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Dave Hill: Lamenting a ‘lost’ London is a populist scam

8th July 20259th July 2025

Claims that the capital has fallen into lawless decline with immigration as a main cause are false and unpatriotic

Fare dodgers are a “parasitic scourge” declares the Mayor, after new figures show an increase in people using buses and tubes without paying, costing the city millions. A clampdown is announced.

Breaking news? Not really. The initiative I refer to was launched in 2011. The Mayor in question was Boris Johnson. And the action he unveiled 14 years ago was one of the more recent against people taking free rides on London’s public transport.

Here, for example, is a London Transport film from the 1980s about fare evasion on buses, some of it with aggravation.

That was London 40 years ago: more than 10,000 people prosecuted over a two-year period for not buying tickets for bus journeys alone.

Fare-dodging, then, is not a new phenomenon in the city. Neither, as Mayor Johnson’s “parasites” intervention showed, are periods of fresh action against it.

We are in such a period right now, though the difference from 2011 is that Transport for London’s latest push against fare evasion, unlike Johnson’s in that year, aims to build on a recent reductions in such offending – from about 3.8 per cent of passengers in the financial 2023/24 to 3.4 per cent between April and December 2024, according to TfL.

Yet some have taken to telling a quite different story about the issue and linking this to a much wider claim about the capital and, indeed, the country.

Introducing a recent short video of himself buttonholing fare evaders at Stratford station, Robert Jenrick, Conservative MP for Newark and shadow justice secretary, alleged that Sir Sadiq Khan was “not acting” against “lawbreaking” which he said is “out of control” and accused him of “driving a proud city into the ground”.

The video has been praised by some as demonstrating a can-do spirit on the part of a politician in touch with everyday concerns, though it failed to mention either the recent reduction in fare evasion or the new measures against it by TfL – whose board Mayor Khan chairs – which had been announced a month before the video went live.

Rather than do that, Jenrick used the video to bundle up the fares issue with other forms of crime, such as shoplifting. And on Times Radio, he said that during his visits to London he sees “on a number of fronts, London declining”. Unsurprisingly, he remarked: “It is Sadiq Khan who has been presiding over this”.

Narratives portraying “Sadiq Khan’s London” as descending into lawlessness are, of course, familiar. The Conservatives were very keen on them during last year’s general and mayoral elections (making themselves look rather foolish in the process and also losing heavily).

They are also favoured by others on the Right, such as the Reform UK councillor and ardent Brexit supporter, Darren Grimes. For Grimes, who terms himself a “proud northerner”, the “fall” of London has been ongoing for much longer.

Last month, seeking to illustrate this, he posted some old film clips of the capital in the 1950s, which look like the work of the tourist board. They began with a scene from a sun-drenched Soho Square (pictured above, from Saturday). Back then, the city was “peaceful, patriotic and pretty” according to Grimes. “What on earth happened?” he inquired.

He was, of course, implying that the city has been ruined by immigration. Yet London is probably safer and certainly more pleasant than it was in the post-war era Grimes portrays as golden. Back then, the capital was still scarred by the wounds of the conflict. As for Soho, it was entering its darkest days of vice, racketeering and exploitation (and that was just the Met). It did, though, also provide lots of joy and entertainment – largely thanks to immigrants (see below).

The populist scam that London has become “lost” or “fallen” because of immigration used to be largely confined to the Farage and fascist Right. Mayor Johnson, for example, aligned himself with the view that London’s cultural and ethnic variety was a strength, as demonstrated by its triumphant Olympics. He even advocated “earned amnesties” for irregular migrants.

Today’s Conservatives, though, seem keen to hitch themselves to the Reform bandwagon, not only by seizing every opportunity to invent a London “crime wave” – often with a questionable basis in statistical fact – but by linking it to immigration.

Jenrick, for example, made a point in his video of identifying barber shops used as money laundering fronts as being Turkish. This was in keeping with his well-established hardline anti-immigration stance and with Conservative policy more generally.

The other day, perhaps inspired by his front bench colleague, shadow home secretary Chris Philp, a London MP, upbraided in person people who had formed a “tent city” on the grass strip that separates the carriageways of Park Lane.

In the resulting montage, great play was made of those he approached being Romanian or Bulgarian and the urgent need to deport them should it turn out that they weren’t meant to be in the country. Philp didn’t say as much, but gave the impression that he – in concert with the Daily Express – was unmasking a new and deadly moral cancer in the heart of the capital, literally between Mayfair and Hyde Park.

In fact, a previous Park Lane tent settlement was removed in October and the latest one has gone as well. Local Tory councillor Tim Barnes, I hope satirically, suggested the latter was due to Philp’s visit. The real reason was TfL securing a court order back in May. Reporting this at the time, the Standard noted that the site has been periodically used by homeless people “for around a decade”.

Likewise, panhandling has been a feature of that posh part of London for a very long time, with Romanians part of the mix only of late. This too was something Boris Johnson addressed during his time at City Hall. In 2012, he announced that 10 Romanian cops had been brought in to help the Met, a move applauded by the Romanian ambassador. These officers would be “a huge asset in cracking down on certain criminal networks” preying on tourists, Johnson said.

The Met commissioner of the time, Bernard Hogan-Howe, accountable to Johnson, noted that Romanians in London could be victims of crime too. But there was no such nuance in the Philp show.

His stunt was not his first go at blaming London’s problems on immigration. Earlier this year, inspired by a Reform-backing X/Twitter agitator, he made the false and inflammatory claim that nearly half of London’s social housing is “occupied by people who are foreign”.

What has changed is an increasing concentration by the Right in Britain as a whole on characterising immigration as the deep and founding root of Britain’s problems as a nation, including by linking it to crime and other social ills and by making super-diverse London, with its son-of-immigrants Labour Mayor, the focus of their attacks.

Conservative complicity in this extends to City Hall, where London Assembly Tory group leader and defeated mayoral candidate Susan Hall has been openly applauding Reform policies and politicians for months.

Fare dodging and the degeneration of the public realm are legitimate concerns – I would like to see more concerted, high profile action on those things. The trouble with the Right’s approach is that it is based on distortions, untruths and the lowest forms of scapegoating in the service of a nostalgic, authoritarian nationalism that would be bad for London and the whole country – a recipe for economic failure, the crushing of human potential, the erosion of democracy and corruption in the corridors of power.

