Brent Central: Lib Dems, libraries and the Labour tide

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/25/brent-central-lib-dems-libraries-and-the-labour-tide

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The polls point to the Liberal Democrats losing two and maybe three of their seven London seats to Labour, including Brent Central in the north west of the metropolis where the inner city morphs into suburbia. The bookmakers are pointing to it too, as are last year’s Brent borough election results. Labour now holds 26 of the 27 council seats in the constituency’s nine wards, leaving the Lib Dems with just one. There’s an incoming red tide. And for Nick Clegg’s party, it gets worse.

Whatever the strengths of Lib Dem candidate Lauren Keith, who remains upbeat, it can’t help that she was brought in at short notice after her party’s original candidate had to withdraw under awkward circumstances. It can’t help either that Sarah Teather, who won the seat in 2010, had stepped down before that. Teather had always stood out, initially for becoming the youngest MP in the Commons by securing the now defunct Brent East seat in 2003. Ten years later it was for announcing that she would not defend Brent Central, which she’d narrowly won ahead of Labour’s Dawn Butler, who is contesting the seat again this time.

Teather felt that Clegg as deputy prime minister had stopped fighting hard enough on social justice issues and for a liberal line on immigration. Perhaps such things are themselves part of the problem for the party as it defends Brent Central. The borough is one of the most ethnically diverse places in Britain and, as local author Rose Rouse writes of Harlesden, “everything that diversity creates”. Along with Wembley stadium and the vast Park Royal industrial park, Brent Central contains Britain’s largest Hindu temple. Its mix of residents is 24% Asian, 25% black, 18% white British and 21% white “other”, a category in which Irish people will be well represented. Muslims make up 21% of its population and Hindus 9.3%. Nearly two-thirds of its households rent rather than own their homes. Harlesden endures high levels of social deprivation, as do parts of Willesden Green and Neasden.

These stats came to life as I wandered down Harlesden High Street last week (see inexpert photo above) and the often pinched and careworn residential terraces leading off it. Everything spoke of “natural” Labour territory, suggesting the Lib Dems did pretty well to establish themselves in Brent in the first place. But maybe their traditional strengths have become a form of weakness. Following last year’s borough vote, Labour councillor Samuel Stopp argued that his party’s main opponents had paid a price for what he called “relentless negative propaganda focused on local controversies” to which, in his view, they offered no solutions amid a general loss of campaigning energy.

He cited car parking and library closures. The latter got a lot of publicity back in 2012. Six were shut. Novelist Zadie Smith, who grew up in Brent and whose most recent work is set there and named after its postcodes, joined the opposition to the policy. But in the council chamber, Brent leader Muhammed Butt told the Lib Dems he had “nothing to apologise for.” After all: “These closures were made because of cuts by your government putting us in an impossible situation.” At the time, the Lib Dems had 17 councillors. Two years later, only one survived. Now, Labour is proudly pointing to a big new library building in Willesden. It must be hard to be the protest party when your leaders are running the country. No wonder Labour believes Brent Central will be theirs.