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Labour faces a potentially bruising set of elections in London next May (Alamy)<\/p>\n
\n 7 min read1 hr
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Labour is steeling itself\u00a0for bruising\u00a0results nationwide at the May local elections. However, there’s one part of the country where party sources believe the scale of the electoral threat is going underappreciated: London.<\/p>\n
While poor showings\u00a0in Wales and Scotland are expected, and may already be ‘baked in’ to Labour thinking,\u00a0losses in\u00a0Keir Starmer\u2019s backyard \u2013 where many\u00a0ministers also hold their constituencies \u2013 could be a real blow to the Prime Minister\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n
This nervousness extends across the board, from City Hall to London Labour MPs and\u00a0councillors on the ground.<\/p>\n
London has traditionally been seen as safe for Labour. The party currently controls around 65 per cent of the capital, with 21 of 32 councils.\u00a0Yet this dominance is now threatened as the party slumps in national opinion polls and a multi-party system emerges.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are bracing ourselves for a really bad set of results nationally,\u201d said\u00a0one Labour source, who said\u00a0London is being \u201ctaken for granted\u201d by the party high command.<\/p>\n
For many in Labour, maintaining control in councils across the capital will be about taking the spotlight off the national picture and refocusing the public\u2019s attention on local issues.<\/p>\n
Speaking to PoliticsHome, the leader of Labour-led Camden council Richard Olszewski said\u00a0it was \u201cobvious\u201d that the council is \u201cnot immune to what’s happening nationally\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the things that are in the area of national politics do get played back to us on the doorstep… What we try to do is to stress that the elections we’re talking about…\u00a0are for Camden council.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councillor Adam Hug, Labour leader of Westminster council, admitted\u00a0there was a \u201cfebrile atmosphere nationally\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn every local election, there is always an element of the local and the national. There’s no getting away from that. It’s our job as local politicians to make people clear of the choice locally,\u201d said Hug.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a tough fight, but we’re up for it, and we have got a good story to tell,\u201d Hug later added.<\/p>\n
Since London’s boroughs were last contested\u00a0in 2022, the growth of smaller parties has led to a fragmentation of voting patterns.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a really unpredictable moment because of the different factions and groups that have arisen,\u201d\u00a0Hackney Labour mayor Caroline Woodley told PoliticsHome.<\/p>\n
Olszewski added:\u00a0\u201cWe don’t have a single opposition party that’s a major threat. It’s a variety of different political parties challenging us in different parts of this borough.”<\/p>\n
Labour is set to\u00a0face threats on several\u00a0fronts: the Greens, Reform, Lib Dems, Conservatives,\u00a0independents and potentially candidates standing for the newly-formed Your Party.<\/p>\n
The same Labour source mentioned above told PoliticsHome that a \u201cGreen belt\u201d is emerging\u00a0across the city\u2019s north-east, starting in Shoreditch, and stretching along the northern boundary of Tower Hamlets into Bow, through the Olympic Park, Forest Gate, and further out into Redbridge.<\/p>\n
Since London Assembly member Zack Polanski was elected leader in September, the Greens’ average national poll rating has risen sharply, but the party had already made\u00a0gains\u00a0at the last set of borough elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2022, the Greens broke through on Newham council by winning both seats in Stratford Olympic Park ward, where they appear to have consolidated their support.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole of the Olympic Park belongs to the Greens,\u201d the Labour source said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just one Labour party member [organising there], who gets rid of all our leaflets. There is no Labour party presence in one of the most sizeable developments in the whole of London\u2026 It\u2019s all Green, Green, Green.\u201d<\/p>\n
Professor Tony Travers, an expert on local government at the London School of Economics,\u00a0said\u00a0there has been “a significant shift from Labour to the Greens” in the polling,\u00a0and\u00a0there is “no doubt that the Greens are moving towards average London poll ratings in the early twenties,\u00a0and Labour are moving down accordingly.”<\/p>\n
Travers also pointed to December’s local government funding settlement that saw a rebalancing of funding around the country, which he said was “particularly bad for a number of inner London authorities”.<\/p>\n