Just look at Hungary. Just look at the United States. Advocates of this approach style themselves as patriots. They are anything but.

OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture with no paywall and no ads. The vast majority of its income comes from individual supporters, who pay £5 a month or £50 a year. They receive in return bespoke newsletters, bargain London event offers and much gratitude. Details HERE. Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky.

Categories: Comment

Tags: Boris Johnson, Robert Jenrick, Transport for London

Christabel Cooper: If fewer ‘White British’ means a nation in decline, why is London so successful?

24th June 20252nd July 2025

Using the capital to paint apocalyptic visions conveniently ignores its contentment with diversity and its economic vitality

Christabel Cooper

In the last few weeks, several high-profile commentators have expressed apocalyptic concerns about the fall in the percentage of “White British” people in the UK. In the Daily Telegraph, Professor Matt Goodwin claimed “the white British will become a minority group in the UK by the year 2063”. Conservative MP Neil O’Brien wrote (also in the Telegraph) that “Britain is heading for utter oblivion”, in part because of high migration and consequent rapid demographic change.

They are fond of citing startling statistics from London to back up their dystopian claims. O’Brien, for example, notes that in Greater London, only a third of private renters are White British. In the Standard, David Goodhart stated that “just over one in five school children are white British”.

What is curious about this is that if you are going to argue that a lack of “White British” people is destroying Britain, pointing to London, the region of the UK which is both the richest and the most tolerant part of the country, is a pretty odd choice.

Take productivity. London remains the most economically productive region in the UK. In 2023, output per hour in the capital was 28.5 per cent higher than the UK average and significantly above every other part of the country. Were ethnic diversity a drag on economic output, this situation would be difficult to explain.

In fact, many of the city’s key sectors – from finance, to tech, to hospitality – are powered by migrant labour. A 2017 PwC report estimated that each migrant worker contributes an additional £46,000 in Gross Value Added to London’s economy per year. With about 1.8 million non-UK-born workers, this translates into around £83 billion annually – around 22 per cent of the city’s economic output.

Education tells a similar story. Inner London schools, notorious for low achievement and disorder in the 1980s, are now among the best-performing in the country. This turnaround occurred as the city’s schools became increasingly ethnically diverse. Today, school students in London, many of them from low-income or immigrant backgrounds, routinely outperform their peers elsewhere.

Researchers point to targeted investment (such as the London Challenge) and high-quality leadership, but also the ambitions of immigrant families, which place a strong emphasis on education. Rather than pulling down standards, demographic change appears to have helped raise them.

Although the city has large ethnic minority populations that could form concentrated enclaves, London is less racially segregated than any major US city and not especially segregated by UK standards either, according to analysis by John Burn-Murdoch for the Financial Times. Surveys show that Londoners – crucially including white Londoners – are more positive about immigration and multiculturalism than residents of less diverse areas. This aligns with social science research showing that proximity to diversity leads to familiarity and tolerance. A 2014 Demos study found that White British people who live in diverse areas are less opposed to immigration and less supportive of far-right parties.

Of course, none of this is to say that London is without problems. High levels of migration have contributed to London’s rising population and therefore become a factor in its housing supply problems and pressures on public services, with many poorer migrant families having high levels of need. However, perceptions that migrants are routinely prioritised over longer-established residents for social housing are mistaken, with borough allocations based on need within a legal framework that encourages a requirement for recipients having been residents for at least two years.

London has not been immune from racially divisive politics: in 2006, the British National Party won 12 council seats in Barking & Dagenham and although they were ousted four years later, some parts of Outer London could be fertile ground for Reform UK in next year’s borough elections. The politics of Tower Hamlets provide another cautionary tale. Lutfur Rahman was re-elected as the borough’s Mayor in 2022 due largely to the continuing support of fellow local Bangladeshi Londoners, despite having served a five-year ban on seeking office after an election court found him to have previously benefited from “corrupt and illegal practices”.

Still, the idea that the rest of the country is about to follow London’s demographic trajectory – and plunge into dramatic social decline as a result – does not hold up. London is a clear outlier: in 2023 around 41 per cent of its residents were born outside the UK, compared to just 13 per cent across England. Goodwin’s claim that the “White British” are on the verge of becoming a minority relies on a particularly narrow and contentious definition – one that excludes anyone with one foreign-born parent. By that logic, both King Charles and Winston Churchill would not count as “White British.”

The more sober reality is that the UK is a patchwork of cities with large migrant populations and varied ethnic backgrounds, which will continue to exist alongside less diverse areas. Meanwhile, the insistence that London is a kind of multicultural hellscape is becoming increasingly unmoored from reality. In his Standard piece, Goodhart claimed: “I heard nobody saying ‘rapid demographic change is nothing to worry about, just look at London’.” But maybe more people should be looking at London. The capital has shown that diversity and change does not have to mean decline. Instead, it can mean adaptation, ambition and success.

Christabel Cooper is Director of Research at Labour Together. Follow her on Bluesky.

Categories: Comment

Tags: demographics, economy, education

Elin Morgan: When two little men met in Canning Town

15th June 202522nd June 2025

A pocket park in Newham, close to a polluted major road, commemorates a famous conversation between Mahatma Gandhi and Charles Chaplin

Elin Morgan

There’s a narrow strip of land in Canning Town, no more than 50 metres long and 25 wide. It’s hemmed in on one side by Victorian terraced streets and on the other by the six lanes of traffic that make up the A13 Newham Way. But its neat wooden planters, filled with lavender and vivid bushes of California Lilac, release a heady scent, which battles with the fumes from the road

At either end of this pocket park, a mounted mosaic provides a clue about the historic meeting that took place a few yards from this spot in the now-demolished house of a local doctor. Each is dedicated to one of the two men who met there on a September evening in 1931. They were among the most recognisable figures of their time and their encounter made the front pages of next day’s newspapers. The Stratford Express reported: “Two little men, both famous in his own sphere, met in the house of an Indian doctor in Beckton on Tuesday evening – Mr Gandhi and Mr Charles Chaplin.”

I first learned about the Chaplin/Gandhi rendezvous at Newham Council’s archive in Stratford, where was I researching the history of cinema in the area. The busy but helpful archivist directed me towards a stack of beige foolscap folders she had pulled from the vaults ahead of my visit.

