Blog

Dave Hill: Robin Wales joining Reform UK is a surprise – but maybe not that much of one

The former Mayor of Newham has long-held, strong beliefs about community politics and integration
Dave Hill

Some early responses to former Mayor of Newham Sir Robin Wales joining Reform UK have, with the help of a raid on the liberal media archive, amounted to the jibe that he was always a right-winger, so what did you expect? For the London Left, that largely meant his embrace of regeneration, taking an “arc of opportunity” stretching from Stratford to the Royal Docks to the property marketplace. There was also his personal style, which some found belligerent and abrasive. But my first thoughts on seeing the news that he will work as Reform’s Director of London Government centred on something else – his aversion to what he called “community politics”.

By that, he meant what he saw happening in next-door Tower Hamlets, where political allegiance became increasingly aligned with ethnicity and faith, resulting in the rise, fall and rise again of his mayoral counterpart, Lutfur Rahman. The latter’s electoral successes have depended not on supposed mass voter fraud – even the court judgement that voided his win in 2014 did not reach that conclusion – but a solid base among local Muslim Londoners. For Wales, this was not progressive, not conducive to good community relations and not something he was willing to encourage.

Newham policy under his leadership reflected that stance, and his convictions on the issue shone through in his speech at this morning’s Reform press conference, where he was unveiled by Nigel Farage alongside his fellow former Newham Labour politician Clive Furness, a councillor for 21 years who, having stepped down eight years ago, will contest the mayoralty for his new party at the forthcoming borough elections.

Wales said that the Gorton & Denton by-election had illustrated a “transactional relationship between reactionary Muslims and those who want their votes” – an accusation also often levelled at Rahman. Nigel Farage, of course, claimed that so-called family voting and “sectarian” motives cost his party victory last week – an assertion that is both mathematically and intellectually questionable.

The idea that droves of Muslim women would have voted for a man like Matthew Goodwin had their husbands not intimidated them into doing something different in polling booths is laughable. And polling by More in Common has cast doubt on assertions that “sectarian” concerns such as Gaza were at the top of Muslim voters’ lists. A separate and broader case can certainly be made that the hard or far-Left in Britain (and elsewhere) has often been far too ready to form alliances with Islamists, whose values are anything but liberal. But is throwing in your lot with an outfit like Reform a good way to make it?

Wales mocked the Labour government, and he is far from alone in claiming that there has never been a chance of it hitting its national housebuilding target. His claim that NHS waiting time reductions have been done by sleight of hand was more contentious. So too his talk of a “rape gang cover-up”, a stock attack line across the far-Right. He sang from the Farage hymn book in complaining about the “brainwashing” of young people into believing “this isn’t a good country”. He praised Reform for “standing against the illiberal values that other people are bringing into our country” and for “raising issues” of concern that other parties wouldn’t. “If I thought Reform was racist, I wouldn’t be anywhere near this room,” he clarified, speaking for Furness too.

Furness himself addressed similar themes, saying his values were those of the Enlightenment and “free speech” and claiming that Labour has abandoned these, creating “a sense in which the government has surrendered to mob rule”. He seemed not to have the government’s robust 2024 response to attacks on hotels housing asylum-seekers in mind. “It’s no exaggeration to speak of the balkanisation of Britain,” he said. “That is not the land I want to live in. Labour’s response has been to appease the most reactionary parts of our society.” He added: “Labour has abandoned the working-class, who might reasonably ask, what is it there for?” It might be reasonably asked of him who fits his definition of “working-class” in high-poverty, multi-ethnic Newham.

Wales said his job for Reform will be to “work with Reform councils” in the capital – of which there could be around five after 7 May – to get spending under control and deliver services better than what he called “the old parties”. Their failures in this regard, he said, have created cynicism in the electorate.

He described himself as “a social democrat” whose priority would be drawing on his long experience at the helm of Newham – from 2002 until 2018 as its Mayor and, before that, as its leader – to help Reform councils in the capital deliver what local voters really want. In this, he echoed a core Reform message which has it that local authorities’ first priority is appeasing interest groups and pursuing pet projects rather than serving their communities.

Over the years, I have had many interesting conversations with Wales, whose task at Newham was not made any easier by the snakepit of local Labour politics. Its constituency parties have been under special measures for years, seemingly rife with factionalism and fears of entryism. The Labour-dominated council chambers under his mayoralties contained firm Wales loyalists and others devoted to arranging his downfall.

Following his deselection, he moved to Suffolk and set up a housing firm with former Tory chancellor Philip Hammond. In 2024, he stood as Labour candidate to be Suffolk’s police and crime commissioner. Lately, he’s been working for the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange. He and Furness announced last month that they had left the Labour Party.

Wales has had a remarkable career in London politics, a Kilmarnock-born chemistry graduate and former student organiser who moved to Newham in 1978 and first became a councillor four years later. He is nothing if not battle-scarred. He is nothing if not open to ideas. We can speculate about all the things that might have prompted him to join a far-Right party of the populist, nationalist variety. Whatever his full reasons for it, his conversion is a sad thing to see.

Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Apple podcasts.

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. If you don’t already receive it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack or follow any Support link on this website.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Newham, Reform UK, Sir Robin Wales

Dave Hill: Labour’s road to recovery runs through London

The party's defeat in Gorton & Denton shows that big losses are even more likely in the capital unless it changes its tune
Dave Hill

It may be too late for Labour to much reduce its coming losses in the borough elections. But if it values its longer-term future, it should make the effort anyway. The party’s hammering by the Greens in Gorton & Denton brought home with a mighty crash what analysis by such as the British Election Study has been showing for months – it’s not switchers to Reform UK Labour should be most worried about, but the much larger number of its erstwhile supporters turning to an array of liberal, Left and nationalist parties, together with a substantial group that have become “don’t knows”.

Labour’s harder lines on immigration and welfare have been putting people off, as has its handling of the economy and the National Health Service. For some, Gaza is an important issue and Labour’s stance has not endeared. Others have been irked by its stepping back from ambitious environmental policies.

There’s also a general sense that the party under Sir Keir Starmer has no clear direction or purpose. Instead, it has been defined by U-turns and inconsistencies, and by sending muddled messages that anger and confuse, many of them inspired by a fear of Nigel Farage.

Yet Reform’s support has mostly been coming from ex-Conservative supporters and people who don’t usually vote. The relatively few who’ve abandoned Labour might have done so anyway – part of the electorate wants to punish whoever is in power, whoever that may be. Labour will never woo them back. Why does it fixate on trying to when it alienates so many more?

The party needs to reconnect with its winning coalition. The path to such salvation looks steep, but it’s the only one available. It runs through many different places, including Scotland and Wales. But London is unquestionably one of them and matters a great deal.

Labour should remember that London provides lots of Labour MPs – 59 out of the 412 elected two years ago. Any insistence that, when it comes to the crunch, most of those seats can be taken for granted looks delusional in light of the Greens’ recent triumph.

If a once ultra-safe seat in Manchester can be conquered from the Left, how many in London are secure? Labour still leads London opinion polls, but by less than it once did. At least a dozen of its 21 councils in the capital look vulnerable. London has been one of Labour’s staunchest strongholds. If the city rejects it in a big way on 7 May, there might be no coming back.

It is no good denouncing the Greens as extreme as the PM did, even though, true enough, they have come to resemble the Jeremy Corbyn Left. Sir Sadiq Khan, writing in the Guardian at the weekend, was surely right to argue that “the vast majority” of Londoners thinking of voting Green do not fit that description and won’t appreciate being so termed. Trying to compete with Reform, the Mayor added, just makes Labour look treacherous and inauthentic.

Tom Baldwin, Starmer’s biographer, says the PM’s allies believe he is “finally asserting his own personality” and the “pragmatic centre-Left politics” that go with it. There was a hint of that in his party conference speech last autumn, though there hasn’t been much more since. A supposedly mission-led government needs to remember who handed it power, and why. In London, 43 per cent of the popular vote came Labour’s way, more than twice the share won by the Tories. The way Labour has been carrying on, most of that could go down the drain.

What is so difficult about standing up for the values that got you elected? Is it really so hard to fashion a position on immigration that recognises both the need for overseas workers in health, care, engineering and other sectors and the need to manage the system well? After all, as Peter Kellner has shown, that’s what the voters want. Might it do Labour more good than harm to firmly state that Brexit has been a failure? Again, most of the people would agree. Could it be that putting the goal of making Britain a clean energy superpower front and centre of your story for voters, instead of playing it down in deference to “Nige”, would be more welcomed than jeered?

There is no doubt that adopting more liberal, practical Left or “progressive” positions on such issues would please lots of London voters and their counterparts in other cities across the UK. A few bold steps in those directions in the coming weeks would at least give Labour’s embattled campaigners some more positive responses when faced by disillusion on London doorsteps from Camden to Lambeth and from Newham to Hackney. Labour cannot afford to lose the capital without a fight. And if it can’t see that, then losing will be what it deserves.

Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Apple podcasts.

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. If you don’t already receive it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack or follow any Support link on this website.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Green Party, Keir Starmer, Labour

Stephen Cowan: Councils in London can be architects of economic change

Hammersmith & Fulham has used its powers and resources strategically to nurture new forces of economic growth
Stephen Cowan

The government has made growth its central mission. But if we are serious about raising productivity, backing tech skills and building a more resilient economy, we need to recognise a simple truth: growth is not just delivered by Westminster or the City, it’s all around us. More precisely, in Hammersmith & Fulham, whose Labour council I lead, it’s happening in White City, on King Street, in Shepherds Bush market and along the Thames riverfront.

Sixteen years ago, when in opposition in the borough, I and my colleague Andrew Jones, a professor of economic geography and now vice-chancellor of Brunel University, began asking what our borough would need to do to prosper in a century defined by science and technology. Would we simply manage decline and inequality in a fast-changing world, or would we deliberately shape our economic future? Put another way, what should the council be for?

