there are some that tend to stay as they are. For the last 40 years, Wandsworth Borough Council has been one of them. Not that it’s a traditional “true blue” sort of place.

Over those four decades that the Conservatives have run Wandsworth, it’s changed dramatically alongside the City it’s part of, becoming ever more diverse and having some of the youngest demographics of voters in the entire country, so not exactly full of typical Conservative voters. Even so, against New Labour and the Blair juggernaut it held firm.

More recently, in the dog days of Theresa May’s administration and her failing Brexit negotiations, it remained Conservative. In fact after that victory, Wandsworth Conservative activists could have easily wondered if that was as tough as it could get. I know, because I was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Putney for 14 years, serving part of that Wandsworth community in Parliament.

Yet earlier today, that track record of success was finally broken. Wandsworth Council turned red and went Labour. Along with Westminster, another long-standing Conservative Council. In practice, for all Labour’s jubilation at its victories, it could only win in Wandsworth by promising to be a red version of the Conservatives. Labour leaflets said they would keep the announced one per cent council tax cut. Their victory was as much thanks to that, plus disgruntled Conservative voters staying at home rather than voters switching to Labour en masse.

But it would be a mistake to just say this was “priced in” to the Conservative Party’s expected results. Because the results tell us much more than a Conservative Party with mid-term blues, still holding on to the Red Wall seats it won in the 2019 General Election.

Above all, they tell the Conservative Party not to make the mistake it made in the mid 90s, writing off whole areas as “places we wouldn’t expect to win in anyway” when local election losses happened. When councils are lost, so too is the chance for a local party to show what it can do and pave the way for winning over voters nationally. When Boris Johnson won the London Mayoralty in 2008, it gave the wider Conservative Party the momentum it needed to go on and form a Government just two years later.

The results tell the Conservative Party it cannot continue to simply pursue a levelling up strategy that ignores the deprivation and people left behind in other parts of our country, including London, which has the biggest concentration of child poverty anywhere in the country. Levelling up is fundamentally about delivering a Britain that has equality of opportunity for everyone. That’s as vital for people in Wandsworth as it is anywhere else. Cost of living – housing especially – is as challenging for people in London as anywhere else in the country.

But it’s clear that both parties have much more to do to unite and convince people across the country that they have the answer on equality of opportunity. For many voters in these elections, it was “none of the above”.

Winning elections is about building a broad coalition of voters and the Conservatives need to regroup and work out how they can make sure that at next year’s local elections, shire Tories in the south of England don’t face the same fate as London Tories last night.

Justine Greening is the chair of Levelling Up Goals and the former Conservative MP for Putney