As I picked through ancient receipts and invoices and gently handled gilt-edged programmes, an image jumped out at me. It was a photocopied page from a newspaper with a picture of Gandhi and Chaplin, side by side, surrounded by a small group of people (above). Gandhi, in his white robes is immediately recognisable, the silver-haired Chaplin less so without the familiar toothbrush moustache and bowler hat worn by his on-screen character the “Little Tramp”.

Also in the picture are three women. The one on the right is Sarojini Naidu, the Indian independence activist known as “the nightingale of India” because of her sensuous, often patriotic poetry. From the setting of the image, they could be anywhere. But they are in Canning Town.

I was aware that Gandhi had spent time in the East End, and that Chaplin was originally from Bermondsey (still east, though south of the river), but I didn’t know they had met, still less in Newham, where I grew up.

Gandhi was in London for the Second Round Table Conference, called by the British government to discuss constitutional reform following widespread protests on the Indian subcontinent against British colonial rule. It took place over four months from September to December 1931.

During his time in London, Gandhi often stayed at the home of his friend Dr Katial, where the meeting with Chaplin took place. He became a well-recognised face in the neighbourhood. An article from the Star newspaper in September 1931 – a few days before the Chaplin meeting – describes him being greeted by a bricklayer as he passed a building site with the words “What Ho! old pal”. This apparently prompted a smile in return, while schoolchildren called out “Good old Gandhi!”.

How he and Chaplin were brought together is not entirely clear. An account from Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s secretary and confidant who documented the London trip for the journal Young India (accessible here) says the approach came from Chaplin. Although the *Mahatma had never heard of the film star, he was encouraged to meet him after hearing how many people he had made laugh.

It is well documented that during this period Chaplin went on a kind of mission to meet many of those who were regarded as great thinkers of the time, including Albert Einstein and George Bernard Shaw. After getting through a scramble in the street – contemporary accounts say the crowds outside the house numbered around 10,000 – the pair spoke for around an hour.

In his autobiography, Chaplin recalls:

“I met him in a humble little house in the slum district off the East India Dock Road. Crowds filled the streets and the press and the photographers packed both floors. The interview took place in an upstairs front room about twelve feet square. The Mahatma had not yet arrived; and as I waited I began to think of what I would say to him. I had heard of his imprisonment and hunger strikes, and his fight for the freedom of India, and vaguely knew of his opposition to the use of machinery.”

Chaplin’s and Desai’s accounts agree that industrialisation and Gandhi’s opposition to it was a key topic in their conversation. Chaplin’s own views leant towards socialism and he was curious as to why Gandhi so opposed mechanisation, which he saw as having the potential to liberate working people. Gandhi explained his opposition in relation to his ongoing struggle against colonialism:

“I am not against machines but I cannot bear it when these machines take away a man’s work from him. Today, we are your slaves because we cannot overcome our attraction for your goods. Freedom will surely be our ours if we learn to free ourselves from this attraction.”

Who knows what impression the movie star made on Gandhi, whose goal of Indian independence was finally achieved in 1947? We do know that the meeting had a lasting impact on Chaplin, who was yet to make the film many consider to be his greatest work. Released five years later, Modern Times is a slapstick satire of industrial capitalism. In his last outing as the “Little Tramp”, Chaplin plays a factory worker ground down by the rigours of modern work.

That meeting in Canning Town, in streets where, overhead, factory chimneys belched their loads into the dusk of the autumn sky, must have fed into Chaplin’s creation of the film.

The legacies of both men have undergone a reappraisal and that they expressed views and behaved in ways, particularly towards women, that are uncomfortable to hear of. Yet it’s hard to deny that each represented, in his own way, a kind of greatness.

I’m glad there’s a place that memorialises the meeting between Chaplin and Gandhi and I’m glad people will remember it took place – from schoolkids who helped design the mosaics to neighbours in the flats and houses nearby. I’m also glad this pocket park, opened by Newham in 2015, is as it is – unassuming, humble almost. It’s a reminder that a meeting of minds, a historical moment, a momentous conversation can happen anywhere. Even in a stretch of land next to the A13.

*Mahatma is an honorific in Indian culture. derived from Sanskrit.

Elin Morgan is a writer and communications professional from East London. Follow her on Bluesky.

OnLondon.co.uk provides unique, no-advertising and no-paywall coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support the website and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things that other people won’t. Details HERE. Pocket Park mosaic photo credit: Tian Khee Siong and Royal Docks.

Categories: Culture

Tags: Beckton, Canning Town, Newham Council

Talk About London: Alexander Jan on transforming Oxford Street

26th May 202529th May 2025

The latest edition of On London's podcast collaboration with The London Society features a guest who sees clearly the many issues to be addressed if Sir Sadiq Khan's plan is to succeed

Dave Hill

Eight months have passed since Sir Sadiq Khan, backed by national government, announced his intention to revive his plan to bring pedestrianisation to Oxford Street by taking control of the “the nation’s high street” away from Westminster Council through the creation of a Mayoral Development Corporation, which would put City Hall in charge of its future.

Since then, many words have been spoken and written about the project, and a public consultation has taken place. But there is still a long way to go before work can begin on changing this legendary retail avenue in the ways Mayor Khan is hoping for. And if one thing has become clear since his dramatic intervention last September, it is that converting Oxford Street into a tranquil, leisure and retail boulevard will entail a great deal more than simply banning motor traffic and putting down paving slabs.

The guest for the latest edition of Talk About London, a join podcast venture by On London and The London Society (of which I am a trustee), is Alexander Jan, formerly chief economist with Arup, now chief economic adviser to the London Property Alliance, chair of the Central District Alliance and Hatton Garden business improvement districts and also an On London contributor.

Alex talked me and my co-host, London Society chair Leanne Tritton, through the different and legitimate interests of local businesses and local residents, the challenges of crime, maintenance and traffic management, and the question of who will pay for it all – an array of problems to be addressed, dilemmas to be resolved and circles to be squared if Oxford Street is be transformed in a way that works well for its neighbourhood, for London as a whole and for the good of the country too.

You can listen to the podcats here or here or watch it below. Many thanks to Alex for taking part and being so eloquent, clear and comprehensive.

All previous episodes of Talk About London can be heard here and watched here.

The other strand of The London Society’s podcast output is a series called London Explained, comprising scripted documentaries researched, written and presented by me, and produced by BBC Radio 4 producer Andrew McGibbon. Our latest is about the past, present and possible futures of Brick Lane.

Both types of London Society podcast can be heard and enjoyed here.

