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Richard Brown: The devolution tide seems to be turning

If so, it will be a good thing, though getting it right will require careful judgements to be made
Richard Brown

Devolution is a good thing. Delivering services locally or regionally can make them more responsive to the needs and circumstances of places and communities, as well as enabling innovation and experiment. It can support integration and prevention, so that people do not fall through the cracks between services, and so that early action can tackle problems before they turn into crises. And bringing services closer to local people (“subsidiarity”, to use the European Union jargon) should aid accountability.

Fiscal devolution adds to the possibilities. It allows local councils and regional Mayors, such as Sir Sadiq Khan, to raise more taxes from their areas or to keep more of the taxes that would otherwise go to national government. Done well, this type of arrangement can create a virtuous circle: if the local economy grows, taxes grow, supporting services for local communities and enabling investment in transport and other infrastructure that will support continuing growth. This benefit has already been illustrated in London by the way the city and its businesses paid for the Elizabeth line and the Northern line underground extension to Battersea Power Station.

Speaking in Manchester this week, Andy Burnham had quite a lot to say about the first aspect of devolution, but rather less about the second. There were harsh words for the “adversarial culture” of Whitehall “departmental silos battling each other and battling the Treasury rather than getting things done”. Even the capital, the PM Presumptive assured us, needed more “powers…over education and housing, so that London can do more for itself and remain the world’s greatest capital city.”

On funding, his language was more opaque. “Power and resources” will be redistributed across the UK, and government departments will be expected to “support strategic and local authorities with funding and resources”. What exactly did that mean? The devolved powers needed in order to raise or retain taxes locally? Or just a new round of grant-funding from the centre?

Such vagueness is understandable: devolving taxes is complicated and campaigns for reform have struggled to make headway for decades. But the tide seems to be turning. In her Mais Lecture in March, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves pointed out the awkward asymmetry of accountability and reward: “While local leaders are asked to plan for the long term, to be accountable for regional outcomes, the fiscal reward for local economic success flows straight to the Exchequer”. Since then, meetings have been taking place to plot the “roadmap for future fiscal devolution” that she promised.

People involved in these discussions suggest the Treasury is receptive to the idea of using tax revenues to create incentives and conditions for growth locally. But other parts of Whitehall still regard the idea with horror. Departments have become used to managing local expenditure through a fiendishly complex set of formulas and grants that top up Council Tax (raised and spent locally) and redistribute Business Rates (raised locally but mainly distributed nationally). This charade of local tax-raising masks one of the most centralised tax regimes in the developed world. In the words of the LSE’s Professor Tony Travers, this “infantilises” local government, by making councils supplicants for centrally-allocated grants.

Tricky issues persist. As well as being highly centralised, the UK has high regional inequality (which may or may not be related to centralisation). Could allowing some taxes to be retained actually exacerbate the problem? If retaining taxes results in areas that are already doing well doing better still, will it also lead to others losing out?

A recent Centre for Cities report set out one approach to squaring this circle. Regional authorities, including the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the 15 mayoral strategic authorities (MSAs) across the country, could receive a share of Income Tax and Corporation Tax equivalent to their current grants from central government. This would amount to between two and six per cent of the local tax take. If the tax take grew, MSAs would keep some or all of the gains, but above a certain level these would start being clawed back to support areas that were not doing so well. But the hope would be that most areas could benefit. Growth should not be a zero-sum game.

The Mayor of London already uses retained local Business Rates to fund services, as do other MSAs, so this type of model has been tried and tested. The Centre for Cities research suggests that retaining two per cent of income tax raised in London would cover the GLA costs currently funded by government grants (reflecting both the scale of services funded by the GLA and the size of the tax base in the city).

But there are still other difficult questions. One is how much tax growth London should retain if revenues rise. London’s share of UK Income Tax and Corporation Tax has been growing quite sharply in recent years, so there might be an argument for the capital to retain a smaller proportion of growth than other cities, not least as some Corporation Tax raised in London relates to profits generated across the country by corporations whose head office is in the capital.

London (and other cities) would also need to be on guard against periodic attempts by central government to “reset” the proportions of taxes that can be retained as a way of redistributing the proceeds of economic growth. Such “levelling up” (and down) resets might be thought fairer to other parts of the country, but they create uncertainty and make it riskier for organisations such as the GLA or Transport for London to borrow money against future tax revenues – and riskier means more expensive. Better, surely, to allow long-term certainty on tax retention, and to use other revenues to support places with smaller tax bases.

Fiscal devolution could go a lot further, as proposed by the London Finance Commission: Mayors could set additional Income Tax rates (as happens in Scotland) or new Council Tax bands (as has happened in Wales). Retained taxes could also be shared with local authorities, and Andy Burnham’s reported interest in land value taxes could lead to a more wholesale process of reform. But, as discussed at a Centre for Cities briefing event, the risk of arguing that fiscal devolution can only be taken forward part of a radical restructuring of the tax system is that nothing continues to happen.