The current pace of technological change is unmatched in human history. Artificial intelligence, life sciences, climate technology, digital media and advanced engineering are transforming how we live and work. History shows that the places which prosper in such moments are those that build science, technology and innovation into their economic foundations. Those that don’t are left behind.

Local government in England is not designed to think about such things. It exists within one of the most centralised systems in the western world. Councils are expected to deliver statutory services efficiently, not to build global economic ecosystems. But we decided that if we wanted inclusive growth for our residents, we had to do more.

That led us, following our 2014 election victory, to pioneer what we call “entrepreneurial municipal government” – councils moving beyond passive administration to actively shaping their local economies. In simple terms, it meant using every lever a council has – planning, land, partnerships, convening powers – to that end and being bold with the powers available to us to create the conditions for growth and its benefits.

One of our earliest influences was Greg Jackson, founder of Octopus Energy, who in 2015 agreed to serve as our voluntary business commissioner. On his advice, we reformed planning policy so that 20 per cent of new office and laboratory space would be affordable and flexible, recognising that start-ups and scale-ups are the lifeblood of innovation. Since 2017, we have given planning consent for more than 190,000 square metres of commercial space.

A pivotal moment came in 2016 when we forged a strategic partnership with Imperial College London. Its incoming president, Professor Alice Gast, immediately grasped the opportunity to cluster an innovation ecosystem around Imperial’s emerging White City campus. That collaboration evolved into Upstream London, a focused industrial strategy centred on life sciences, climate tech, digital industries and advanced engineering, the sectors that will define the 21st Century.

Today the White City Innovation District is home to a dense cluster of global firms, scale-ups and research institutions working side by side. From Novartis, L’Oréal and Autolus to cutting-edge climate-tech and AI ventures, more than 800 STEM³ businesses now operate across the borough.

At its heart sits Imperial’s Deep Tech Campus and Scale Space, which we created after persuading venture builder Blenheim Chalcot to stay in the borough and help us build something more ambitious – a 200,000 square foot community, purpose-built for high-growth science and technology companies. A network of incubators, laboratories, venture builders and investors has grown around it, supported by Upstream Nexus, which connects entrepreneurs to capital, expertise and markets.

We took the same approach elsewhere. When Fulham Football Club approached us about building a multi-storey car park beneath their Riverside Stand, we suggested something more transformative: a new stand incorporating conference facilities, hospitality and specialist workspace for fintech and STEM accelerators.

The developers of Shepherds Bush market also bought into our plan, converting old trailers into on-site laboratory spaces for start-ups.

The results have been transformative. Since 2017, Upstream London has helped attract over £6 billion in high-growth investment and more than 17,000 new STEM³ jobs to Hammersmith & Fulham. Our economy has grown faster than any other borough in London and ranks among the fastest growing in the UK.

But growth figures alone were never the point. We should not countenance boroughs where world-class laboratories sit alongside estates whose young people see no way into them. Growth that excludes local people is unfair, fragile and economically wasteful. So, we embedded inclusion from the outset.

The same principle underpins our H&F Pathway Bond. Inspired by the African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” the Pathway Bond is a partnership between the council, businesses and community partners. Over 100 organisations, from global pharmaceutical firms to start-ups, now provide mentoring, apprenticeships, work placements and inspiration for local young people.

None of this happened by accident. London’s prosperity is often discussed as though it were a natural force. It is not. It is shaped by our decisions about land use, partnerships, incentives and leadership. Councils can convene developers, universities, businesses and communities. We control planning. We understand our labour markets. These powers can be used defensively or strategically, reactively or proactively. In both cases we chose the latter.

There was no ready-made blueprint. We drew lessons from global innovation clusters – developing partnerships with Milan, Barcelona, Oslo and Rzeszów  – but ultimately had to write our own playbook. The central lesson is simple. Bring the right elements together and ensure they reinforce one another – anchor institutions, entrepreneurial firms, affordable workspace, housing that supports talent and a public realm that encourages creativity and collaboration. Above all, it requires a council willing to align everything behind a long-term mission.

In our time of constrained public finances, entrepreneurial municipal government is not a luxury but a necessity. When councils act strategically, public purpose and private investment reinforce one another. If London wants sustainable, inclusive growth in a fast-changing world, it should look to the power of local leadership. Our experience in Hammersmith & Fulham shows that councils need not be spectators of economic change. They can be its architects.

Stephen Cowan is the leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council. Follow him on Bluesky. Photo of Scale Space from Upstream London.

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. To start receiving it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack or follow any Support link on this site. Thanks.

Categories: Comment
Tags: economy, Hammersmith & Fulham, Labour

Julie Hamill: A London night with New Jersey royalty

The Talking Sopranos podcast has come to the London Palladium
Julie Hamill

After moving with my husband to New York in 2000, a good friend there couldn’t believe we hadn’t seen The Sopranos before. He said it was “the best TV show on the planet”. So, after he’d loaned us the first series on DVD, our Sunday night ritual of watching new episodes on HBO began and continued after we moved back to London in 2005, right up until the show’s iconic onion ring ending in 2007.

