{"id":950464,"date":"2026-05-10T13:02:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T13:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/950464\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T13:02:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T13:02:21","slug":"camden-council-leader-says-he-lost-seat-while-helping-to-save-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/950464\/","title":{"rendered":"Camden Council leader says he lost seat while helping to save others"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labour\u2019s losing candidates in Holborn & Covent Garden \u2013 Richard Olszewski, Julian Fulbrook and Livia Paggia wait for updates at the count<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE leader of Camden Council says he lost his place at the Town Hall while helping his colleagues survive the local elections.<\/p>\n

Richard Olszewski had been accused of a \u2018chicken run\u2019 when he left his home ward of Fortune Green \u2013 the territory in the north west of the borough taken in full by the Liberal Democrats this week \u2013 to stand in Holborn and Covent Garden, which has been solidly Labour for decades and was once seen as one of the party\u2019s strongest seats.<\/p>\n

But the move did not go down well with some locals who felt the leader and party were taking their support for granted, while issues around Gaza and immigration set a different tone for the contest in the borough\u2019s most southerly ward.<\/p>\n

The Greens, with candidates living locally, including Jim Monahan \u2013 the co-founder of the Covent Garden Neighbourhood Association and a prominent community campaigner since the 1970s \u2013 took all three seats when the local election scores were counted on Friday.<\/p>\n

Cllr Olszewski told the New Journal after the result: \u201cI\u2019m personally disappointed to have lost out but when you face the electorate, everyone who does has to accept the risk that you are going to lose. However, my aim was to retain Labour control of Camden because I think we have a fantastic manifesto to deliver over the next four years, as we have been since 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cI campaigned in a way to help my Labour colleagues across the borough win their seats and I think this is a mark of leadership. You lead to serve the borough as a whole, and you have to take the risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his change of ward had been for his opponents an \u201cobvious point on which to attack me\u201d, but he added: \u201cAs leader, I needed to be present in every part of the borough both in terms of representing the council and being there for all the communities, as well as all the political campaigning that was required.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would have been very difficult to do if I had stayed trying to defend a highly marginal seat. It would have prevented me from being able to go around the borough. Obviously, that was a risk I took in order to campaign effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cllr Olzewski was in the thick of the defence of Highgate on election day \u2013 doorknocking with Sir Sadiq Khan \u2013 and had been at campaign events at every ward considered marginal over the past few weeks.<\/p>\n

Fortune Green, as it turned out, looked less like a \u2018highly marginal\u2019 contest and more like a Liberal Democrat stronghold, with a one-sided result in which Labour were a long way behind the victors. In fact, the final results map makes it hard to see where Cllr Olszewski could have moved to where there was both a vacancy and a near-guaranteed win.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The new councillors for Holborn & Covent Garden: James White, Hamza Chowdhury and Jim Monahan<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Holborn and Covent Garden, the party had lost the services of Awale Olad, popular locally and a spirited scrutiny committee chair who made headlines challenging executives from Lime bikes and Thames Water, as well as local police.<\/p>\n

He had been one of the only Labour councillors over the course of the last term to have made a council chamber speech criticising the bombing of Gaza, in which he accused Israel of \u201cunspeakable war crimes\u201d during a debate on pension investments.<\/p>\n

Another local Labour councillor to step down, Sue Vincent, appeared on a leaflet telling residents to vote Green \u2013 seen as a symbol of how the party\u2019s left wing felt disenfranchised by Labour nationally and locally.<\/p>\n

Her replacement as a candidate, Livia Paggi, seen as a future star for Labour and chosen to give a speech on the main stage of the manifesto launch, also lost, and the result in Holborn and Covent Garden was described as the \u2018forced retirement\u2019 of Julian Fulbrook. The latter\u2019s personal vote was clear in the final scores but not enough to fend off the Green Party.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Livia Paggi was a new Labour candidate in Holborn & Covent Garden and had been chosen to do one of the lead speeches at the campaign launch last month<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cllr Olszewski said: \u201cLocal elections are inevitably affected by the national scene, that\u2019s a historical fact. A political party\u2019s position in a local authority can rise and fall as their party does nationally. We had issues raised with us about national politics or even global politics that are impacting on us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe heard people tell us that and what we said to them was, \u2018we understand what you are saying to us\u2019 but we asked them to consider the facts about who runs the council. I would often say: \u2018It\u2019s a pretty good council isn\u2019t it?\u2019 \u2013 and people would say it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that he felt Camden was the \u201cbest council in the country\u201d, illustrated by outstanding ratings in all departments, bar housing, from independent regulators, and that he had high hopes for the manifesto pledges that his Labour colleagues would act on in the coming years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Richard Olszewski during the counting of the votes<\/strong><\/p>\n

And Mr Olszewski said he remained fully behind Holborn and St Pancras MP Sir Keir Starmer\u2018s leadership at the top.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was elected to lead a Labour government for five years and he\u2019s getting on with the job,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fact is he inherited a mess, a broken economy, wrecked public finances, wrecked public services, it\u2019s going to take time to turn that around.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlready, the Labour government has been delivering on its manifesto, helping private renters for example, which is very important in Camden, lifting the two-child benefit cap, improving the lives of more than 4,000 families in Camden, and strengthening rights for workers \u2013 all Labour values.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour\u2019s losing candidates in Holborn & Covent Garden \u2013 Richard Olszewski, Julian Fulbrook and Livia Paggia wait for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":950465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,28959,257,285,259385,18394,16,15],"class_list":["post-950464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-holborn","tag-london","tag-politics","tag-richard-osley","tag-the-camden-new-journal","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116550418589430518","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=950464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}