Dan Tomlinson’s 2,914-vote general election victory for Labour in Chipping Barnet – the first time the suburban seat on the fringe of the capital has returned anyone other than a Conservative – was a result which sent ripples well beyond its constituency boundaries. The young economist fought an energetic campaign against long-time incumbent Theresa Villiers, whose battles against housing development had seen her dubbed the “patron saint of Nimbyism”. Her defeat was widely heralded as a sign that, even in the leafy suburbs, the tide had finally turned in favour of building homes, not blocking them.
Three months on, Tomlinson doesn’t seem to have taken a breath, visiting organisations and attending events across his patch, and even spending part of his birthday, which came just two weeks after the election, out knocking on doors. He’s already met rail operators to push the case for step-free access to local stations and raised with Number 10 the need for more police in Barnet. He is also planning a car theft summit and promoting a campaign for a “smartphone-free” Chipping Barnet to protect younger children in particular from social media harm, in line with fellow MP Josh MacAlister’s Safer Phones Bill, just launched. His backing for the popular campaign to bring Barnet FC back to the borough from its current exile in Harrow will also be a crowd pleaser. “I hope the club and the council can work constructively together to look at which sites might be feasible,” he says.
Tomlinson is busy on a wider level too, as a backbench champion for Labour’s mission to grow the economy and get to the top of the G7 league while making “everyone, not just a few, better off”. The past week has seen him in the media and banging the drum at the government’s international investment summit. It’s all in accord with his pre-Parliament career at the Resolution Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, working on ways to improve living standards and tackle poverty. “Over that period I was watching the Tories trash the economy. That’s the reason things are in such a dire state,” he says. “So getting the economy growing is the key to one of my main goals – to work with the government to improve the living standards of people of Chipping Barnet, as well as people across the country.”
Tomlinson is keen to work with Sadiq Khan too on boosting economic growth in the capital. His personal shopping list includes a new HS2 terminus at Euston – one “with enough platforms for it to be future-proofed” for northern extensions of the line – and Crossrail 2, including an extension to High Barnet. He wants to counter the outer/inner divide too, because both play their part in powering the city’s economy.
But the MP’s stance on housing will perhaps be of most interest. Growth means building more homes, and Tomlinson is firmly behind Labour’s pledge to see 1.5 million of them by 2029. Locally, that was a clear dividing line during the election campaign, with Tomlinson highlighting Villiers’s seeming indifference, as expressed in a 2023 interview, to the impact of the crisis in the constituency. “I’ve met people all over Chipping Barnet who have been affected,” Tomlinson says. For him, it’s personal too. He grew up in a low-income family, experiencing homelessness as a child, and more recently faced the challenges of private renting in London and saving for a deposit. “We do need to find a way to build the homes people need,” he says.
In one of her last throws of the dice just before polling day, Villiers warned, somewhat apocalyptically, that those concerns meant “only five days left to save the Green Belt”. There is a trade-off, Tomlinson says, when it comes to new housing, but that will be focussed on the “grey belt” – previously-developed land within the Green Belt, which the MP will now be encouraging Barnet Council to bring forward for possible re-use for housing.
The new government will still take a “brownfield first” approach in the inner city, Tomlinson says, and rules for grey belt sites will prevent a developer free-for-all. In any event, Whitehall’s proposed new target for Barnet, at 3,683 homes a year, is actually lower than the previous government’s of 5,160 a year. The policy is not about concreting over the Green Belt any time soon.
Constituents who catch Tomlinson’s maiden speech, expected in a week or so, should also be pleasantly surprised to hear a celebration of the suburbs. “I am proud to be an MP for a suburban seat,” he says. Having taken a well-trodden route himself, from inner city Tower Hamlets to a house in Barnet, and recently started a family, he’s a suburbanite too, he points out: “There is a lot worth cherishing about the suburban life.”
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money other people won’t. Details HERE. Follow Charles Wright on X/Twitter. Photo: Dan Tomlinson website.