Andy Burnham in his speech spoke of a “10-year mission”, but he also expressed a sense of urgency and frustration with how Whitehall has worked to frustrate the transfer of power to the UK’s cities and regions. This sense of urgency suggests that this could be a moment of change, an opportunity for Mayor Khan and the other Mayors to push for faster and fuller devolution of services and taxes, if they are really going to be able to do things differently and deliver for their communities.

Follow Richard Brown on Bluesky.

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. Thanks.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Devolution, Sadiq Khan, Whitehall

Charles Wright: How will ‘robotaxis’ work in London?

The London Assembly has been exploring the pros and cons of the the new technology that could be operating on city's streets very soon
Charles Wright

Robotaxis in London? It’s now no longer a case of “if” but “when” – and that could be as soon as this summer. With enthusiastic government backing, UK tech pioneer Wayve’s AI Driver is “ready to go”, its business partner Uber is opening a list for customers who would prefer an “autonomous” ride, and US rival Waymo is gearing up to launch too.

There are plenty of open questions about this new technology, which the London Assembly’s transport committee has been exploring over the past few weeks. Issues include safety for passengers and other road users – including cyclists and pedestrians – accessibility, data protection, the vehicles’ impact on the city’s already congested streets and, not least, the potential for catastrophic job losses among London’s 100,000 or so licensed private hire drivers.

It is not – not quite – a done deal. The operators in Britain face two regulatory hurdles: firstly convincing government agencies that their vehicles meet government and international safety standards and, secondly, gaining approval from local transport authorities. In London, Transport for London will have the final say on whether a service can get going or not.

Surmounting the first hurdle shouldn’t be difficult, although the public still seems unsure. Last October, a YouGov poll found 79 per cent of Britons trusting driverless taxis “not very much” or “not at all”, with 59 per cent saying they would not feel comfortable riding in one “under any circumstances”. The operators have responded by highlighting their vehicles’ record in the United States, their big testing ground to date, with familiarity with the tech alleviating public concerns.

Assembly transport committee chair Caroline Russell of the Green Party found herself “reassured” after a 15-minute Wayve trip earlier this month. “It was very smooth, really quite dull,” she told The Standard. “There are huge possibilities with the technology that makes sure that people obey speed limits and that they don’t drive too close to a cyclist, that they look out for pedestrians wanting to cross the road and obey all the road rules – that’s absolutely great.”

What about the second hurdle? TfL has significant scope under the legislation to consider a proposed service’s impact on its existing transport networks and City Hall policies, and to impose restrictions on where and when the service will operate and how many vehicles can be deployed. And it could say no.

“The roll out of AVs [autonomous vehicles] must support the aims of the Mayor’s transport strategy,” their spokesperson told On London. That would mean compliance with Sir Sadiq Khan’s “Vision Zero” goal to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries from collisions on London’s streets by 2041, as well as his active travel aim that 80 per cent of trips are made by walking, cycling, or public transport by the same date, his air quality and carbon reduction targets, and wider policies for delivering a more efficient and less congested road network.

The Assembly committee will put its suggestions to the Mayor following its meeting on 14 July, at which TfL representatives will be quizzed. It is set to highlight concerns about congestion – “the biggest question that TfL needs to be looking at,” according to Russell – full accessibility to the vehicles for disabled and older Londoners, and potential job losses in the current private hire fleet.

TfL will be setting out detailed guidance shortly, though time will be tight once applications come in – the regulations allow just 42 days for decision-making. At the Assembly session, representatives of AV operators were again in full reassurance mode. In what would still essentially be a further pilot phase, the number of “Robocabs” unleashed onto the streets would a be relatively low “dozens, not hundreds” according to Wayve. They would operate in selected boroughs across outer as well as inner London, and at first with experienced licensed drivers on board, keeping them within the scope of existing private hire vehicle and driver licensing rules, according to TfL.

Agreeing to hold down numbers and support current drivers into backroom roles would limit the impact of the new tech on existing jobs, and fares would be set at current levels too, the operators said. As well as being safer, the AVs could help address “unmet need” in outer London and potentially replace car club vehicles, according to Wayve’s Sarah Gates. Keeping to the speed limit at all times would have a “calming” influence on other drivers, added Waymo’s Ben Loewenstein.

Not everyone is convinced. “London’s transport network is a delicate eco-system and a lot of people’s jobs depend on it, and you’re basically asking us to take a big gamble and see where it goes,” Labour’s Elly Baker told the operators. Momentum seems to be with the operators and their taxi-based market solutions, which TfL may find easier to regulate than to ban. But even if the initial impact is mitigated, the long-term remains uncertain, as technology that is expensive at present becomes cheaper.

Transport consultant and former TfL innovation director Thomas Ableman warned the committee at its first session that the real opportunity “and the threat” of this innovation would emerge “if and when the cost of this technology falls significantly”.