Despite knowing  episodes and lines inside out – Full Leather Jacket, “Interior Decorator”, Johnny Cakes, “Name That Pope” and so on –  if I  come across a repeat on TV I watch it anyway, immersing myself in New Jersey. I was so enamoured by it that, four years ago, I devoted an entire Boogaloo Radio show to The Sopranos, with clips, conversation and music.

Whaddya say? I’m a woman who loves mob dramas, with Goodfellas still my favourite film to this day.

Last May we found out that Michael Imperioli (who played Christopher) and Steve Schirripa (who played Bobby) were taking their Talking Sopranos podcast on a live tour. Hosted by comedian Joey Kola, the 90-minute show promised behind-the-scenes stories, clips and a Q&A. When we saw it was coming to the London Palladium, my husband, Gerard, and I booked immediately.

On arrival, the super-efficient door staff at the Palladium ushered us straight inside. There were barely any women in the crowd. On the way in, we heard one say: “I’ve never seen the show, I hope I enjoy it!” Clearly, someone’s plus one for the evening.

In the bar queue, some guys from Milton Keynes talked about their train times home then started asking each other’s ages. “I’m 31,” said one. “No way,” said the other, “I’m not even 30 yet.” I thought this was young for a Sopranos audience, until I realised that was about our age when we began watching the show.

As we took our seats, we reminisced about enjoying such an iconic series while living just across the river from New Jersey. The opening credit shot was one of the last television sequences to feature the Twin Towers, near where we lived in Manhattan. A voice with a familiar American accent came over the PA: “Turn off your cell phones. No photography.” It sounded less like a polite request than a warning about an overdue collection.

After Kola, who looked like he could have been part of the cast, had done a ten-minute skit about his life as a self-identified “fat man” – including a demonstration of the flexibility of his click belt – Talking Sopranos began with a bit of a crowd gasp as a video of James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano himself, looking cinematic on a big screen, talking in a very familiar, moving family clip about “remembering the little things”.

I could feel it bringing a lump to every throat in the room, which is quite incredible. He played a complex and evil man, yet his very presence would melt you like an ice cream. How did he do that? As explained later by our hosts, it involved a sprinkling of unique Gandolfini magic: “We all miss Jim. He really was something special.”

From there, the evening settled into an affectionate, well-rehearsed rhythm. Stories about auditions, on-set mishaps and cast dynamics flowed easily. The one heckler was handled well. “Hey fella, if I need your help I’ll ask for it, okay?” said Schirripa.

Everywhere I looked, there were wise guys proudly wearing Bada-Bing! T-shirts as if considering applying for a job. The couple to my left were from Kent, and a smiling man who let me pass him in the aisle said, “No problem luv!” in a full-English-breakfast Essex accent. A man who asked a question at the Q&A was from Watford. The place seemed to teem with people who had travelled into London to see the show. This made the experience even better, as if a New Jersey crowd had come to Manhattan for a night out.

There were a few mentions of the female cast, in particular having to be on their A-game when working in scenes with Edie Falco, who played Carmela Soprano, Tony’s wife. I would have loved to have heard more about the women in the cast. For me, the ensemble of female titans were the very gabagool of the show. I had some questions. But only one fellow wise gal managed to get a word in during the Q&A. Nevertheless, it was an excellent, moving and immersive evening in the company of New Jersey royalty.

Talking Sopranos at the London Palladium ends on 2 March. Follow Julie Hamill on Instagram.

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. To start receiving it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack or follow any Support link on this site. Thanks.

Categories: Culture
Tags: London Palladium

John Vane: Tube dirt attitudes

Some don't know about, don't care about it or don't even believe in it. For others, it means a never-ending battle
John Vane

Two London women, late twenties, friends, two contrasting views on personal hygiene and the London Underground. This is not about moquette preferences. It’s about something even more important. More emotive. More elemental. It’s about dirt. Tube dirt. It’s about how much of it there is, how much it matters and how to appropriately respond.

Let’s call one of the women Florence. She described taking the subterranean railway home from work, getting into her flat and immediately blowing her nose. She is horrified by what comes out. The muck! The dust! The dirt! She puts the clothes she has been wearing in the washing machine. She takes a shower. Only after every speck of Underground contaminant has been purged from her person can she relax.

Let’s call the other woman Freda. She listened to Florence in a state of wonderment, verging on awe. She too gets the Underground to and from work. She too has a routine when she gets in at the end of the day. It involves going to her bedroom and lying down. Under her duvet. In her work clothes. Tube dirt and all.

This is Freda’s way of unwinding, of shedding the strains and stresses of the day, of making the transition from work and travel mindset to one of recovery and repose. Florence’s equivalent ritual is about purification – of body, of garments and, I would deduce, anxiety. Tube dirt anxiety. Oh my God!

For Freda, the same goal is achieved though a kind of spiritual letting go, and that means not worrying about Tube dirt, not thinking about it, perhaps not even acknowledging its existence. Its presence or otherwise is simply not a post-work wellbeing factor for her.

