Who Represents Chiswick After This Week's Elections?

All parties can claim some success looking at local voting figures

Cllr Garth Roberts gives his acceptance speech after the South West constituency declaration

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May 5, 2024

While most attention was focused of the outcome of the contest for London Mayor, who were to be Chiswick’s representatives on the London Assembly was also being decided. The W4 postcode area is covered by two constituencies in the representative body and neither was a foregone conclusion with the three largest parties all having hopes of success.

Chiswick Gunnersbury ward councillor Ron Mushiso failed in his bid to become Conservative London Assembly member for the South West constituency which covers the part of Chiswick in the borough of Hounslow. The seat covers the three boroughs of Hounslow, Richmond and Kingston.

As in 2021, it was a three-way contest, but this time out the Liberal Democrat Leader of Richmond Council, Gareth Roberts became the first non-Conservative to win here and also the first Liberal Democrat to win a Greater London Assembly constituency seat. Previously Liberal Democrats on the London Assembly had been elected through the Party List. Mr Roberts, who describes himself as a cyclist on his social media biography, has been a councillor for 14 years and sits on the Trustee Board of the Royal Parks.

He said afterwards, “Thank you all those who voted for me. And thank you to all the candidates who fought a decent, fair election.”

Cllr Mushiso also thanked his supporters but told ChiswickW4.com that unfortunately he hadn’t done enough to get his message across to the extra 20,000 voters he needed to win. He added that he wished Gareth Roberts the best of luck .

Asked if he thought that national dissatisfaction with the government had cost him the seat, he said, “No. I personally feel I ran as Ron Mushiso and lost as Ron Mushiso. The pundits and journalists can decipher it, but I don’t feel the national picture was the major factor for me losing. “

Cllr Ron Mushiso at the count

His vote share was down by 7.5 percentage points compared to the previous incumbent Nick Rogers, but much of that fall can probably be attributed to a 5.5 percentage point increase for Reform’s Steve Chilcott. At the same time there appears to have been a degree of tactical voting with Gareth Roberts seeing a 4.4 percentage point increase in his vote while Labour’s Marcela Benedetti saw a 1.5 percentage point drop in her share.

A Liberal Democrat source said, “It sounds like heaps of Lib Dem voters have split their ballots – voted for us in the South West London assembly seat, but then voted Sadiq.”

Optimism for the Conservatives has been stoked by a decline in Labour’s share of the vote in the Brentford West constituency was announced on Friday with the fall widely interpreted as being propelled by dissatisfaction over the closure of the Watermans Arts Centre. However, any impact on Labour only benefited the Liberal Democrats in the event.

There was a remarkably different pattern of voting in the Mayoral election in the South West constituency with Sadiq Khan topping the poll with 77,011 and Susan Hall in second with 68,856. Rob Blackie, who was standing for the Liberal Democrats came third with just 25,579 votes.

The Party List vote in the constituency failed to follow the pattern of the Mayoral or Assembly Member vote with the Conservatives finishing a close second behind Labour and the Liberal Democrats in third.

The Conservatives had high hopes for Ealing and Hillingdon as they were anticipating a ULEZ effect similar to that seen in Uxbridge, which forms part of the constituency, during a recent by-election at which they pulled off a shock win.

As at the last election, Ealing and Hillingdon elected a Labour London Assembly member while preferring a Conservative Mayor. This contradictory outcome was repeated as Susan Hall got 75,396 votes ahead of 73,257 for Sadiq Khan with the Greens and Lib Dems polling around 10,000. Although topping the constituency vote has no material benefit, it was a rare win for the Conservatives in a generally miserable night across the country and the reduced margin of victory in the Assembly Member contest will make it their top target for the next election.

Bassam Mahfouz, an Ealing councillor who won selection as the Labour candidate against the incumbent Onkar Sahota, received 72,356 votes but it appears that Reform voters in the constituency switched to Susan Hall in the Mayoral contest with over 8,000 fewer backing Howard Cox for Mayor than the Assembly candidate.

Labour did see its vote share in the Assembly election decline by 3.4 percentage points to 37.4% but the Conservative candidate Henry Higgins also lost ground with a 2 percentage point fall leaving Bassam Mahfouz with a 2.5% majority.

The 4.3 percentage point increase seen for Reform candidate Anthony Goodwin was not enough to prevent him coming last out of the five candidates but does appear to have been sufficient to deny the Conservatives a win.