The question then, he said, would be whether robotaxis “are useful for what we want to achieve as a city. Do they do what we want all transport to do – connect as many people as possible to as much opportunity as possible? Is this the right model?”

Instead of an “unconstrained” taxi fleet, the capital could consider the approach used in Oslo, where the public transport network was procuring small AVs for fixed routes connecting low density suburbs to transport hubs, he suggested. “That could be utterly transformative to connectivity in outer London suburbs and for people who currently do not have access to either public transport or private mobility,” he said. Or perhaps an “AV shuttle across Hammersmith Bridge?”

Competing visions then, and big questions for the city. The technology may look unstoppable, but how it is deployed remains very much in contention.

The full London Assembly transport committee sessions can be viewed on the City Hall website here and here. Agendas and minutes of committee meetings are available here. Follow Charles Wright on Bluesky. Photo from Wayve website.

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. To receive it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack. Thanks.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: autonomous vehicles, London Assembly, transport, Transport for London

Tim Donovan: Interview with Lewisham’s new Mayor Liam Shrivastava

A year ago he was an unhappy Labour councillor, today he is the top politician in a borough he believes deserves better
Tim Donovan

Five minutes after sitting down with Lewisham’s new Green Mayor, we are talking about Ghana versus England. The World Cup works in mysterious ways. Ghana is an unexpected part of Liam Shrivastava’s journey. Not long after joining Labour a little over a decade ago, he went to work as media manager for an elite football academy in the east of the African country. “It was in the middle of nowhere, like a tiny village. I used to take the canoe to work,” he says.

It was a move he describes as “totally random” – recommended by his then boss at Leeds University Student Union where he was doing the marketing. Some of the boys coming through the academy are now in Ghana’s senior squad which held England to a 0-0 draw last week.

Shrivastava says it was Brexit that first politicised him and Jeremy Corbyn who inspired him. That, for some, might seem contradictory, given the then-Labour leader’s unenthusiastic campaign to remain in the European Union. In 2017, as Labour won 40 percent of the vote and 262 seats in the general election, resulting in a hung parliament under Teresa May, Shrivastava watched coverage via a projector and a bedsheet in a town east of the Ghanaian capital Accra.

“I was, oh, man, I’ve got to get back involved in this,” he recalls. “So at that point, I was like, even though I was sort of having this sort of very amazing adventure, I was like, no, I need to go back to the UK and fight for socialism and more progressive politics because things are really bad.”

Shrivastava’s arrival in the south London borough he now leads was via a master’s degree in political communications at Goldsmiths College, where he first got immersed in local politics. He became the communications officer for a charity, the Institute for Race Relations, which he credits for honing his understanding of the media and the evident comfort he feels in the presence of journalists. “The experience very much sharpened my politics and my values.”

By the time the 2022 borough elections came around and despite the moves by Labour under Sir Keir Starmer to purge the party of its Corbynite elements, Shrivastava was selected for New Cross Gate ward. He won, but being a Labour councillor was never a comfortable experience for him. He was out of step with the majority of Lewisham’s ruling group.

Almost exactly a year ago (25 June 2025), facing disciplinary action over his criticism of Labour’s stance on Gaza and welfare benefits, Shrivastava defected to the Greens. In a withering resignation statement, he said the Labour Party he had joined was “unrecognisable” and the way to fight the rise of Reform UK was “not to pander to it, but to confront it with a positive, eco-socialist vision”. He tells me he has no regrets and that it was right to leave rather than to fight for the direction and soul of Labour from within.

Shrivastava is now one of four former Labour councillors who head Green administrations in London councils after being in the party for only a matter of months. The other three are James McAsh in Southwark, Martin Abrams in Lambeth and Mark Blake in Haringey

Shrivastava insists defecting was a “roll of the dice”, hardly a sure-fire political bet given the Greens had not had a councillor elected in Lewisham since 2014. “It definitely can’t be said that you’re doing it as something that is a guaranteed banker to being the Mayor within a year. Absolutely not. It was beyond our wildest dreams.”

He adds, “I wasn’t even sure if I was going to continue in politics. Genuinely, I was basically thinking, for various reasons, being a councillor is stressful, it takes over your life, you know, all these things.”

It soon becomes clear how strongly Shrivastava feels that Lewisham has gone under the radar and been let down by decades of Labour administrations facing scant opposition and scrutiny. He says it has been “massively overlooked” in terms of transport investment and connectivity, and his over-arching priority is to get the Bakerloo line extended and coming through the borough. He welcomes the Labour government’s commitment to the devolution of fiscal powers which could unlock funding and loosen the stranglehold of the Treasury.

Days after his election, Shrivastava surprised some observers by attending UKREiiF in Leeds – the biggest event in the national property calendar and not obviously natural Green territory. He was determined to get in the room with developers, planners and investors, and some present said he argued forcefully and impressively for the regeneration, economic opportunities and reduction in car use which could come from such a “transformative” project as the Bakerloo reaching further south and into his borough.

