David Floyd gives an overview of the contest in one of Barnet’s three marginal seats

A platform at East Finchley tube station

Result in 2019:

Mike Freer	Conservative	24,162 – 43.8%
Luciana Berger	Liberal Democrats	17,600 – 31.9%
Ross Houston	Labour	13,347 – 24.2%

Majority – 6562 / 11.9%

While Labour’s unpopular then-leader Jeremy Corbyn is likely to have had a negative impact on the party’s performance in all three of Barnet’s constituencies in 2019, this impact was particularly dramatic in Finchley and Golders Green, the UK seat with the largest number of Jewish voters.

That was because high profile Jewish former Labour MP Luciana Berger, who left the party due to its failure to tackle antisemitism under Corbyn, ran in the constituency for the Liberal Democrats and dramatically increased their vote from 6.6% in 2017 to 31.9% in 2019 and took second place ahead of Barnet Labour councillor Ross Houston (now the council’s deputy leader).

The result was that incumbent MP Mike Freer received nearly 500 fewer votes in 2019 compared to 2017 but substantially increased his majority as 56% of votes were split between the two left of centre candidates.

A lot has happened since then. Freer chose not to run again following an arson attack on his constituency office and receiving death threats. Labour claims to have tackled antisemitism and the Liberal Democrats have run very low key campaigns in all recent elections locally.

This all adds up to an extraordinarily difficult task for new Conservative candidate Alex Deane in his contest with Labour’s Sarah Sackman.

Statements from seven of the eight candidates: Alex Deane – Conservative, Brendan Donnelly – Rejoin EU, Sarah Hoyle – Liberal Democrats, Katharine Murphy – Party of Women, Steve Parsons – Green Party, Bepi Pezzulli – Reform UK and Sarah Sackman – Labour.

Barnet Post approached Independent candidate Michael Shad for a statement but we have not received one.

Note: Barnet Post approached all candidates for the borough’s seats and offered them the opportunity to make a 250-word statement. The purpose of these statements is to give voters the clearest possible understanding of the perspectives of people who are asking for their support. In doing this, we acknowledge that some views expressed my cause offence and distress and apologise if this is the case.

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