Tulip-mania: Labour wins in England’s most marginal seat
LABOUR held the most marginal seat in England when Tulip Siddiq retained Glenda Jackson’s old seat with a surprisingly comfortable majority.
She won the Tory target of Hampstead and Kilburn by 1,138 votes — a huge rise on the 42-vote gap between Ms Jackson and her Conservative rival in 2010. Ms Siddiq, who in that year became the first Bangladeshi woman elected to Camden council, increased Labour’s share of the vote by 11.6 per cent. She said she was “absolutely honoured” to become the voters’ MP.
“This constituency — in which I have grown up, in which I went to school, where my parents got married in the 1970s, where I used to write for the local paper — is my home,” she added. Tory candidate Simon Marcus saw his share of the vote rise nine per cent but Labour benefited most from a collapse in support for the Liberal Democrats of more than 25 per cent.
Ms Siddiq invited her husband Chris Percy and her family on stage at the count in Camden. Outside she was mobbed by Bangladeshi supporters.
Thanking Mr Percy, she said: “Gentlemen, take note. This man took five months off work and really supported me. He has done an amazing job.”
Tory aides were left to mull over the belief that the party let a possible gain to slip away. One observer said Tory resources had been withdrawn from the constituency in the campaign’s later stages to help shore up sitting Conservative MP Mike Freer in neighbouring Finchley and Golders Green.
Ms Siddiq, 32, said voters had put faith in “Labour values of justice and social equality” and vowed to defend the NHS and public services. She told her supporters to “gather tomorrow morning, Kilburn High Road, 9am”, adding: “The hard work has just started.”
Former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer called for Labour to learn the lessons of his emphatic victory as he reflected on the party’s dire performance nationally.
Sir Keir retained Holborn and St Pancras for Labour with a 17,048 majority — almost double that of former Cabinet minister Frank Dobson who was standing down. He said after the count, also in Camden: “If you work for and with the people in your constituency tirelessly, you get these results.”
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, who came third behind the Tories after a five-fold increase in her vote, said her result and those elsewhere showed that her party was “in a new place — at the centre of British politics”.
She said: “This has been for the Green Party a campaign unlike any other. Our membership has more than quadrupled in the course of this campaign.”