He says, “This part of southeast London is disconnected and there are high levels of deprivation, and we aren’t seeing this borough developing the way that maybe other boroughs are developing, and we’re not seeing that investment come in, and that is because of the lack of transport infrastructure.”

But at a private dinner at UKREiiF, Shrivastava also got an early taste of the potential challenges – and lingering resentments – which lie ahead. In a short speech to the assembled investors, fellow guest Anthony Okereke, Labour leader of neighbouring borough Greenwich, criticised Shrivastava over his election campaign.

This was about a video Shrivastava put out, attacking his Labour mayoral opponent Amanda De Ryk for having previously done consultancy for the development giant Muse, and in which he said he would never take money from a developer.

Lambeth’s outgoing leader Claire Holland also said pointedly that Shrivastava would be “standing on the shoulders” of his Labour predecessor in Lewisham.

Shrivastava tells me, “It’s disappointing that political opponents resort to these playground tactics. Some Labour leaders are clearly still sore about the election results, but the election is over and we need to be a bit more grown up and show Londoners we’re serious about working constructively across our differences.”

It would seem fair to assume that housing and development could be the defining test of Lewisham’s first Green Mayor, with all eyes on whether he comes to be viewed as “anti-developer and anti-homes,” as some opponents maintain.

He is one of the three London boroughs Mayors who’ve launched a legal challenge against the “emergency measures” agreed last year by the government and City Hall to boost house-building. The others are his fellow Green, Zoë Garbett of Hackney and Aspire’s Lutfur Rahman in Tower Hamlets. They are objecting primarily to the acceptable proportion of affordable homes proposed by private developers being reduced from 35 percent of the total to 20 percent on a temporary basis.

Shrivastava tells me, “It is incredibly disappointing…allowing developers to fast-track projects that only deliver 20 per cent [affordable] housing is not going to solve the housing crisis.”

He claims he will deliver at least 1,000 new homes for social rent over the next four years and wants to move away from purpose-built student accommodation and co-living schemes, which he says are proliferating, to more family homes that get people out of temporary accommodation. It is a tall order.

He says it is self-evident that the small number of homes currently being built by the private sector indicates “market failure” and that when developers are not prepared to take the risk, it shows how important it is for the public sector to step in.

He will not be precise on his plans at this stage – they will be revealed in due course – but wants more council and community-led building, working with chosen private sector partners. He disagrees that talk of moving away from a “developer-led” model will lead to developers moving away and looking to build elsewhere.

“I think we can find people that are willing to work with us. If some developers say, okay, we’ll go elsewhere, fine. We’ll work with other people because, you know, I’m sure there’ll be other people that we can work with. What is the point of approving a scheme that delivers no affordable housing? And is of, say, poor quality, which does not meet the needs of our communities? It’s only going to drive up prices. It’s only going to push people out.”

Shrivastava admits he wants to reduce dependence on developers’ own plans shaped by market conditions and bring forward more of the council’s own schemes. The key challenge is finding the right finance arrangements. “We believe that there are options out there. There are ways in which we can borrow, finance, build our own homes.” This may include pension funds.

His election manifesto talked of putting people before profits, the sort of rhetoric likely to raise the hackles of the built environment sector. He will not say what is an acceptable level, but accepts builders need to make profit. He insists he will be open and pragmatic. There will be negotiations so that “two parties can arrive at a point where they’re happy” and the amount of good quality affordable housing is maximised.

He is enthusiastically inheriting a project piloted by the Labour government in Lewisham which bundles small plots of brownfield land together to make development more attractive to small and medium sized developers.

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If housing is the central long-term challenge, a visible blitz against fly-tipping is imminent, to underline the Mayor’s pledge to be more responsive. Hotspots are to be reclaimed for the community as has happened already in one place, Lewisham Green. “We cleared the space, we put down some wood chips, planted a few seeds. The community saw it, the residents saw it, and they’re like, oh, brilliant. Can we turn it into a community garden?

In several parts of London, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) have become politically toxic. While Shrivastava commits to safer streets and reducing air pollution, he will not pledge to create more LTNs nor say whether he personally would like to see more. There will be better engagement and consultation than previously, and decisions will be evidence-led, he insists.

It has not taken long for talk to emerge of the dangers of factionalism within the Greens, with tensions between the Corbynite newcomers and traditionalists long embedded in their communities and focused on core environmental issues. Shrivastava says such talk is over-done and that shared values unite more than they divide.

“I don’t think there’s much disagreement when it comes to policy and things like that. There might be differences in terms of like culture, right, because there are very different traditions, very different ways of doing things, ways of working.”

In the past year, Green membership in Lewisham rose from 500 to 3200, making its the second biggest local party after Hackney’s. The Mayor says the party must develop new systems and processes to reflect its large membership and newly-held power.

