It’s been an extremely dramatic election night across the U.K., where Theresa May’s Conservative Party defied expectations by losing its majority, albeit not as yet its ability to form a government. Over a night where Conservatives unexpectedly lost seat after seat, one district stood out even more than the others: the small but incredibly wealthy London district of Kensington. It’s thanks to Kensington, the richest constituency in Britain, that a result can’t fully be called yet. After two botched counts during the night, polling staff were exhausted that they need a rest before recounting this afternoon. Finally, this evening, the constituency was definitively declared for Labour.* Clearly, something incredible has happened.
The richest cluster of neighborhoods in Europe has just for the first time in its history voted in an MP from the center-left Labour Party. The last, now-rejected count found Labour just 35 votes ahead, a first for an area whose electoral boundaries have shifted but never yet returned anyone but a Conservative to Parliament.