Categories: Analysis

Tags: Alexander Jan, Oxford Street, Sadiq Khan

Richard Brown: Remembering London, July 2005

6th July 20258th July 2025

One day, the capital was exultant over winning its 2012 Olympics bid. The next day was 7/7

Richard Brown

6 July 2005

It’s lunchtime in London, and I’m in a thronged and anxious Trafalgar Square, watching the big screens broadcasting from Singapore, where it is early evening; a smaller crowd is gathered in Stratford, the hub of London’s bid for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. London and Paris are the final two cities in the running; reflecting a thousand years of rivalry and friendship.

In Singapore, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge steps to the podium, and grim-faced IOC members stand to attention as the interminable Olympic anthem is played, like politburo members reviewing a Mayday parade.

Finally, an envelope is brought forward and Rogge opens it: “The International Olympic Committee is proud to announce that the Games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of…London.”

In Singapore, the euphoria hits the London delegation before the city’s name has left Rogge’s lips. Tessa Jowell is cheering and waving her arms in the air, Denise Lewis is airborne, David Beckham is embracing anyone within reach, Ken Livingstone looks slightly bemused but then breaks into a broad grin.

In London, Trafalgar Square erupts; Stratford erupts. People are hugging; I think I might be crying, though I’m not entirely sure why. People rush to share their excitement at our win. Some of them have been doing everything they can to scupper the bid, but still. We’re going to need all the allies we can get now. Rosanna Lawes from the London Development Agency (LDA) has tears in her eyes too. “Now we’ve got to deliver it,” she says.

With Heather Small’s booming voice asking what I have done today to make her feel proud (I really don’t know, Heather, I feel scared more than anything), I pick my way through the jubilant crowd. I join some Greater London Authority (GLA) colleagues in a hotel overlooking the Square for a beer, then announce rather piously that I have to go back to work. I’m leading transition planning for the GLA and Government, and this is it. The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) is a few moments away, and I’m soon back inside, sending out tender documents (by post, how quaint!) for headhunters to find a chief executive for the Olympic Delivery Authority, an organisation that doesn’t even exist.

The DCMS Bill Team are there too, readying the legislation that will be introduced into Parliament in a matter of days. I have a conversation with Tony Winterbottom from the LDA: he needs authorisation to let contracts for tunnelling works in the Olympic Park, to enable high voltage power lines to be buried, to enable construction of the 80,000 seat stadium that the world will be watching in July 2012. Timings are tight and budgeting is complicated by government rules. It can’t be done; it must be done. I’m feeling elated, but also slightly sick; it’s going to be a busy summer.

7 July 2005

I’m up early, and scoop up all the newspapers at Stockwell station on my way into the office. I want to remember this moment, when the bid was hailed as a triumph, before delivery becomes vilified as a disaster. We had been told by people involved in Sydney 2000 that the celebratory moment would be fleeting.

By 10am, we are hearing rumours. Major transport disruption. An ongoing incident. Bombs on buses and in crowded rush hour tube trains. Mobile phones stop working; nobody knows what is happening. We worry about people who are not in the office. Are they running late or in trouble?

I step outside, despite security guards trying to dissuade me, my need for a cigarette overcoming their caution. Cockspur Street is almost silent. No buses. Hardly any cars. Very few people. Sirens in the distance. For all its urgency, work is desultory suddenly, incidental.

By early afternoon, I’m speaking to Jeff Jacobs, my DCMS boss. He is in Singapore with the London contingent. Someone has told them that Thelma Stober, one of the LDA’s principal lawyers, has been injured in the bombing, but nobody is clear how badly. A stunned Ken Livingstone makes a powerfully defiant speech in Singapore before boarding a plane back to London.

I leave work early, joining subdued crowds walking home, across St James’s Park, down a traffic-free Vauxhall Bridge Road to the river. I wonder whether to stop in at the White Swan for a drink. Surely that’s what we do; we carry on as if everything is normal, even though it very clearly is not?

Categories: Culture

Tags: 2012 Olympics, Tessa Jowell, Trafalgar Square

Lewis Baston: Conservatives hold safe seat in Hammersmith & Fulham

6th July 20257th July 2025

The Tories will be pleased to have won, though the swing to them from Labour was small

Lewis Baston

The Conservatives successfully defended one of their safer seats last week in the sometime marginal Hammersmith & Fulham, currently controlled by Labour with a large majority. The swing was not dramatic, but at a time when extreme election results and polls have become normal that becomes interesting in itself, like Conan Doyle’s dog that did not bark.

Fulham Town is a compact ward based on the residential streets off the western end of Fulham Road and New King’s Road as they converge towards Putney Bridge. The traveller on the District line gets an overview of the rooftops of the ward from the elevated tracks between Putney Bridge (just outside the ward) and Parsons Green (just inside the ward). There is very little open space. The impression given, of a low-rise, densely populated area of well-maintained Victorian terraces housing young professionals is not misleading – this is an affluent and long since gentrified district.

Created in 2022, this two-member ward is a cut-down version of the three-member Town ward that came before. It was part of a patch of four highly affluent Fulham wards that voted Conservative even at their historic low point in 2022. Town had long been considered safe for the Tories, who won the seat continuously from 1978, although Labour closed the gap dramatically in 2018. Overall, the boundary changes in Hammersmith & Fulham favoured Labour, but Fulham Town ward was safer for the Conservatives than its immediate predecessor.

Fulham Town’s statistics paint a portrait of a wealthy area – not up there with the most elite parts of Westminster or Kensington & Chelsea, but still extreme by most comparisons. Take its housing, for instance. The average price for a dwelling in Fulham Town is £949,000, making it the second most expensive ward in an expensive borough – and 69 per cent of dwellings are flats and maisonettes rather than whole houses.

Even with an average household income of £72,000, local housing is ridiculously unaffordable and there is only a small social housing sector (16 per cent, the lowest proportion in the borough). Forty per cent are owner-occupiers and 44 per cent rent privately. Fulham Town’s population has declined by five per cent over the last ten years, indicating a lack of sites for new development.

The population is predominantly of working age, with the professions and finance well-represented: 69 per cent are educated to degree level (compared to 47 per cent for London as a whole). Fulham Town has the smallest non-white proportion of the population of any Hammersmith & Fulham ward at 22 per cent, although 42 per cent are foreign-born, many of them from European Union countries.