He dismisses suggestions that, given the Greens’ dramatic rise to power in places like Lewisham with 40 out of 54 council seats, inexperience will soon reveal itself. On the contrary, he argues that a widely-drawn new skillset will bring fresh energy and ideas.

“We’ve got three councillors that have got architecture degrees. We’ve got journalists. We’ve got lawyers. We’ve got serious talent. It is bringing in new perspectives and different ways of working.”

There have been many defections from Labour to the Greens, but few who have gone the other way. The most prominent was Darren Johnson, a former London Assembly member and councillor in Lewisham for the Greens. He describes his old party as “morally bankrupt.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” says Shrivastava. “I think the fact Darren has joined the Labour Party and was actively campaigning with Labour during the election. I think it’s clear that he has moved. We don’t want, in my view, people like that in the Green Party.

“The Labour Party is morally bankrupt when it comes to Gaza and when it comes to trans rights, different things like that. And these are things that Darren feels, you know, more comfortable with. So it’s nice that he has a new political home.”

Scrutiny of Greens during their local campaign across London brought accusations of antisemitism, including social media postings by a Lewisham candidate who was removed. Shrivastava does not deny it’s a problem, but says it’s hardly exclusive to the Greens. From his experience at the Institute for Race Relations, he says there is a “heightened responsibility” for all councillors to be careful about the language they use, mindful of the potential impact on communities.

“I think clearly there’s work to do around vetting and also setting expectations from candidates. I think antisemitism and other forms of racism are a problem for all of society, and it’s present in all political parties, and that’s been, you know, clearly evidenced.”

Given the big Green break-through is widely viewed as a protest against Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, I suggest Labour under Andy Burnham might reverse Green progress and Shrivastava could prove to be a one-term wonder. He doesn’t rise to the bait.

“I think if Andy is going to succeed, if he does become Prime Minister, it will be by being consensual,” he says. “It will be by recognising that we are in the era of five party politics, and that the Green Party’s rise, and obviously Reform’s rise, are not temporary. If he wants to be Prime Minister after the next election, he is going to have to cede some ground. He’s going to have to work with other parties.”

This is not, the Mayor insists, a high water mark for the Greens in Lewisham “This isn’t going to fizzle out,” he says. “I think this is only going to get better.”

Tim Donovan is the former political editor of BBC London and now a trustee of Centre for London and political adviser to Kanda Consulting. Follow him at LinkedIn. Photos from Lewisham Council.

OnLondon.co.uk is funded by sales of publisher and editor Dave Hill’s twice-weekly newsletter On London Extra. To receive it, become a paying subscriber to Dave’s personal Substack. Thanks.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Green Party, Lewisham Council, Liam Shrivastava

Burnham praises London, shock. What will ‘Number 10 North’ do for it?

The likely next prime minister said in his speech in Manchester that he wants London to remain "the world's greatest capital city" and hinted at new powers over housing and education
Dave Hill

Two unusual things occurred during Andy Burnham’s speech in Manchester today. One was that he described London as “the world’s greatest capital city”, marking a considerable shift from his usual characterisation of it as synonymous with all the things he has long persuaded his local electoral base to resent and dislike. The other was that I uttered the words “oh, piss off” only once while he was delivering it.

It was the speech of a politician who wants and needs to cement the confidence of the Labour MPs and members whose leader he is likely to be in just a few weeks’ time, and who appears to recognise that continuing to practice “north-south divide” grievance politics, as he has done so profitably for years, would look a bit odd while also preaching the virtues of national unity and collaboration, and when pledging to bring about “good growth in every postcode” in the land.

Striking, too, was his indictment not of “London” as a boo-word symbol of all that is unfair on “the North”, but his specifying of “Westminster and Whitehall” when singling out the need for big changes in the culture of national government in the form of moving “power from the centre” like never before.

What, though, might the big themes Burnham sketched out in his speech do for London and for Londoners? I had been told of “initial chats” between City Hall and the Burnham operation about better-equipping the capital for dealing with its housing problems and for boosting further education and skills training – two areas Sir Sadiq Khan and the boroughs alike would dearly love to have more control over – and this seemed to be confirmed in Burnham’s speech.

Having advocated greater powers for rural, de-industrialised and coastal areas to “address issues specific to them”, he said, “and, yes, more powers for London too, over education and housing, so that London can do more for itself”. His “greatest capital city” compliment followed. Gasp. There was even a round of applause.

Burnham’s embrace of the capital did not go near acknowledging the undeniable – and yet so frequently denied – vital importance of its economy to that of the entire nation and its public finances. Rather, he said that “the stark imbalance in resources between national government and local government” is “holding back growth” and that this was “bad for everywhere” including “London and the south east”. The whole country, he said, “suffers when the regions and nations are not meeting their potential, and Londoners are left with an overheated economy and an overcrowded housing market”.

There was a lot in his speech about battles with central government that London government could relate to: exasperation with Whitehall’s profound, default reluctance to give away even a fraction of its decision-making capacity, and its preoccupation with its own internal struggles is often expressed by veterans of City Hall. Those days, Burnham boldly said “are over for good”.

