The MP enjoys a very high level of popularity within the UK Jewish community - but it's not clear whether that's her best option to win a seat
September 12, 2019 15:46
In normal times, Finchley and Golders Green would not be considered a serious target seat for the Liberal Democrats. In fact, in terms of straightforward voting numbers from previous elections, the constituency would not even crack the list of their top 100 targets.
But, as every single day now seems to prove, we are not living in normal political times. And the Lib Dems have a not-so-secret weapon – a politician whose popularity among British Jews is all but unparalleled.
“I’d love it if Luciana ran here,” one Jewish resident of the constituency recently told me. Except it wasn’t one; I must have heard similar sentiments from two dozen different people over the last few weeks. Traditional Tory voters, lifelong Labour supporters – all saying the same thing; if she stands in the constituency, which has the highest percentage of Jewish voters in the country, they will vote for her.
It isn’t about having a Jewish candidate in the constituency, it’s about having a Jewish candidate who is popular enough within the Jewish community. In 2015, when Labour fielded a Jewish candidate, Sarah Sackman (and had a Jewish leader, Ed Miliband), I personally witnessed distressed Jewish voters confronting her during the election campaign outside Golders Green station, angry at what they perceived as Mr Miliband’s hostility towards Israel. She did not win. Similarly, the Lib Dems themselves have fielded a Jewish candidate in the constituency for three out of the last six elections – it’s never made much of a difference.
Even with significant Jewish support, Luciana would have a mountain to climb in F&GG. Jewish voters, despite their higher concentration there, still make up less than 25 per cent of the constituency’s voting population as a whole. The Liberal Democrat vote, which reached an all-time high in 2010 of 17 percent, collapsed to just 3.3 per cent after five years of coalition government, and even at the last election, they only received 6.6 per cent.
The Lib Dems have another possible arrow in their quiver, however – the fact that, unlike the Conservatives and Labour, they are an unambiguously anti-Brexit party, in a constituency where approximately 70 per cent of people voted Remain. But it is far from certain whether that would be enough.
The Conservative MP for Finchley & Golders Green, Mike Freer, is popular within the Jewish community, having worked closely with communal leaders on key issues of concern. I understand that the attitude of such leaders is not uniformly positive towards a Luciana run. In fact, there is worry that by splitting the vote, she might inadvertently help Labour retake the constituency, which, at a time when Labour is led by a man perceived by around 85 per cent of Britain’s Jews to be antisemitic, would be disastrous.
It is tempting, meanwhile, to see Labour as being in free-fall in the area. In last year’s local elections, for example, instead of Labour taking control of Barnet council, they actually lost seats. The PPC (prospective parliamentary candidate), Sara Conway, resigned suddenly earlier this week, citing “personal matters”. The previous week, she had found herself in a difficult situation after suggesting that antisemitism had been “weaponised by certain media commentators”.
But, at the 2017 general election, despite the vocal opposition to Jeremy Corbyn among the vast majority of British Jews, Labour still came within 1,600 votes of winning the seat. It’s possible that they were helped by the fact that the then-chair of the Jewish Labour Movement was the party’s candidate, but then again, Sarah Sackman was vice chair of the JLM when she ran two years before, and that did not seem to do any good.
All this is moot, however, until we find out whether Luciana will run in the constituency or not. There is no doubt that she will run somewhere – but where? There are far safer seats for her to run in than Finchley and Golders Green, from Richmond Park or St Albans to Nick Clegg’s old seat of Sheffield Hallam.
In late 2018, when the possibility of an election was mooted, the Liberal Democrats selected a number of prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) for constituencies around the country – including Finchley and Golders Green. If Clareine Enderby, the current Liberal Democrat candidate for F&GG, makes a sudden announcement that she will not, in fact, be running there, then we can probably make an educated guess as to who might replace her. Until that point, however, things will remain unclear.