The by-election was caused by the resignation of the deputy leader of the Conservative group on the council, barrister Andrew Dinsmore (not to be confused with Andrew Dismore, the former Labour MP and London Assembly member) who had represented Fulham Town since May 2022 and contested the Hammersmith & Chiswick parliamentary seat last July.

Dinsmore has recently become a father and moved out of London to be closer to support from his extended family. He remains well-connected, claiming credit for “right-wing lawfare” to Conservative Home readers, and obviously enjoyed his local government experience enough to want more of it. He is the Conservative candidate for the by-election in the Barleythorpe ward of Rutland County Council to be held on 24 July – a fairly urban area by Rutland standards, but still a change of pace from Fulham Town.

Five candidates contested the by-election, representing the five main parties. The Conservative defence was in the hands of Liam Downer-Sanderson, who works in communications in planning and housing and is, like Dinsmore, a Conservative Home writer. His output there has included a leadership election essay in favour of Robert Jenrick. Downer-Sanderson was brought up locally and is editor of the Fulham Society newsletter. He contested the marginal Sands End ward in May 2022.

The Liberal Democrat challenger was Roy Pounsford, a retired project manager who fought Fulham Town in 2022. Chris Clowes stood for Reform UK. He was their parliamentary candidate for Rutland & Stamford in last year’s general election, so there has been two-way traffic in the political exchange scheme between Fulham and Rutland. Adrian Chisholm, a Westminster Council worker on transport projects, stood for the Greens. Youth worker Sam Kelly represented Labour.

Local issues included parking – a perennial complaint in this affluent but congested area – crime, housing and the timetable for improvements to the nearby Charing Cross Hospital. Chisholm campaigned on housing, the state of local high streets and national and global issues. Kelly focused on Labour’s record in control of the borough since 2014: “We try to be different in our approach to running the council. That’s why we’ve been able to deliver services that you simply wouldn’t find elsewhere.”

The Conservatives comfortably held the seat, despite the effort the Lib Dems put in. Downer-Sanderson won 647 votes (43.3 per cent) compared to 345 (23.1 per cent) for Pounsford. Kelly finished third (251 votes, 16.8 per cent). The parties of all three suffered falls in their vote share – Labour’s being the largest – as neither Reform nor the Greens had contested the ward in 2022. They took 12.5 per cent and 4.2 per cent respectively. Turnout was 28.6 per cent.

The Labour to Conservative swing was only 4.5 per cent – well down on the two by-elections in Hammersmith & Fulham in February. If repeated across the borough next year, it would switch only one or two seats between the parties.

Both that low swing and the Conservatives’ resilience are symptomatic of several local trends. Politics in Hammersmith & Fulham has long been contested between well-organised local Conservative and Labour parties, and some of the older demographic certainties seem to survive in the borough – council estates vote Labour, Fulham streets full of affluent City professionals vote Conservative.

Fulham’s Conservative machine is plugged into the central party because it is the sort of place where Tory advisers and parliamentary staff live. Local fundraising and doorstep activism are sustained by the proximity of Westminster. As in Wandsworth across the river, there remains a Conservative critical mass that sustains it as an effective campaigning organisation, even though its support among young professionals is much lower than it used to be.

The Tories have to worry less about Reform competition in these wealthy, cosmopolitan inner London enclaves and are able to compete with the Lib Dems as local tribunes. Unless the Conservative Party really does die, there will always be patches of blue along the King’s Road and the Fulham Road.

Categories: Analysis

Tags: Conservatives, Hammersmith & Fulham, Labour

London gets ‘up to 30%’ of fund for affordable homes. Does it have the workforce to build them?

2nd July 20256th July 2025

The government's allocation recognises the capital's housing emergency, but labour shortages need tackling too

Dave Hill

The government has announced that £11.7 billion of the £39.billion it plans to spend on social and affordable homebuilding over the next 10 years will be used to “support housing delivery from the Greater London Authority in the capital”.

As a national total, that is a big increase on the £11.5 billion, five-year programme launched by the Tories in 2021. And London getting “up to 30 per cent” of it is good in the sense that £11.7 billion over ten years is, per year, a lot more than the £4 billion over five years the city received last time, if arguably disappointing in being a smaller proportion of the national total.

In March, the government told City Hall that London would be getting 20 per cent of a £2 billion “downpayment” ahead of a longer-term investment to follow later in the year, so by that measure things have improved since the spring.

Sir Sadiq Khan has welcomed the funding settlement as “the biggest and longest the capital has ever received” and thanked Angela Rayner, the minister responsible for it. The same sentiment was expressed by Grace Williams, executive member for housing and regeneration of London Councils, and also leader of Waltham Forest.

The Mayor added that he will “continue to work closely with the government” to secure further housing support, including “investment in transport infrastructure, which would unlock thousands of new homes in the capital” – surely a reference to the proposed extension of the Docklands Light Railway extension into Thamesmead.

The new cash is vital, but only part of the solution to the capital’s multifarious housing emergency. Money for housing goes less far in London than it does anywhere else in the UK because everything in London costs more.

Also, housing delivery in the city has been horribly hampered by the same things that have slowed down the construction sector as a whole everywhere, notably inflation, the financial problems of housing associations, the slow-moving Building Safety Act regulatory system – see my recent piece about Woodberry Down in Hackney – and labour shortages.

That last issue was the main subject of the latest Talk About London podcast, a joint endeavour of On London and The London Society, co-hosted by me and London Society chair, Leanne Tritton.

Our guests were Amos Simbo, managing director of consultancy Winway and founder of Black Professional in Construction, and Dave Rogers, deputy editor of Building magazine. Why don’t we have more of the skilled workers we need? Watch and listen below.

Fair play to the government, it has been making an effort. in March, it invested in training, and last week it launched a construction skills mission board to push things along.

There’s still a long way to go, though. A long, long way.

This article was updated following its original publication to include responses to the government’s announced from the Mayor and London Councils.

Categories: News

Tags: affordable housing, The London Society

Charles Wright: Who says the Treasury’s Green Book favours London? Not the government’s assessors

1st July 20252nd July 2025

Rachel Reeves told the House of Commons that the complaints of MPs outside London were justified, but the reality is rather different

Charles Wright

In arguments about government funding, the Treasury’s Green Book – its guidance for appraising the cases for individual projects – has long been singled out by critics. It has been “tilting the playing field against areas like ours,” according to Liverpool city region Mayor Steve Rotherham. In a Westminster Hall debate in April, MPs for seats outside the capital queued up to condemn the Green Book’s “hardwired” London bias, “baking in regional inequality”.

