Harrow West

	01/06/2017	Expat 192.133.45.2
Labour lead now 17% in London - double what it was in 2015. Labour will hold this seat.
	12/05/2017	The Guardian 151.101.192.67
Harrow West: can Labour hold its 'lucky' seat of 20 years? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/12/harrow-west-can-labour-hold-its-lucky-seat-of-20-years Excerpt: On election night in 1997, Gareth Thomas, Labour?s 29-year-old candidate for Harrow West, went to the count with two prepared speeches: one if he came second, the other if he came third. Labour had never won this seat; the Conservatives had a 17,800 majority. But in one of the less noted but more remarkable moments that night, the landslide swept him into parliament with a slender majority of 1,240 votes. It was a 17.5% swing ? the third biggest of the night. Miraculously, 20 years and four elections later, Thomas is still there. He has been sitting on a thin cushion ever since, with a majority that rose as high as 6,156 in 2001 and is currently down to 2,208. His seat is 19th on the Tory target list. ... Clearly, the Conservatives see Harrow West as winnable. Theresa May was in the borough earlier this week; the week before there were visits from Boris Johnson and David Cameron. The Conservatives got back to me too late to be included in this article (they also did not attend candidates? hustings on Thursday night) but have since been in touch, so we will hear from them later in this series. Sitting on the north-west outskirts of London, Harrow is one of those areas where the suburbs and the city meet but don?t exactly match. Within 40 minutes you can be in St Albans in Hertfordshire or at Heathrow. In 15 you can be in central London. Wherever you are in the constituency, you?re rarely more than five minutes from a large park or a big roundabout. Quiet streets with bay windows, big driveways and mock tudor awnings suggest the promise and comfort of suburbia. On top of the hill sits Harrow school, where teenagers carrying straw hats and big folders stride around as though they own the place ? which they pretty much do. Historically people have come here for better schools, a quieter life, more space and a longer commute. This is the fifth most culturally diverse borough in the country with one of the lowest crime rates in London. But the very things many left the city to escape ? traffic, underfunding, grime and bustle ? seem to be following them. A spate of knife attacks has some local people feeling less secure. With owner-occupation rates down from 80% to about 60-65%, a borough that once saw itself as aspirant is now starting to feel transient. Houses meant for single families are occasionally crammed with a lot of low-paid tenants. Bins meant for two adults and two children overflow; mattresses and furniture get dumped; young men with nowhere else to go congregate in the park and drink. ... There are lots of potential permutations in Harrow West ? Tories who might vote Labour because of Brexit; Labour voters who might switch to the Lib Dems because of article 50; Ukip voters who may switch to the Conservatives because of May; people of all convictions staying at home because the whole thing irritates them and they think it?s a done deal anyway. With this many variables and such tight margins, there is everything to play for.
	27/04/2017	Jack Cox 24.212.227.58
5% Labour win here in the last election, This seat has been a Tory stronghold until 1997 and I think it swings back in that direction with their current polling