Cambridge Gardens Street has rarely experienced such political turmoil. On Sunday, December 8 in the morning, cold and sunny, a group of Labor activists knock on the doors of this small residential avenue of middle class north of Kensington, in full London. On the sidewalk across the way, Liberal Democratic activists are doing the same. The two competing groups hunt on the same lands with the same argument: "If you want to stop Brexit, you have to vote for us. "
The scene perfectly symbolizes the division of Brexit opponents for the December 12th parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom. All the polls show it: today there is a very slight majority (around 53%) to stay in the European Union. But the brexiters are behind only one party, Boris Johnson's conservatives, while opponents are split in two: Jeremy Corbyn's Labor and Jo Swinson's lib-dem. According to Matthew Goodwin, a political scientist at the University of Kent, Mr. Johnson collects 72% of the voting intentions of those who voted for Brexit in 2016, while Labor gets only 48% of those who voted against.
"The difference is that we are the real anti-Brexit, while Labor is led by someone who believes in Brexit in secret", jeers one of the lib-dem activists on the Cambridge Gardens sidewalk. Electors to get by with this …
A very "remainer" territory but extremely unequal
London is an essential bastion for Labor. While the north of England is nibbled by conservatives, Corbyn's party got 59% of Londoners' votes in 2017, winning 49 of the 73 seats at stake. If he wants to move forward, he needs to even better in this city. The latest polls suggest that this will not be the case, indicating that it could even lose one or two seats. In this scenario, London would remain Labor, but would not tip the national result.
Kensington is the image of the British capital, until the caricature: it is a territory very "remainer" (68.8% for the maintenance in the European Union in the referendum of 2016), but extremely unequal. Close to Cambridge Gardens is the infamous Grenfell Tower, which dominates the entire neighborhood. There remains a huge column covered in white, with a green heart at the top and the inscription " forever in our hearts ".