All of this raises important questions. How dirty is the London Underground, exactly? How much is it rational or reasonable to care? Transport for London, of course, prides itself on its Tube cleaning regime, but there are variations in intensity. Where trains themselves are concerned, the Piccadilly line’s get the least attention, followed by those used on the District, Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City. Then comes the Central line, and so on.

A mayoral answer in November 2023 said stations are cleaned daily including “touchpoint” sanitation of escalator handrails (which, come to think of it, can sometimes feel a bit sticky). Go back another year and find a detailed defence of a “robust cleaning regime” across the whole of the city’s public transport network.

But what about air quality? “Multiple studies have shown that air pollution levels on the Underground are higher than those in London more broadly, and beyond the World Health Organisation’s defined limits,” said yet another study of the matter, this one from Cambridge University. Little bits of pollution are wafting everywhere, even as you stand on a quiet platform. They’re in your ears. They’re in your eyebrows. They’re in your hair.

I don’t plan to get between Florence and Freda on this one. After all, they are still friends and their discourse went on to hilariously embrace, for example, how best to get a sponge between your toes when in the shower. I will, though, observe that cities are, by their crowded, cluttered, human-infested nature, often grubby places. If you don’t like it, you have to find your own best way to live with it.

Buy John Vane’s London novel Frightgeist here . 

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. To start receiving it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack or follow any Support link on this site. Thanks.

Categories: Culture, John Vane's London Stories
Tags: Central Line, London Underground, Piccadilly Line

Tim Donovan: What’s so bad about London boroughs being under ‘no overall control’?

The prospect of many councils in the capital being run by coalitions in making people nervous, but history suggests such arrangements can work well
Tim Donovan

Some remember it as the night Frank Dobson took a swing at an opposition party activist. The late local MP was said to be wound up as tensions spilled over and control of Camden Council slipped away from Labour for the first time in 35 years. As dawn neared, there was a recount or two and then the final scores were in. The Liberal Democrats, with 20 seats, had become the largest party. Labour had won 18, the Conservatives 14, and there were a couple for the Greens.

Labour leader Raj Chada had lost his seat in Gospel Oak. One of the Tories who defeated him was a young entrepreneur called Chris Philp, now a London MP and shadow home secretary. Another unsuccessful Labour candidate was Howard Dawber, these days the capital’s deputy mayor for business. His was one of many Labour careers dashed, or at least stalled, that night as voters gave free rein to their anger at Tony Blair’s third government. In Camden it was time for a first: the Lib Dems and the Tories running the show together.

It is very likely that what happens this May will resemble – or surpass – the experience of 2006. In that year, eight councils, a quarter of those in the capital, were left with no party in overall control. There was not a uniform pattern to this municipal upheaval. Like Camden, the boroughs of Brent and Waltham Forest also came to be run by Lib Dem-Tory administrations. In Hounslow, the Conservatives governed with the help of community group councillors, and in Merton they did it by bringing independent residents’ association members onside. Southwark and Islington had been in the hands of minority Lib Dem administration since 2002, and that continued. Finally, Labour won the mayoralty in Lewisham but lost control of the council.

The then leader of Camden Lib Dems, Keith Moffitt, remembers 2006 clearly and fondly. “From quite early in the evening it looked good for us,” he says, “although we never really thought we would take complete control.” He became the leader of the council – a high point in his political career, though he is still involved locally as the agent for the party’s candidates in this year’s election. “I am certainly proud of what we achieved,” he says. “I think we did remarkably well.” So too does the then leader of the Conservatives in Camden, Andrew Marshall. “Those four years when we were in power were a lot of fun,” he tells me in a call from New York, where he works as a communications consultant.

In the days following the count, the two leaders thrashed out a deal they could put before the council’s chief executive, and then full council. It was a decision to work together and run Camden under what they were keen to call a “partnership administration”. They didn’t want to use the word “coalition”, although four years later, thanks to David Cameron and Nick Clegg, such an arrangement was to go national and mainstream under that name.

Councils being run by an executive cabinet – usually of around 10 members – was a relatively new thing, introduced in the Local Government Act 2000 to replace the traditional system of committees. It was largely untested as a model for when no party had overall control of a council. It had been Tory and Lib Dem policy to oppose the cabinet system, but in Camden they decided to make it work for them.

The two leaders negotiated over a policy programme which preserved their most cherished individual asks but found common ground in a wish to freeze Council Tax and get on top of the borough’s council housing repairs. They agreed a cabinet of six Lib Dems and four Tories. Both leaders got it in the neck from some of their own councillors over the deal, but Moffitt suggests it actually worked out better having four experienced Conservatives involved rather than newly elected novice Lib Dems.

Both former leaders feel people exaggerate the perils of so-called No Overall Control councils leading to logjam and uncertainty. Inheriting what they admit was a strongly performing local authority, led by a capable team of officers, made it easier.  There was a triangular relationship to decision-making – two parties instead of one working alongside the chief executive.

They agree that success depended on them getting on well personally, building trust and being prepared to compromise, not sticking rigidly to party philosophy. “Let’s be honest, there aren’t purely Conservative ideas on how to collect your rubbish,” says Marshall. “We were prepared to talk like grown-ups,” says Moffitt. In next door Brent, he says, the situation proved more problematic because the two leaders involved did not get on.

