Hands fights for seat as Tories face central London wipeout

MINISTER Greg Hands faces a battle to hold onto his seat at the next general election to avoid a threatened Tory wipeout in central London for the first time ever, say political experts.

- NICHOLAS CECIL

The Conservatives hold three seats in central London but Labour is strongly targeting at least two of them.

Nickie Aiken’s decision to stand down at the election as MP for the Cities of London and Westminster will have fuelled Labour’s hopes of seizing the constituency for the first time.

Former Westminster City Council leader Ms Aiken held the seat in 2019 with a majority of 3,953. But since then Labour won control of the flagship Tory town hall in the 2022 local elections.

The neighbouring Kensington seat is a super marginal, won by Tory Felicity Buchan by just 150 votes in 2019. She gained 16,768 votes, Labour’s Emma Dent Coad 16,618, and Liberal Democrat Sam Gyimah, who had defected from the Tories amid the Brexit chaos, 9,312.

London minister Mr Hands has a far bigger majority, of 11,241, in Chelsea and Fulham. He became an MP in 2005 for Hammersmith and Fulham, a consituency that was then redrawn in 2010. A number of the London seats are seeing boundary changes, some potentially quite significant, two new ones are being created, and some are being renamed including Kensington and Bayswater.