Lewisham had a 70 per cent Remain vote

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As was widely expected, Heidi Alexander announced today that she is to resign as MP for Lewisham East to become Sadiq Khan’s deputy mayor for transport.

When I blogged about the likely by-election I said:

Heidi Alexander had a majority of 21,213 at last year's general election, with the Liberal Democrats in a distant third place. We did have a good second place here as recently as 2010.

But there is another, intriguing statistic that bears on the contest.

Lewisham Borough Council gives the 2016 referendum result for the borough as a whole. It reveals that Remain received 86,955 out of the 124,637​ votes cast across Lewisham. That is 70 per cent of the vote.

Could it be that this will a more interesting by-election than the pundits have forecast?