Conservatives Suffer 11.5% Swing To Labour In One Of Their Safest Seats In London

It was chucking it down with rain from yesterday afternoon onwards but Labour’s Ben Coleman still secured an 11.5% swing against the Conservative Party in the Town by-election in Fulham. I am grateful to all of those residents that voted for us and to all the volunteers that campaigned for us. Thank you.

Town is one of the safest Conservative held wards in Hammersmith and Fulham and across London. The 11.5% swing compares to the last hard fought by-election in that ward which had taken place on the 15th October 2009. Compare yesterday’s result to the London local elections result, which took place on the same day as the last General Election on the 6^th May 2010, and it’s still an excellent 7.2% swing to Labour. Here’s how the numbers of votes break down:

Conservative 768,

Labour 416

Liberal Democrat 331

UKIP 39

These results underline how my Labour colleagues and I have a good chance of winning control of the Council in 2014 and putting an end to the awful things the Conservatives are doing. If we do win, we will stop the Conservatives’ wasteful use of taxes payers’ money such as: £70million for new Town Hall offices; £5million on propaganda; £12m on so-called “consultants” and even £1.5m for legal fees they need to fight local residents and businesses objecting to their dubious building schemes. We will redirect all that money into cuts to council taxes, investing in modern, efficient services and we’ll put extra police onto the streets. Full details to follow when we publish our 2014 manifesto.