Recent months have\u00a0seen a significant number of Labour councillors defecting\u00a0to the Greens. While Labour argues that many of these councillors defected only after being deselected ahead of May’s election, political discontent has also been rising within the party’s ranks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This played out dramatically earlier this year at\u00a0Southwark council,\u00a0where senior Labour figures were\u00a0accused of a stitch-up\u00a0after\u00a0the election for borough leader was re-run.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Liam Shrivastava, who defected from Labour and now leads the Green opposition on Lewisham council, said\u00a0councillors were leaving\u00a0Labour\u00a0\u201cbecause the party no longer reflects their values\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a few cases, they may have been deselected and blocked, but on very spurious, often factional grounds or due to a particular political stance. The Labour party is quite happy to reselect favoured councillors who do little casework or have brought the party\u00a0into disrepute.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Zack](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3CYJFXT.jpg\")
\nZack Polanski won\u00a0a landslide victory in the\u00a0Green\u00a0Party leadership contest in 2025 (Alamy)
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It remains uncertain\u00a0to what extent Your Party will be competing with the Greens for left-wing votes, or whether the parties will collaborate in any way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shrivastava says of Your Party: \u201cIt’s very unclear what they’re going to do in London. I think they’re going to be quite limited in what they can achieve with elections happening so soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Your Party has been beset by infighting<\/a> since it was launched by former Labour leader\u00a0Jeremy Corbyn and ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana earlier this year. Neither MP will be allowed to lead the party until 2027<\/a>, after members recently voted to put lay members in charge, potentially further limiting the new left-wing force’s political impact.<\/p>\n Caroline Russell, the London Assembly\u2019s Green group leader, told PoliticsHome: \u201cLabour councillors are defecting to us and our membership is growing rapidly, so our capacity for doorknocking is surging and our ambition for next May is expanding further every week.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are increasingly confident that in boroughs across our city we will be providing a real challenge to many of the Labour super-majority councils.\u201d<\/p>\n While Labour expects to keep overall control of Newham\u2019s mayoralty and council, the party also anticipates that it will lose roughly a dozen seats to independents and the Greens. As Newham\u2019s constituency Labour parties have been suspended for almost five years, there are said to be \u201chardly any\u201d activists on the ground.<\/p>\n In Tower Hamlets, Labour appears resigned to losing the mayoralty to Lutfur Rahman and his Aspire party again and is primarily aiming to retain the council seats it already has.<\/p>\n Redbridge Labour will meanwhile face a tough challenge from independent candidates, after one came within 528 votes of unseating Health Secretary Wes Streeting at the July 2024\u00a0general election.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Hackney, the Greens are thought to have their best shot yet at winning the mayoralty, having come second with 25 per cent of the vote at the last election in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n A Green source says that in Islington, which is home to senior Labour MPs like Emily Thornberry, their party is confident of winning 15 or more councillors \u2014\u00a0compared with just three they won last time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in Barking and Dagenham, Labour is confident of retaining overall control \u2013 having won every single seat in 2022. But Reform UK is\u00a0poised to make gains,\u00a0especially in the east of the borough, with Eastbrook and Rush Green ward thought to be among the most vulnerable areas.<\/p>\n Reform’s main targets in London will be the capital’s “doughnut” of outer\u00a0boroughs. According to\u00a0Reform London Assembly member Alex Wilson, the party’s activists are working\u00a0\u201cvery hard in Havering, Bexley, Bromley,\u201c\u00a0while \u201clooking to make some good progress in other places like Croydon, Hillingdon, possibly Hounslow as well\u201c.<\/p>\n But he adds that Reform intends to stand candidates across the capital:\u00a0\u201cWe’ve been given a very clear direction from the leadership that everybody in London, in every borough and every ward has to have the opportunity to vote for us.\u201c<\/p>\n A London Labour spokesman told PoliticsHome: \u201cWe know that in London every vote is hard-won. That is why we are campaigning with purpose in every borough and making the case on delivery, not slogans.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have raised the minimum wage twice for thousands of Londoners, Sadiq Khan has delivered 100m\u00a0free school meals, households will get \u00a3150 off their energy bills this April, a quarter of a million children are benefiting from the lifting of the two-child cap, and 2.7m\u00a0renters will gain more secure homes when Labour\u2019s Renters Rights Bill comes into effect in May.<\/p>\n \u201cLabour is delivering at every level of government to drive down the cost of living, and a vote for Labour in May is a vote to keep that mission going.\u201c<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767429495_325_impression.ashx.png\")
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7 min read1 hr
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