ROYAL COUPLE’S DISTRICT VOTED WITH BRITAIN’S WORKING CLASS
Longtime enclave for Conservative Party ‘just had enough’
Kensington is home to Britain’s upper crust: royalty, celebrities and the super-rich. Residents of the posh London enclave include Prince William and Duchess Kate and elites who set the standard for fashion and blue-blood tradition.
One of the biggest shocks of last week’s general election occurred here. The left-wing Labour Party that appeals to millions of working-class Brits snatched the west London neighborhood seat in Parliament from the Conservatives for the first time since the district was created in 1974.
Kensington Palace, where William and Kate reside, is one of the area’s most famous landmarks.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling owns a home in the area, as do singer Elton John and Virgin airlines entrepreneur Richard Branson. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is one of many people of immense wealth who live there.
“Kensington and Chelsea used to be a very safe seat for the Conservative Party,” said Richard Walls, 73, a retiree and a Kensington resident. “There’s definitely a trend. I think they’ve just had enough, and they’re fed up. They want something new.”
Enough voters agreed with Walls to give Labour’s Emma Dent Coad a wispy-thin 20-vote victory over Conservative rival Victoria Borwick out of nearly 33,000 cast. The results were counted three times before Dent Coad was declared the winner.
The loss of Kensington underscored the election setback suffered by the Conservatives under Prime Minister Theresa May. They lost 12 seats, which cost them a majority in the House of Commons. The Labour Party hammered May for cuts in health, education and welfare programs.
“I’m a big Labour supporter. I agree with all the values that Labour holds,” said Tim Fryer, 44, a manager of a hotel near Kensington Palace.
Fryer explained that not everyone in Kensington is rich. Far from it. South Kensington is known for its opulence, but North Kensington is less affluent and includes lower-income housing.
The distance between the two is small, but the political gulf “between the two is vast,” he said.
Tenants in North Kensington complained about a bill last year that would force households earning more than $51,000 to choose to pay market-rate rents for their government-subsidized homes, buy them or move out. In November, the government announced that paying market-rate rents or buying the properties would not be compulsory, given the high cost of homes in the area. A government-owned twobedroom apartment in South Kensington sold for $1.3 million in 2015.
“People don’t always believe me when I say parts of the borough are very, very poor,” Dent Coad wrote on her blog in a post accompanied by a picture of a makeshift shelter built by home- less people. She said the area is “the most unequal borough in Britain.”
Dent Coad pointed to worsening life expectancy in areas where poorer residents live and lamented moves by the government to privatize services. One example she cited: The demolition of a government nursing home was approved “to make space for a super-luxury private care home.”
“Kensington and Chelsea is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the country after seven years of Tory government,” she said. “Our poorer communities and vulnerable individuals are being squeezed out by voracious development to benefit the few and very wealthy.”
Walls predicted that Dent Coad’s victory could be a sign of bigger change to come. A survey by market research firm YouGov after the election showed May tied with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on who would make the best prime minister at 39% each.
“I think that next time, Mr. Corbyn maybe has a good chance of becoming prime minister,” Walls said. “The Conservatives lost touch with the people.”
“Our poorer communities and vulnerable individuals are being squeezed out by voracious development to benefit the few and very wealthy.” Member of Parliament Emma Dent Coad