But how realistic are hopes that this rosy picture of civic co-operation could be replicated in current times? For a start, the fragmentation of support for parties has transformed a landscape where a main three vied for a Town Hall presence to one where there are five are in contention. It feels hard to predict what kind of political stasis might result in the weeks after May’s elections if the numbers get messy and you have five sets of players feeling they are in with a shout of a role in a coalition.

Unnamed

Who is and who isn’t prepared to do business with whom? How easy will it be to make coalitions work in cabinet? We must wait to see what happens in councils where Labour loses overall control but remains the largest party. Will it be legitimate for them to continue if their opponents cannot agree to form an alternative administration? Is it safe to assume that the Greens and Lib Dems would not work with Reform? How will Independent groupings act?

London’s councils continue to face big financial problems, spending more than £5 million a day on housing people in temporary accommodation alone. Room for manoeuvre and executing bright new promises of spending and saving is limited. That applies whether voters opt to retain a hitherto entrenched one-party fiefdom or decide to mix it up a little. But some areas of vital future growth will surely be affected by the uncertainty that comes from coalitions, not least the time they may take to settle. Regeneration and the built environment are good examples of areas that are susceptible to uncertainty and volatility.

With three months to go until the elections, public affairs and communication specialists are trying to reassure their clients they know how to navigate the political upheaval coming down the track. In chaos, there is opportunity. But such is the potential for change (and joint administrations) in many boroughs that it is difficult to map likely shifts in policy and tone, let alone identify the characters who will end up on the next planning committee.

How much more complex will the operating environment really become? At a recent housing event, the developers, planners and architects I spoke to were curious about the possible widespread changes in the capital’s town halls. What, in particular, might a Green or a Reform council mean for them? But they argued that political change was always factored in. Electoral cycles, general and local, don’t in any case align with regeneration schemes that can be long, long years in gestation. Heed was already paid to the political calendar when navigating the planning system, they told me. It’s already the case that they approach different boroughs in different ways. This will only change by degree.

After four years of the Lib Dem-Tory partnership running things in Camden, it was time for the voters to give their verdict. Marshall describes the strange sensation of campaigning at the 2010 election, when they resumed their fight against the Lib Dems, as if their partnership had not happened. Creative campaign leaflets stressed the unique part the Tories had played in the preceding four years.

It all came to nought as Labour again won a majority. Moffitt claims that this had little to do with the competence of the partnership administration. It was the local elections being held on the same day as the general election that brought out the Labour vote. “We were unlucky,” he says. “We weren’t rewarded for what we did. As we know, no good deed goes unpunished.”

Tim Donovan is the former political editor of BBC London and now a trustee of Centre for London. Follow him at LinkedIn. Image of Camden Town Hall interior from Camden Council.

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. To start receiving it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack or follow any Support link on this site. Thanks.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Camden Council, Conservatives, Green Party, Labour, Liberal Democrats

Is Reform UK ‘far-Right’ on London social housing?

The party rejects the label, yet its recent pronouncement on an important area of borough responsibility sound very similar to those of extremist parties in the past
Dave Hill

Reform UK gets touchy when called “far-Right”. Two years ago, the BBC apologised for doing so after the party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, complained about the term being used to describe Reform in an article on the corporation’s website.

The measure of Tice’s judgement where political terminology is concerned can be gleaned from his characterisation of Sir Keir Starmer’s hugely important recent visit to China as “kowtowing to his Commie friends in Beijing”. It is hard to imagine a more juvenile remark from a man with aspirations to high office.

There is, though some ongoing confusion and debate about whether or not “far-Right” is the most apt or useful label to stick on Nigel Farage’s mouthy nationalists.

A considered argument is made that although Reform fits the “far-Right” mould in lots of ways – for example, Farage’s flag-waving xenophobia, contempt for norms of liberal democracy and chumming up with foreign politicians the BBC is prepared to call “far-Right” – it is more accurate to call it “populist Right” (or “populist radical Right”) in order to distinguish it from neo-Nazi and overtly racist organisations also placed under the far-Right umbrella.

But putting all that aside, how do Reform policies compare with those adopted down the years by other British political parties to which the term “far-Right” unquestionably applies?

Housing provides a useful test – one that might also be applied to the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch, who some argue now often occupy part of the far-Right spectrum too.

In a recent email to supporters seeking candidates for the upcoming borough elections, Reform’s London chief Laila Cunningham raised the matter of social housing allocation – how councils in London decide which households seeking such homes get them, and which have to keep on waiting.

In this policy area, she claimed, “priorities have gone badly wrong”. She continued: “Too many London councils have chosen to prioritise new arrivals over British families and veterans who’ve contributed to this country all their lives.”

The claim is pretty vague. How is Cunningham defining “new arrivals” and “British families”? How often does the prioritisation she alleges take place? What does “contributed to this country” mean? Has a British-born Londoner aged 18 “contributed to this country” more or less than a 50-year old British citizen who was a “new arrival” 40 years ago and runs a business or is employed in one of the city’s public services?