Big promise. In what forms will it be kept? “The change will be driven through the Prime Minister’s office,” Burnham said, “in an extended operation based here in Manchester” to be called “Number 10 North”. But though based in Manchester, its job would be “to make power flow into the Midlands, into the South West, into the east of England and, yes, into London, as I said before, as much as into the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and here in the North West”, not forgetting Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It would be “the nerve centre of a re-wired Britain” and “the conduit through which we redistribute power and resources across the UK” and “co-ordinate all parts of government”.

This raises a whole host of questions. Is it necessary, practical or efficient to set up what sounds like an large outpost of Whitehall at the other end of England in order to implement a devolution revolution? If Whitehall is to be reformed, why can’t a reformed Whitehall do it? Does a branch of national government become better equipped to empower Norwich or Birmingham or Bristol simply by not being based in London any more?

We’ve heard claims about the virtues of relocating civil service capacity to the regions many times before, from everyone from Michael Gove to Pat McFadden. Does it really make a difference to the implementation of national government policy? Can devolution only happen if there is also decentralisation, which isn’t the same thing? Perhaps we should also keep in mind that even long-term advocates of devolution are careful to warn that it isn’t guaranteed to bring success.

Still, these are early days in the Burnham ascendancy. And let’s rejoice, at least for now, in the novel experience of the “King of the North” not painting “London” as the enemy.

Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky and at LinkedIn. Photo from BBC News.

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. Thanks.

Categories: News
Tags: Andy Burnham, Devolution, housing

Lewis Baston: Five go back to the polls in Haringey, Hackney and Ealing

A bunch of London by-elections took place last week which, in most cases, should not have been needed
Lewis Baston

Five London borough by-elections took place on Thursday 25 June, which is a lot given that a full set of borough elections was held only last month. The contests were needed in order fill seats already vacated by newly elected councillors who were either not qualified to stand or decided they did not wish to serve.

The polls in two wards in Haringey were particularly important, because they created a chance that the council would change from being under No Overall Control to having a one-seat Green majority. Voters – only a few of them, as heatwave turnout was low – also returned to polling stations in one ward in Ealing and two in Hackney.

It is worth devoting a bit of attention to the causes of the by-elections, as these differed from the kinds that lead to by-elections in mid-term. In the case of Dalston ward in Hackney, the reason was the same as brought about the Crofton Park election the previous week in Lewisham in that the Green Party’s Zoë Garbett had been both elected both as the borough’s executive Mayor and re-elected to her ward councillor seat. Standing for both posts was entirely reasonable, but serving in both is not permitted.

In Hackney Central ward, the Greens’ James Tilden was elected on 7 May, but being employed by Hackney as a primary school teacher meant he was ineligible to sit on the council. According to the Hackney Citizen, “the party and Tilden claimed they were not aware of the issue until after he was nominated, by which point it was too late to withdraw his candidacy”.

In Haringey, Northumberland Park ward winning Green candidate Jayon Henriques was, like Tilden, ineligible under the Local Government Act 1972, but in his case for reasons that have not been disclosed. Again, the Green Party claims not to have been aware of the problem until after close of nominations though, in contrast to Hackney’s Greens, they did not actively campaign in the ward.

There is no excuse for a party to run ineligible candidates. The rules are not new, and it is up to parties and candidates themselves to ensure that they have done the elementary due diligence and research about standing in a public election. It is a basic matter of respect for the electorate and a council’s hard-pressed finances.

When, a long time ago, I stood for election in a London borough my grilling by the party I hoped to represent went as far as establishing that I didn’t owe the council any money before I was so allowed even to become a prospective candidate, let alone selected to run. An insurgent approach to politics is one thing, negligence quite another.

The councillors who had resigned within days did so despite being eligible. Labour’s Hasret Bozdogan quit Haringey Woodside ward for unspecified personal reasons, while Ealing Green councillor Simon Anthony stood down from North Acton because of long-term health problems arising from Covid-19. These are more sympathetic circumstances. We do not know the full stories and therefore should not judge. People sometimes aspire to roles that they realise on reflection are not for them.

“Paper candidates” representing a party in a ward where they are unlikely to win are sometimes elected when that party’s tide is coming in as it was for the Greens in London in 2026. But it is incumbent on parties to select carefully and inform potential candidates before they face the electorate that being a councillor is a serious and potentially onerous public service.

***

Let us begin with that crucial pair of Haringey by-elections. Labour had run the borough continuously from 1971 until May’s elections, when the Greens won 28 out of 57 seats, against 21 Labour and eight Liberal Democrats. The Greens took office as a minority administration led by Mark Blake, one of several Green council leaders who had defected from Labour during the 2022-26 term (see also Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark). Good results for Greens were expected in Hackney and Lewisham, but the Haringey outcome was at the top of the range of local expectations.

