The Labour Party has won the constituency of Hendon by a tiny margin, turning a solidly Tory seat red for the first time since 2010.
David Pinto-Duschinsky won the seat with 15,855 votes, pipping Tory Ameet Jogia’s 15,840 to take the seat, which had a Conservative majority of just over 4,000 in 2019.
Pinto-Duschinsky, the son of a Holocaust survivor, served as an adviser to the late Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling.
Earlier in the campaign, he told the JC he wanted to bring “change” to Hendon. “If you knock on the doors around here, you hear that the country is broken, that people are struggling with the cost of living crisis, they can't see a GP, they don't see police on their street and that things just aren't working as they should do.”
He also described the levels rising levels of antisemitism as “the most challenging and the hardest time in my lifetime to be British Jew.” He added: “We face not just the trauma and grief on the back of October 7, but a surging wave of antisemitism. I talk to people who talk about having to hide their kippot, to families whose kids have had to take off their school blazers because they have Magen Davids on them. I've even talked to people who've taken down their mezuzahs. This is an incredibly tough climate, and it breaks my heart, but it makes me even more determined to stand up for our Jewish community.”
Around 15 per cent of the population in Hendon are Jewish, making it the parliamentary constituency with the second largest number of Jewish voters in London (Finchley and Golders Green has the most).