The emotive gist of Cunningham’s assertion, though, is clear: it is that while “Brits” in London languish on social housing waiting lists, immigrants are being allowed to jump the queue. Reform has since said it “could” impose a local residency requirement of “up to” ten years in any London borough it wins control of in May, with Cunningham asserting that “Brits have been pushed to the back of the housing queue in their own country”.

In fact, Tory-run Hillingdon has long required anyone applying to even join its social housing waiting list, let alone be allocated a home, to have lived in the borough for an unbroken ten years. Top Reform London target Bexley, also Tory-run, has a five-year requirement. Many other boroughs have similar rules, with Labour Camden, for example, saying you have to have lived in that borough for five of the past seven years to be eligible for joining the council’s social housing register.

Length of residency in a borough is one of various criteria boroughs use for allocating housing when it becomes vacant, including assessments of applicants’ individual circumstances and needs. But it’s the “queue-jumping” claim Reform wants voters to concentrate on. It is deliberately emotive, designed to stoke-up and profit from resentment of immigrants.

Let’s place Reform’s stance in historical context. For half century and more, the nationalist far-Right in Britain has sought to woo unhappy voters with claims that immigrants are to blame for housing shortages and more: that they are occupying homes that would otherwise go to “Brits”; that they jump social housing queues and, while they’re at it, ruin “traditional’ neighbourhoods with their filthy foreign habits.

London has been no exception. Far from it. In the 1970s, with the country’s economy in a hole, the far-Right National Front exploited such sentiments to become a significant electoral force in much of the capital, as well as a violent racist street movement.

In the 1977 Greater London Council elections, the party won 5.3 per cent of the popular vote, the fourth largest and not far behind the Liberals (who got 7.8 per cent). An NF splinter group, the National Party, got another 0.4 per cent. In some GLC constituencies, including Edmonton, Greenwich, Hackney North & Stoke Newington, Islington Central, Bermondsey and Brent East, they finished third.

Later, new far-Right parties emerged, again attracting quite small but significant amounts of support in London, and prospering in specific parts of it. In 1993, the British National Party won its first election anywhere in the country, taking a seat on Tower Hamlets Council after claiming that local Bangladeshi Londoners were being given favoured access to social housing and by running a “rights for whites” campaign. In fact, under a rogue Liberal Democrat administration, the truth was the exact opposite. But the BNP candidate snook home, beating his Labour rival by seven votes.

Early in the current century, the BNP made strides further east, in Barking & Dagenham. Again, housing was central to its wider allegation that immigrants were being put ahead of “our people”. The party spread the total falsehood that the Labour Party was giving Africans £50,000 to buy houses in the borough. In 2006, it won 12 seats on the council and formed the official opposition to Labour. It won 17.2 pr cent of the popular vote. UKIP, on 13.2 per cent, wasn’t far behind.

Two years after that, the BNP had enough support across the city for one of its Barking & Dagenham councillors to win a London Assembly seat through the Londonwide proportional representation route, with a 5.3 per cent vote share. And in 2010, a year when a general election and full borough elections were held on the same day, BNP leader Nick Griffin contested the Barking parliamentary seat.

He made alleged “unfairness” in social housing allocations a key part of his campaign. A news report from the time shows (from 36 seconds), him claiming that “people from all over the world are coming in here, haven’t paid a penny [and] get pushed to the front of the queue”.

That sounds rather similar to what Reform’s Laila Cunningham claimed in her email. Where there is a difference is Griffin’s emphasising in the 2010 TV report (below) that alleged housing discrimination in favour of “people from all over the world” is unfair not only on what he calls “the indigenous Brits” but also “on settled ethnic minorities who’ve come here, been here for years, helped build the society [and] paid their taxes”.

This was unconvincing from the leader of a party that wanted immigrants and non-white British citizens to leave the country – a chunk of the population that would have included Laila Cunningham. Even so, it was a caveat Cunningham does not include in her email.

Perhaps we should reserve judgement on Reform’s social housing eligibility test until it becomes something more substantial than a Daily Express story lacking key details. But on the strength of what it has – and hasn’t – said about the matter so far, the party of Farage and Cunningham is hardly less “far-Right” than that of Griffin in 2010.

As On London reported last year, Reform has not been averse to making wildly inaccurate claims about social housing allocations in London. Its policy chief Zia Yusuf, no less, said on Newsnight that “the majority of social housing in London goes to foreign nationals”. In fact, about 17 per cent does.

Before that, Chris Philp, a London Conservative MP and shadow home secretary, took the astonishing step of highlighting on X/Twitter a map made by a prominent ethno-nationalist social media propagandist to claim that “48 per cent of London’s social housing is occupied by people who are foreign”. That isn’t true either. The reality is more like 15 per cent.