The new government promised to investigate, and Rachel Reeves threw some red meat to complainants when announcing the findings of its probe alongside her Spending Review. “I have heard the concerns,” she said. “They are right.” A new Green Book, she said, would be make sure that “no region has Treasury guidance wielded against them”.

One problem though; the investigation actually found no “conclusive evidence” that the Green Book, particularly its much-criticised Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) formula, which measures the cost of a scheme against its “monetisable” benefits – put simply, its value for money – “systematically” favoured London and the South East.

It wasn’t the first such finding. The previous government’s 2020 review reached the same conclusion, as did an analysis by the Centre for Cities think tank in the same year. And a new Centre for Cities commentary by London School of Economics Professor Henry Overman, a member of the external panel set up by the Treasury to scrutinise its latest review, bluntly confirms the general expert view, that claims of Green Book bias are generally “nonsensical.”

The review itself was bullish too. The Green Book, it said, had been praised as “comprehensive, evidence-based and objective” and was “recognised internationally as an example of good practice”. What was required was simply “greater clarity” that government funding decisions were not made on the basis of BCR rankings alone.

Its key point, perhaps, was that “ministers and other decision makers” make spending decisions, not the Green Book itself. As Treasury minister Torsten Bell said in the Westminster Hall debate, “It is ultimately for government, both national and regional, to decide. We must not evade our responsibilities behind technical frameworks.”

Nevertheless the Treasury will be rewriting the Green Book. Significant changes include introducing new “place-based” business cases and a new focus on how to assess the impact of “transformational” schemes that aim to produce large-scale economic growth. Think HS2 or Northern Powerhouse Rail.

Should London, already feeling hard done by, be worried, particularly with the government continuing to highlight “deep regional inequalities” and the need to ensure “all regions get a fair hearing”, as Bell said in the Westminster Hall debate?

Perhaps not so much.

The “place-based” approach will assess all the projects needed to achieve the objectives of a particular location, such as housing and transport schemes. These, the review says, are “often mutually reinforcing and greater than the sum of their parts” – benefits it accepts are not always captured by conventional appraisal. Might the Docklands Light Railway extension to Thamesmead, potentially unlocking 30,000 new homes and 10,000 jobs, fit that bill?

The approach to “transformational” schemes, aiming at long-term change on a bigger scale, is similar, seeking to “articulate the ‘size of the prize’ of achieving growth in a particular area”, including the “complementarities” between different projects and their impact on “jobs, infrastructure, skills and supply chains, as well as on social capital and the environment”.

Interestingly for London, the review promises to build on recent Department for Transport (DfT) analysis of “transformational” schemes, which found that the 1999 Jubilee line extension not only contributed to the success of Canary Wharf but boosted employment, productivity growth and new housing along its whole route, despite originally failing its value for money test.

That scheme was approved in any event. By 2003, its BCR was up to 1.75 to 1, meaning that £1.75 of value were generated for each £1 that had been invested. More recently, that ratio had risen to 3 to 1. Without it, a separate analysis suggests, development in the City would have stalled and high-paying jobs would have gone to other countries. As the DfT concluded, “traditional cost-benefit appraisal may underplay benefits of this nature for such schemes”.

There are more recent examples, too: the Elizabeth line, with an original BCR of 1.7 to 1, is now up to 1.9 to 1, with a £42 billion contribution to the UK economy in its first two years; and the Northern line extension to Battersea. The transport case for that scheme was weak, but recognising its critical contribution to the development of the Vauxhall, Nine Elms and Battersea opportunity area resulted in a BCR of 8.2 to 1.

A reformed Green Book could support similar success stories, according to Professor Overman. “A coordinated set of housing, transport and other investment projects could do a lot to ‘transform’ London’s economic performance and help it catch up with the higher levels of productivity seen in the most productive European cities,” he says in his Centre for Cities comments.

The review’s embrace of joint working across Whitehall and regional government may offer another opportunity for London as it negotiates its promised multi-year “single pot” funding settlement and looks to take forward more public-private financing arrangements similar to those used for the Elizabeth line and Northern line schemes.

As the review itself concludes, though, it’s all about the politics. Much depends not only on how well the capital makes its case, but on whether the government’ s commitment to, in Bell’s words, bring to “growth in every part of the country” includes its capital city.

Categories: Analysis

Tags: housing, Rachel Reeves, rail transport

Dave Hill: Traducing London – Politics in the age of pretending

30th June 20256th July 2025

The UK won't prosper and grow unless its leaders support its capital city, yet none of them seem keen on the idea

Dave Hill

It’s a year since a general election that brought a blessed end to government by culture war division, political game-playing and the feeding of “island nation” self-delusion. And yet Great Britain’s Great Pretending continues.

Yes, a stumbling Labour administration has its welcome long game, hard truths side, with its combination of fiscal rules, investment spending and emphasis on economic growth. But implementation of its Plan for Change has so far eschewed any reforming challenge to the vast populist fiction that London is nothing but a problem for the rest of the country rather than absolutely key to its renewal.

What is so very hard about devising a programme for national recovery that recognises the contribution that will have to be made by the nation’s capital city? It is, after all, a contribution that already includes Transport for London creating employment from Goole to Glasgow, London restaurants buying leeks from Lincolnshire and fish from Grimsby, and Central London generating 10 per cent of the UK’s economic output – a contribution without which lights would go out all over the rest of the UK.

Last year, London was named the world’s most student-friendly city for the sixth successive year. Last month it was found to be the best region at providing opportunities for its poorest children. Last week, it was named the world’s best city for the tenth time in a row. And yet the response of the Labour government to the successes of this mostly Labour-voting place has not been to applaud them, vow to sustain them and work out how best to spread them across the land, but to make a show of saying it will curtail them.

First came Rachel Reeves’s endorsement in her Spending Review of the highly contestable lament that the Treasury’s Green Book has had a built-in pro-London bias. Next, recycling Conservative “levelling up” hot air, came the government’s industrial strategy, with its repeated emphasis on projects “outside London and the South East”.