The thin line between the Haringey Greens and the 29th seat they needed to secure a majority was a Labour hold by a margin of three votes in Woodside ward. But then Labour’s Bozdogan, elected by that tiny margin over Green Hayley Jukes, resigned. If the Greens could gain the seat while also defending the one they held in Northumberland Park they would have their majority. Both seats had given split verdicts in May, electing two Labour and one Green councillor, so it really did hang in the balance.

Northumberland Park is the north east corner of Tottenham, north of Tottenham Hale and between the High Road and the borough boundary along the River Lea. Its main landmark is the Tottenham Hotspur football stadium. A section of the ward is industrial. From a London Underground perspective, the local depot is the only place where Victoria line trains see the light of day, although despite the past pleas of London Assembly members there are no plans to extend its services to there.

It is a deprived working-class ward, with the highest proportion of social housing in Haringey (41 per cent) and the highest proportion of people with no educational qualifications (28 per cent). It also has one of the highest proportions of black residents in all of London (36 per cent). Before the Greens won of its three seats in May, it had long been one of Labour’s safest wards.

Northumberland Park was one of three Haringey wards where the Greens ran in alliance with the Haringey Socialist Alliance (HSA), a local Corbynite group. The Greens stood one candidate and the HSA two in the three-member working-class Tottenham wards of Bruce Castle, Northumberland Park and West Green. The pact was not a success, in that many voters who supported the Green candidate did not give their other votes to the HSA candidates – fewer than half in the other two wards.

However, Northumberland Park HSA candidate Alison Davy did the best of all of them. The Greens could almost certainly have had another candidate elected in West Green (and therefore won a majority), but Northumberland Park was a bit more of a stretch. No HSA candidate stood in the by-election, which consolidated the left-wing vote behind the Greens.

Woodside, like Northumberland Park, is in the north of Haringey on the border with Enfield. It is in Wood Green rather than Tottenham and has a different sort of London community. Forming the part of Wood Green to the north of Wood Green’s Piccadilly line station, it is historically a more middle-class suburban area. It forms part of the broad band of Cypriot, Greek and Turkish modern London stretching outwards from the inner city to the suburbs along Green Lanes (reflected in being the Haringey ward with the highest proportion of white residents of non-British ethnicity in the 2021 Census).

The Cypriot Community Centre opened in the ward in 1979 is a cooperative endeavour between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Woodside’s housing is private rented (45 per cent) rather than in the social sector, as older suburban houses have been divided into flats. It elected Conservative councillors as late as 1990, but the Tory vote collapsed rapidly and Labour held the ward from 1994 onwards, including against a Lib Dem challenge in 2006. But in May, the Greens gained one of the three seats on a high swing despite coming a poor second in 2022.

The Green candidate in Woodside was Elara Shurety, a PhD student researching poor housing conditions. Labour selected NHS radiologist andformer councillor for the ward Thayahlan Iyngkaran. All five of the Labour candidates in the by-elections were councillors who had been unseated in May, four of them for the same ward in which they were standing. This was the case also in Northumberland Park where former cabinet member for communities, Ajda Ovat, stood again. She faced opposition from the Greens’ Rose Dakuo, a community organiser. There were also candidates for the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Reform UK, but the contests were essentially between two parties.

They were close-fought and the vote shares for Green and Labour were up in both wards. Shurety gained Woodside for the Greens, with 1,033 votes (43 per cent) to 978 votes (41 per cent) for Iyngkaran, a majority of 55 votes. But the Green excitement at the Woodside count was dampened by Northumberland Park where Labour regained the seat by 877 (44 per cent) to 839 (42 per cent), a majority of 38 votes.

Both seats swung slightly towards the Greens, although the electoral pact in May in Northumberland Park makes calculating swing problematic. So, for Haringey Council’s overall composition, it is a case of as you were, with the Green administration still one seat short of a majority.

***

The Hackney Central and Dalston wards adjoin each other, following the east-west axis of the Mildmay line of the Overground. Hackney Central is well-named, in that it covers the “town centre” of Hackney – the area around the adjacent Hackney Central and Hackney Downs stations and the Town Hall – and it is also in the geographical centre of the larger area covered by the London Borough of Hackney.

Central has the sort of mixed community that inner London tends to produce, with high levels of social and economic deprivation alongside a highly educated, high-income but precarious population: forty-eight per cent of households are renting in the social sector and 40 per cent are in managerial or professional occupations.

It has a high (27 per cent) proportion of black residents. Hackney Central was a safe Labour ward from its creation in 2002 and although the boundaries are very different, its predecessor wards were Labour going back to 1953. Labour won 66 per cent of the vote in 2022, but the Greens won on a massive 32 per cent swing in May 2026.

Dalston is socially and politically different in that it, particularly on the boundaries in force since 2014, is more heavily gentrified. It adjoins the Islington ward of Mildmay, which contains the Canonbury area. Dalston landmarks included the Rio Cinema and Ridley Road Market, which back in the 1980s catered to a poor working-class clientele as detailed in Paul Harrison’s book Inside the Inner City.