However, today’s Tory leadership and Reform UK alike have detected, like the BNP and the NF before them, that there are votes to be had in London – mostly from low-income white Londoners – from loudly proclaiming that foreigners, immigrants, asylum-seekers and anyone they chose to characterise as not a “Brit” – are frequently and routinely being given social housing they shouldn’t be entitled to. Reform are at it elsewhere, too: their candidate in the Gorton & Denton parliamentary by-election has been spreading exactly the same sorts of malicious rumours.

There is a legitimate debate to be had about social housing allocations in a time of scarcity in London, just as there is about whether calling Reform far-Right helps or hinders understanding or defeating them. What is clear, though, is that when it comes to social housing in London – and elsewhere – Nigel Farage’s party is stirring the same old pot of falsehoods, hatreds and exaggerations that the BNP and the NF stirred in the past.

Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Apple podcasts.

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. If you don’t already receive it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack or follow any Support link on this website.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: British National Party, Laila Cunningham, National Front, social housing

Tom Copley: Sadiq Khan is getting London building again

The Mayor's critics are wrong to blame him for economic circumstances he cannot control and fail to recognise the action he is taking to improve housing supply
Tom Copley

Housebuilding in London is facing the most challenging financial circumstances in decades, but there are good reasons to be hopeful – Sadiq Khan is taking the hard decisions needed to turn things around.

When the Mayor was first elected in 2016, he inherited a system whose potential had been squandered by his predecessor, Boris Johnson. Construction costs were low and interest rates were nearly zero, but Londoners were seeing very little benefit from this. Johnson would wave through developments with very low proportions of affordable housing, and council housebuilding was at rock bottom.

By taking the right decisions at the right time, such as introducing a fast-track route  for development schemes offering 35 per cent genuinely affordable homes and backing councils to get building again, Sadiq got the most out of a growing market, with private development subsidising a boom in social and affordable homes.

The numbers speak for themselves: before the pandemic, Sadiq not only helped deliver the most council homes built since the heydays of the 1970s he also oversaw the most housing completions of all tenures since the 1930s.

But in recent years, economic conditions conditions have seen housebuilding nosedive. Some of this has hit development across the rest of the country too: Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine increased the prices of materials rapidly, and shortages of construction workers post-Brexit did much the same for labour costs. Between 2020 and 2025, the price of steel bars rose by 40 per cent, and the price of concrete by half.

Other challenges are more specific to London. Ninety-six per cent of our newly built homes are flats, meaning developers here are more likely top be reliant on borrowing in order to meet the high upfront costs and long delivery timelines involved. It also makes them particularly susceptible to rising interest rates, including the sort we saw as a result of the disastrous 2022 mini-budget.

The last government also badly botched the introduction of new building safety rules. The Mayor and I have long called for stronger regulations to prevent a repeat of the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire, and we will continue to enforce stronger fire safety rules than national government’s – such as banning combustibles on the walls of the affordable homes we fund – to address London’s unique situation.

But the chaotic way the second staircase rule was introduced for all blocks of flats above six storeys meant that many housebuilders had to pull planning applications and even mothball otherwise viable schemes without warning. At the same time, unnecessary, bureaucratic delays from the new Building Safety Regulator left some sites stalled for more than a year.

This perfect storm has been devastating, with housing starts dropping rapidly and sites being left vacant for months while Londoners in desperate need of secure housing go without. The overwhelming majority of these problems were cooked up not in City Hall but by the last government in Whitehall.

Sadiq is doing all he can to get London building again by cutting complexity for housebuilders and freeing up more land for development with a streamlined London Plan; by using his planning powers to call-in and approve more developments; by preparing to green-light building through new mayoral powers; and by actively exploring building on the Green Belt, which can be a win-win for housing and access to nature.

But we can’t undo a crisis that wasn’t caused by City Hall on our own. That’s why we are working closely with the current government to cut Building Safety Regulator delays and make more schemes economically viable through a time-limited emergency package to speed up and cut levies for schemes that provide 20 per cent or more affordable housing.

That comes on top of a record £11.7 billion secured for a new, ten-year, Social and Affordable Homes Programme, and nearly £2 billion in grant and low-interest loans to back an innovative new City Hall developer, which will bring together the private and the public sectors to unblock the sites across our city that have the most potential for rapid development. Unlike the last national government, the current administration understands the scale of the challenge and is working with City Hall, investing to get councils and developers building again.

In the face of falling housing starts, some have grasped for easy answers, blaming City Hall for the results of economic conditions and policy choices far beyond its control. Others have wrongly claimed that Sadiq has imposed unnecessary regulations or peddled downright false figures about the number of homes City Hall has helped to deliver. The truth is very different. Sadiq has backed builders with a rapid, unashamedly pro-housebuilding response to worsening economic conditions

When he was first elected, Sadiq made bold calls to make the housing market work better for Londoners. We saw the results: housebuilding numbers not seen since for decades, including tens of thousands of new housing association and council homes for social rent.

Now, faced with much more difficult circumstances, Sadiq is doing it again – making the right calls for the right time to turn the tide on the housing crisis and get London building again.

Tom Copley is Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development. Follow him on Bluesky. 

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. If you don’t already receive it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack or follow any Support link on this website.

Categories: Comment
Tags: housing, Sadiq Khan, social housing