Now, London local government, much of it on its knees due to the costs of social care and homelessness, shudders at Labour signalling a shift of council funding towards what the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinks will be poorer areas in the urban North and Midlands. Has some Whitehall algorithm decided that their access to good schools and public transport and their geographical proximity to high productivity jobs means the have-not kids of Newham and Tower Hamlets must be rich?

In fairness to London MP Sir Keir Starmer and his team, their traducing of London is a display of tender of appreciation compared with the unending, obsessive denigration of the city by the increasingly desperate Conservatives and others on the hard Right with whom they are frantically competing.

Assorted Donald Trump tribute acts ranging from “Westferry Bob” Jenrick to sundry twits from GB News have maintained the same Tory attack lines on the capital that brought them nothing but ridicule and contempt during elections last year.

To the already failed charge that a once great capital has sunk into a crime-ridden decline – and all because of Sir Sadiq Khan, apparently – has been added the emboldened insinuation that London’s supposed descent into Hell is due to its being infested by people who aren’t properly British. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, despite representing a constituency in Croydon, is deeply immersed in this sewer.

Some of Philp’s fellow London Tories also believe that impersonating Nigel Farage will do more to help than hinder them in next year’s borough elections. Judging by last year’s mayoral contest, which saw their woeful, Reform-applauding candidate crushed, they need to think a little harder, if only for their own sorry sakes.

But both of the country’s biggest political parties would do well to refrain from, in their different ways, casting the UK capital as a Bad City to be disciplined and derided. London doing well and rest of the country doing the same are complementary goals, not competing choices. I cannot believe that Chancellor Reeves does not agree. Misrepresenting London as a lawless urban jungle, as do today’s Conservatives and those they see fit to mud wrestle with, is parasitic and unpatriotic.

There’s not a nation on Earth that wouldn’t be delighted to have a true World City, one recognised and revered around the globe, within its borders. Will our political leaders recruit London to the cause of improving all British people’s lives, or will they keep colluding in the appeasement of low nationalism and validation of baseless grievances that fuel anti-London sentiment and drag everywhere else down? Will they acknowledge and nurture London’s great strengths? Or will they carry on pretending?

Categories: Comment

Tags: Chris Philp, Conservatives, Labour, London, Rachel Reeves

News: Billingsgate and Smithfield markets move confirmed as City unveils regeneration programme

29th June 20251st July 2025

The corporation has assembled a "destination city" strategy team, and its chairman has denied any "governance failure" over abandoned Dagenham Docks relocation scheme

Dave Hill

The City of London Corporation has confirmed its plans to redevelop the land currently occupied by the Smithfield and Billingsgate wholesale food markets, along with pledging to help the markets’ traders find a new location “within the M25” while also working with Barking & Dagenham Council to make alternative use of the Dagenham Dock site, which had previously been earmarked as a suitable place for the markets to move to.

The City says the decision, taken on Thursday by its Court of Common Council, “lays the foundations” for the long-term realisation of its “Destination City” strategy, which includes further transforming the Smithfield buildings, listed Victorian structures close to Farringdon station, into a “cultural and commercial hub”. The new London Museum, formerly the Museum of London, is scheduled to open in part of the site next year.

The Billingsgate site, which is in Poplar in Tower Hamlets, next to Canary Wharf, would accommodate up to 4,000 new homes under the City’s plans. An 11-person Markets Site Regeneration Programme team will also look at how the Dagenham site can still be used for providing “high quality jobs for local people”, the City said. They will continue to operate from their present locations until at least 2028.

The Common Council’s approval of the regeneration programme confirms the City’s decision taken in November to close the two food markets, which have operated under its ownership in the capital from various locations for centuries, and to abandon the idea of moving them to the 42-acre Dagenham site on the north bank of the Thames, which over time has been the base for industries including logistics, coal off-loading, shipbuilding and power generation. They

Concerns have been expressed by some about the security of food supplies across the capital, given the historic role of the markets as places depended on by retailers and restaurants for reliable quality and prices for their customers.

Responding to the these, the City commissioned a study by the consultancy Artefact, published in February, which concluded that such concerns are “largely overstated” because “the majority of UK meat and fish consumption flows through supermarket channels that operate independently of Smithfield and Billingsgate” and because “alternative wholesalers” ensure supply chains to caterers and restaurants.

Interviewed by On London last month, Chris Hayward, chairman of the City’s key policy and resources committee and its political leader since 2022, said that much of the impetus for change had come from the market trader organisations themselves telling him “we want modern buildings, we can’t go on where we are, we can’t expand our businesses where we are”.

He described their position as having “matured as time went on” and reaching “a stage where they said to us, we think it’s in our interests and you think it’s in your interests that we now go and do our own thing”, with the City no longer being their landlord.

Hayward also said, referring to Smithfield, that having “diesel lorries trundling through the streets of London”, carrying meat to and fro, could no longer be justified in the light of the City’s climate action strategy.

The Dagenham site was acquired by the City in 2018 from Barking Power Ltd, and announced as a potential option for bringing Smithfield, Billingsgate and, initially, the Leyton-based New Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market, also owned by the City, together in the same place.

Councillor James Tumbridge, at that time chairman of the City’s markets board, a committee responsible for overseeing all matters relating to the markets, expressed delight with the purchase, describing it as “a part of our vision for London and for our markets”.

However, a 2024 markets board document says that members heard that a design proposed for Dagenham Docks scheme was not favoured by traders who were, by then, in any case, “not satisfied” with a move there at all.

There was also some internal criticism of the City’s handling of the markets issue. Confidential minutes of a markets board meeting held last year seen by On London record its members agreeing with one of their number that “the state of play in relation to the Markets Co-Location Programme was a failure for the City Corporation from a governance perspective” given that the programme had been active for several years but there was “still no resolution that suited all parties”.

The markets board membership includes Greg Lawrence, member and chairman of the Smithfield Market Tenants’ Association, and Tony Lyons, chairman of the London Fish Merchants’ Association. Lawrence said in November that moving from Smithfield would be “sad” but doing so would be “better” for traders in the end. Both he and Lyons have been invited by On London to talk about the situations with Smithfield, Billingsgate and the groups of traders they represent.

Hayward strongly disagreed that the abandonment of the Dagenham Dock plan reflected badly on the the corporation, pointing to the cost impacts of the pandemic and inflation. “The bottom line is that I arrived at the view, as the leader of the corporation, [and] with the support of my policy committee, that the Dagenham Dock site had become unaffordable”. He emphasised, too, that “collectively all our capital projects have become more expensive,” including those already underway.