In terms of turnout, both local constituencies saw above average turnout with the South West seat seeing 45.3% of the electorate vote, the third highest in London, and Ealing and Hillingdon 43% compared to 40.5% across the capital. The West Central seat saw a 35% turnout.

Labour took the West Central London Assembly seat for the first ever time with James Small-Edwards winning by just over 4,000 votes. The constituency, which covers the boroughs Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster, also backed Labour in the mayoral vote.

Conservative Tony Devenish, who has held the seat since 2016, said it has been a ‘huge honour’ to represent the area, and that his priority “will always be the people in this part of London”.

Mr Small-Edwards, who won with 46,831 to second-place Mr Devenish’s 42,578, said the result was ‘humbling’ on a day when his party picked up both the local constituency and Mayoral votes.

Cllr Stephen Cowan, Labour Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, described the result as a 'huge endorsement for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party'. He continued: "We’re winning significantly in areas that we’ve not won before, and while there’s no complacency, it bodes well for Chelsea and Fulham, the City of Westminster, and Kensington in the General Election.”

Local turnout was down when compared with the 2021 elections, from 39 per cent to 34.94 per cent. Mr Devenish won by just over 2,000 votes four years’ ago, after being run close by Labour’s Rita Begum.

Mr Small-Edwards, who is the son of singer Heather Small and rugby coach Shaun Edwards, said continuing support for the cost-of-living crisis will be one of his key aims on the London Assembly, alongside more affordable and social housing and action to combat climate change.

Despite its gains, Labour does still does not have a majority on the London Assembly now holding 11 out of the 25 seats. The party will be dependent on support for the Greens who have three representatives and the Liberal Democrats with two. The Conservatives now have eight members in the assembly.

There was some speculation on social media on Friday evening that the Mayoral election could end up being closer than expected. Figures released on Friday showed that turnout was down in all seven London Assembly constituencies in which Sadiq Khan polled more first preference votes than his Tory rival Shaun Bailey in 2021. Turnout had meanwhile risen in some of the constituencies which had returned Conservative candidate. With not a single vote counted at this point, these predictions of a tight contest proved ill-founded with Sadiq Khan going on to win a third term with an increased majority receiving 43.8 per cent of the votes (1,088,225) to Susan Hall’s 32.7 per cent (811,518).

Ms Hall congratulated the Mayor on his victory, before saying he must make tackling crime his top priority adding, “He owes it to the families of those thousand people who have lost [their] lives to knife crime, under his mayoralty.

“I will continue to hold Sadiq to account, to stand up for hard-working families, for motorists and for women.”

The best ever result for a winning candidate in terms of vote-share was achieved by Mr Khan in 2016, when he secured his first term as mayor with 44.2 per cent of ‘first preference’ votes, under the old ‘supplementary vote’ system.

For this year’s City Hall election and others going forward, the voting system has been changed to ‘first past the post’, meaning that voters are no longer able to choose a first and second preference for mayor. The winning candidate now simply had to receive more votes than any other.

The lowest win, by vote-share, was that of Labour’s Ken Livingstone when he won re-election in 2004, with 37 per cent of first preferences. This was down from the 39 per cent he received when running as an independent in 2000.

In that earlier contest – the capital’s first mayoral election – Mr Livingstone achieved the largest margin of victory by a London mayor over their nearest opponent, defeating Tory candidate Steven Norris by 11.9 percentage points.

By contrast, the narrowest winning margin was held by Tory mayor Boris Johnson when he secured a second term in 2012 with just 3.7 percentage points over Mr Livingstone.

Since the mayoralty’s creation in 2000, overall turnouts for City Hall elections have averaged at about 40 per cent.

Historically, the highest turnouts in London mayoral contests have been in the ‘change’ elections of 2008 and 2016 – when Tory mayor Boris Johnson and Labour mayor Sadiq Khan each seized their first victories, respectively. But even in those contests, fewer than half of eligible Londoners actually voted, as only 45 per cent turned out in each.

At the other end of the scale, the lowest turnout recorded was in the mayoralty’s first election in 2000, back when Londoners were unused to the idea of having a directly-elected mayor. Just over a third of those eligible – 34 per cent – cast their ballots.

Written with contributions from the Local Democracy Reporting Service