Green-voting 'hipsters' could oust me as Tottenham MP, admits ex-Foreign Secretary David Lammy

“My majority was 15,000 at the general election, but I went on to Electoral Calculus and it says if the seat of Tottenham is retained by David Lammy, it will be no more than 1,000 votes,” he told the event, according to The Telegraph.

“So what was a safe seat is no longer a safe seat.”

King Charles meets then Foreign Secretary David Lammy at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on February 12, 2025 in London

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“I can 100 per cent tell you, knowing my seat as I do, that there is no prospect of the Greens taking my constituency,” he told the New Statesman in March.

Mr Lammy is said to have explained at the fundraising event how he now believes he could face a fight to hold onto the Tottenham seat.

“The truth is, because of regeneration in London, the demographic is changing a bit,” he reportedly said.

“There are hipsters, particularly, that are voting for other parties.

“That’s how I’m going to put it.”

Green Party leader Zack Polanski wants to be MP for Holborn and St Pancras

PA Wire

Given the change in London politics, Mr Lammy continued: “So for the first time in 27 years, I need an organiser, a community organiser who’s day-to-day in the constituency on doors, with those leaflets, helping me know where the issues are, street to street, neighbourhood to neighbourhood.

“This is something that marginal constituencies do the whole time, but a seat like mine has never had to do.

“And when you have an organiser, you have to pay your organiser, you have to have resources for the things the organiser needs, and that is why I’m having this fundraiser.”

He got 23,066 votes, with the Greens in second place on 7,632.

His tally was still 57.5% of the overall vote, but down 20.3 percentage points from the 35,621 he gained at the 2019 general election.

Andy Burnham is seeking to win back voters who deserted Labour for the Greens

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Luke Tryl, director of think tank More in Common, said: “It’s definitely true that, at the height of the Polanski surge, David Lammy’s Tottenham seat looked like it could be heading into the Green column and our MRP earlier this year put the race as a statistical dead heat.

“The Greens’ wins in Haringey council confirmed the peril.

“Since then, the Greens’ polling has ticked down as Burnham has united the Left, but what we don’t know yet is whether this is a permanent trend or whether the Greens could climb back up to threaten Labour’s Left flank.”