The original cost of the Dagenham Docks project was put at £741.4 million, of which £229.9 million was spent on buying the site and spending what Hayward described as “a few million” on remediating it. Later, the cost was estimated to have soared to close to £1 billion. The remaining £511.4 million will be returned to the City’s estate budget, which is contributing to other schemes such as a new law courts project at Salisbury Square off Fleet Street.

It was announced in December that a compensation package had been agreed with the City “that financially supports the Traders to relocate to new premises”. The Smithfield association said that 70 per cent of its members had agreed to move together to a new site and the others would “transfer their trade” to other members. The Billingsgate group said that 90 per cent of its members had “indicated that they will continue trading when market operations cease at the current site”.

Categories: News

Tags: Billingsgate, Chris Hayward, City of London Corporation, Smithfield

Lewis Baston: Big Green gain in Greenwich by-election highlights local pressures

28th June 202529th June 2025

Labour handled the issues and the campaign badly, but the contest illuminated dilemmas faced by councils everywhere

Lewis Baston

There was a spectacular result in Thursday’s by-election in the Shooters Hill ward of Greenwich Council, where the Greens gained the seat from Labour with a big swing after a campaign dominated by local issues.

There have been five by-elections in Greenwich in just over a year. That’s more than anywhere else in London recently, suggesting the maritime borough is not a happy ship. One of those by-elections, held last November, was also for a Shooters Hill seat. I describing the geography and demographics of the ward when writing about that contest. It is a half-way out piece of socially mixed suburban London, the sort of area for which the term “middle London” is sometimes used.

Labour won that previous Shooters Hill race, and until Thursday had prevailed in every election held there since the ward was created in 2002, although the Conservatives made it a close thing in 2006, their best year in borough elections since 1982.

The outcome in November was Labour’s third-best London by-election result since the general election, but Thurday’s was its second-worst in the same period. The party’s national popularity was already in steep decline by last autumn, and things are only somewhat worse for it now, so to understand why its defeat was so heavy it is necessary to examine local circumstances.

The by-election was triggered by the resignation of Labour councillor Ivis Williams, who was first elected for the ward in 2022, and before that had represented Woolwich Common ward from 2018 to 2022. Williams had previously been in good standing with the local Labour leadership – she was cabinet member for finance for a while – but then came a spectacular falling-out. Unlike previous councillors to resign, she did not go quietly. Instead, she left with all guns blazing, issuing public statements and endorsing the Green candidate.

The cause of the dispute between Williams and the Labour Group, and the voter discontent in Shooters Hill, was the council cabinet’s November 2024 decision to sell off two plots of land in the ward to help balance its books. One is occupied by the former Greenwich Equestrian Centre, which opened in 2013 as an Olympic legacy project but closed its doors last year. The other was a smaller site called Green Garth, located on the edge of the Shooters Hill residential area and green space.

Although the Equestrian Centre was not primarily an amenity for locals, ward residents regretted its loss and feared the consequences of private development of both sites. They felt that alternative uses had not been given proper consideration and that residents had not been adequately consulted. Petitions gathered steam and by the end of March had reached 2,000 signatures – more, as Williams pointed out, than had voted Labour in the ward in 2022.

Williams wanted to postpone the sale of the land to see if residents could put together bids for a community asset transfer, but this was regarded as being against Labour group policy and therefore a disciplinary matter. Williams disputed this and resigned from the council. Then, after being informed that the disciplinary process would would go up to the London regional level, she resigned from the party too.

The fall-out added another layer to Labour’s local problems. As well as taking an unpopular decision about the asset sales, the party in Greenwich now appeared to many Shooters Hill residents to have been unwilling to listen to them, and to have punished Williams for representing their views. They were sharply criticised in Greenwich’s lively local online media for their handling of the matter.

The depth of local feeling created a difficult situation for Labour’s new candidate, Jummy Dawodu. She went all-in on support for the council leadership, criticised the opposition campaigns, did not participate in hustings they organised and also denied there was much local discontent. Labour tried to portray the contest as being between them and Reform UK.

Unusual as it was, the Shooters Hill by-election illustrated wider issues in British politics. Greenwich did not want to sell its land in Shooters Hill, but like most of local government – and indeed national government – the borough is under terrible financial pressure. Asset sales are a way of keeping public services going for another year. Delaying or cancelling them makes cuts or other tough decisions more necessary.

There are no easy answers. Greenwich Labour made its case poorly and ran a wilfully misdirected campaign. They clearly mishandled Williams’s apparently sincere attempt to represent her residents. However, local government could not function if councillors saw their job solely as being ward representatives. There has to be a collective view of the common good.

Development needs to happen somewhere, and existing residents will sometimes have to be disappointed. Complaints about lack of consultation are often disguised protests at the substance of the decision, and therefore even the most time-consuming and painstaking community engagement will not really help. There is always more to these situations than a morality tale of bad machine politics against plucky local residents.

There were seven candidates for Shooters Hill – those of the usual five parties plus two Independents. The dynamic of the campaign was to give Labour a kicking and this feeling, helped by Williams’s endorsement, coalesced around Tamasin Rhymes, who had also run the Greens in the ward in November.

The local issues galvanised voters’ interest. Turnout was 32.6 per cent – almost as good as the 35.6 per cent for the full borough elections of 2022 and a marked increase on the 22.5 per cent in the autumn, with 707 more people casting votes. Rhymes was elected with 869 votes, Dawodu was second with 756, and Paul Banks of Reform UK was third with 402 votes – a respectable but not dramatic vote share of 16 per cent, up from 10 per cent in November. He pushed Conservative Tim Waters into fourth, on 288.

Relative to the ward’s electoral history, this was a much more impressive Green gain than the one in Lambeth last month: the swing from Labour to Green was 24.5 per cent compared with 10.5 per cent. In addition, the Greens lacked an organisational and voting base in Shooters Hill, but were gifted powerful campaign momentum by the situation that led to the poll and the endorsement of a popular outgoing councillor.

The distinctive local context means it would be foolhardy to regard the result as a harbinger of huge Green gains from Labour in middle London come the May 2026 borough elections – even Labour’s good result here in November didn’t predict what would happen in the same ward seven months later. But it does show the political pressures that councils face, caught between stringent finances and discontented residents.

Categories: Analysis

Tags: Green Party, Greenwich Council, Labour