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Published: 4th November, 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

THE Liberal Democrats have blamed national politics for their thrashing in the Kentish Town by-election on Thursday.

Labour won the poll by almost 700 votes in what had been billed as a knife-edge contest.

Held amid the fallout from the Coalition government’s spending cuts, the by-election was nevertheless a chance for the Lib Dems to begin their fightback in Camden following a fall from power in May’s borough-wide elections. 

But with a swing to Labour amounting to about 10 per cent, the party’s Jenny Headlam-Wells was crowned the new ward councillor at about 11pm to cheers from colleagues. The party continued in a King’s Cross pub with a bottle of Prosecco. 

It is the first time Labour has won a by-election in Camden in eight years, a dismal record compared with the Lib Dems’ series of victories in one-off polls.

Until the May council elections, all three seats in Kentish Town were held by the Lib Dems, who ran Camden in coalition with the Conservatives in the previous four years. All those ward seats are now in Labour hands, reinforcing a trend which suggests a swathe of north London – where MPs and councillors have retained their seats in difficult conditions – has developed a resistance to the slide in the party’s fortunes nationally.

Cllr Headlam-Wells said: “It was a good, positive campaign. People worked hard and got the message out that we will do our best for residents in hard times. I’ve lived in this part of London for so long people know me and came out to support me.”

Lib Dem candidate Nick Russell had been aiming to use the by-election to win back a seat he previously held at the Town Hall. 

During the campaign he was attacked for living in Kilburn, but Labour said the win was actually a judgment on the Lib Dem decision to join a power-sharing pact with the Tories at Westminster.

Labour leader Councillor Nasim Ali said: “This is testament to what we have been saying about the Coalition’s programme of cuts. We have said we will stand up for the people of Camden against these cuts – and they have backed us in this election to do that. 

“We had a good candidate here and we’ve won by a big margin. In the past, Kentish Town was always Labour.”

The by-election was called following the death of Labour councillor Dave Horan in September.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Islington North Labour MP who worked with Cllr Horan, said his old friend would have been proud of the result. 

The statistics appeared to show that Labour had pulled in votes from the Lib Dems and the Green Party. Four years ago, the Green Party had hopes of winning a seat in Kentish Town but its share of the vote has slowly been eroded.

Lib Dem leader Councillor Keith Moffitt admitted the size of the defeat was a shock. “I was expecting the final result might be 20 votes either way but we are looking at an election that came at the worst possible time for us,” he said. 

“The Labour Party has become a repository for the protest vote against the Coalition. People said to us they were happy with what the Lib Dems have done in Kentish Town for the past four years; how we saved and restored the Prince of Wales Baths. They said our councillors had worked hard for them but at this point they could not vote Lib Dem because of the Coalition and the cuts that have just been announced.” 

He added that coalitions were about compromises and that the alternative would have been Tories in power with a complete mandate to do what they wanted.

“People have to ask themselves whether that’s what they would have preferred. I think people in the future will see that the economy improves and confidence grows, and that the Lib Dems were right to join the government.”

How they voted:

Jenny Headlam-Wells (Labour) – 1,411
Nick Russell (Lib Dem) – 715
Naomi Aptowitzer (Green) – 349
Will Blair (Conservative) – 186
Turn-out 26.02 per cent