Enfield has for many years, politically speaking, been a relatively predictable borough of roughly two halves: Labour to the east of the A10, the Tories to the west. In the borough’s entire history, only three council seats have ever been won by anyone other than candidates of those two parties. With its southernmost wards trending redder, Labour has run the council since 2010 and took 38 seats to the Tories’ 25 in 2022.
The tectonic plates have been shifting though. Four years ago the Tories gained eight seats at the expense of Labour, recording the second-highest swing in their favour of any London council election that year. And now an earthquake could be imminent, with the latest YouGov projection putting Labour, the Conservatives and the Greens all within five percentage points of each other.
Continuing momentum may see the Conservatives getting over the majority line, but “plenty could go wrong”, according to the comprehensive London Decides analysis put together by On London’s Dave Hill and Lewis Baston with public affairs specialists Lowick Hedry. In Enfield, they say, the Tories are “still running up a down escalator in terms of demographics” and facing tough competition from Reform in the north-east of the borough.
Adding the Greens into the mix, says James Cracknell, who as editor of the local Enfield Dispatch newspaper has his finger very much on the pulse of the local political scene, makes the outcome of this year’s vote ”more difficult to predict than at any time in the borough’s history”. It won’t take much to push the borough into uncharted No Overall Control territory, with one or other small party perhaps holding the balance of power.
That could mean some “unusual alliances”, Cracknell says, particularly over the vexed issue of where to build more much-needed housing or, more accurately, where not to build it. Labour has doubled down on plans for some 9,000 homes on the Green Belt around Crews Hill, and the government, as well as relaxing Green Belt planning restrictions more generally, has now earmarked the same area for a 21,000-home New Town. Opposing that is a perhaps unlikely but potentially powerful coalition of Green and Reform, Lib Dem and Conservative.
It’s not just about building on the Green Belt either. A hustings in the key battleground ward of Southbury saw the Greens, Reform and the Tories lined up against a proposed 1,150 home scheme on an underused brownfield site – too tall, not a “good fit” for the area, not affordable enough, potentially damaging to “community cohesion” – even, according to Green candidate Mueez Abdurrahman, short on parking space.
The once-fierce debate over the borough’s two Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in Palmers Green and Bowes Park, both of them Green target areas, could reignite too, with the Conservatives maintaining a pledge to “rip them out”.
Full disclosure: I live in one of them. There was undoubtedly some overblown rhetoric around “active travel” benefits and reduced car use when the LTN was introduced, plus some poor early decisions on access. Both with those now rectified, I’m not sure residents would welcome the Tory plan, which would reopen a rat-run through our narrow terraced streets for the benefit of North Circular Road commuters.
That’s certainly on the cards though, and could even be facilitated if Green wins squeeze the Labour vote to the extent that a Conservative administration, perhaps “with the permission of Reform”, takes control – a plausible outcome according to Hill and Baston. Or perhaps LTN residents’ current freedom from daily congestion could be up for grabs in post-election horse-trading?
With a legal battle likely, as has already occurred in Tower Hamlets, the Tories may not see LTNs as a hill worth dying on if the wider prize is a common front over the Green Belt. But that could also see costly conflicts with City Hall and the government, with the Crews Hill scheme possibly removed from borough purview via a Mayoral Development Corporation. “If the government and Sadiq Khan want to play silly buggers we will see them in court all along the way,” Tory group leader Alessandro Georgiou has warned.
At the very least, there could be delays over the council’s own Local Plan, with Labour’s proposals unpicked if they are no longer in power. The party’s controversial deal with Spurs allowing a new women’s squad training facility on disused golf course in the Green Belt, now facing judicial review, might be unwound too.
And, as former Khan aide Nick Bowes has forecast for London as a whole post May 7, City Hall’s new draft London Plan, due soon after the elections and setting challenging new housing targets for the boroughs, “could well be a political tinderbox just waiting to explode”. In our connected city, council election decisions inevitably have implications beyond borough boundaries.
Big decisions for voters in Enfield then. And as Cracknell concludes, “how this all plays out is anyone’s guess.”
The latest Enfield Dispatch election coverage is here and there will be regular updates from the count, which will takes place on Friday 8 May on the paper’s website. A full list of Enfield candidates can be seen on the council website here.
For in-depth coverage the elections in all 32 boroughs, read London Decides, written by Lewis Baston and On London publisher and editor Dave Hill in collaboration with public affairs specialists Lowick Hedry.