But contemporary Dalston has a lot of private renters (43 per cent of households) and is the ward with both Hackney’s lowest proportion of social tenants (27 per cent) and its highest of graduates (66 per cent). Garbett won one of the two Dalston seats for the Greens in 2022, and it has tended to be one of the better wards for her party in recent elections. They won overwhelmingly in May 2026.

Both of the Labour candidates for the two by-elections had represented the seats they were contesting until being unseated in the May: Sheila Sosu-Runge in Hackney Central and Grace Adebayo in Dalston. The Greens recruited from a talented and interesting pool: in Dalsston, Manal Massalha, a sociologist and photographer of Palestinian origin: in Hackney Central, Noah Birkstead-Breen, academic, translator and co-founder of Sputnik Theatre.

The Greens held on to both seats despite a swing to Labour of seven per cent in Hackney Central and five per cent in Dalston. These were smaller than the 11 per cent swing in Lewisham’s Crofton Park the week before but enough to make Hackney Central a close-run thing, with 52 votes (three per cent) separating the candidates.

***

North Acton is a patchwork ward, consisting of small, disconnected areas that did not fit in anywhere else. Its centre of gravity is currently in the south, where it covers a residential area to the north and west of Acton town centre and Acton Main Line station. It meets the A4020 Uxbridge Road at Twyford Crescent. London’s Japanese community knows it as the neighbourhood of the Japanese School.

Then there is a 1930s suburb near West Acton Central Line station, and the newer cluster of high rises near North Acton station (there are a lot of stations in Acton) and the A40 Western Avenue. North again, the 1930s Park Royal Industrial Estate dominates the landscape, with several tiny residential areas amid it like creatures trapped in amber. The far end is at the entrance to Willesden Junction station. The population will surge with the housing to be built in the Old Oak and Park Royal area covered by a London Mayoral Development Corporation in conjunction with the Old Oak Common HS2 station.

Demographically, North Acton is a typical slice of diverse inner London in many ways, although this will shift with the new building. Its main peculiarity is that 21 per cent of its population are full-time students thanks to the Imperial College student housing around North Acton station.

Politically, its history is a little different from the other Labour-dominated wards in that it is the successor to the pre-2022 Acton Central ward which voted Conservative as recently as 2006 and was often a marginal seat. The Tories were still (a fairly poor) second in 2022. The two incumbent Labour councillors seeking re-election in May both won, but Labour lost the third seat to the Green whose resignation triggered the by-election.

The Lib Dems are now well-established as the main opposition in Ealing’s council chamber, winning 13 seats to Labour’s 46 in May. The Tories and the Greens got five each and there was one Independent. North Acton had not been a Lib Dem target ward, but they decided to give it a go for the by-election and ran a serious campaign. Their candidate Abdi Ahmed is a parliamentary researcher for a Lib Dem MP.

For Labour’s Gareth Shaw it was a second attempted ward transplant. He had represented Walpole ward 2014-26 but changed to South Acton in 2026. The Lib Dems targeted Walpole and won. While South Acton seemed safer, the Greens did well enough to win the third seat at Shaw’s expense, so he was available for the North Acton vacancy.

The Green candidate Marijn van de Geer also moved ward. She stood in East Acton in May, and had been the London Assembly candidate for Ealing & Hillingdon in 2021. She is perhaps on the more radical side of the Greens, having been a founder member of the direct action group Extinction Rebellion in 2018 and made controversial social media comments.

There was less Green-Labour electoral polarisation than in the Hackney and Haringey wards, although they were still the two largest parties. The Greens held the seat with 804 votes (30 per cent) and a small swing in their favour. Labour’s vote was 642 (24 per cent), the only by-election since May in which their share has been down. The Lib Dems came a creditable third with 523 votes (20 per cent).

***

The five by-elections, with the partial exception of North Acton, were fights between Labour and the Greens. In Hackney and Haringey no other party was a significant contender, with the highest vote share for anyone else being the 7.2 per cent polled by Ruth Price for Reform UK in Woodside. Jerry Sulaiman, valiantly contesting Dalston for the Conservatives, polled just 10 votes (1.1 per cent). It was possibly – someone might prove me wrong – the worst performance in London borough history by one of the two old “main” parties.

Northumberland Park was the first Labour gain in a London borough by-election in just over ten years, the last being the Roding by-election in Redbridge on the May 206 day Sadiq Khan was first elected London Mayor. There should be a few more during the current council term of office. Labour’s results were so bad in some boroughs in May that there should be a regression toward the mean.

More paper candidates elected by surprise will quit. Green administrations in six ex-Labour boroughs will inevitably encounter local issues and disappoint the voters. Labour may perk up nationally with a new leader – even though Andy Burnham has, rhetorically at least, not been very London-friendly. Labour’s deep roots and stronger organisation may help them rally voters in low turnout by-elections.

But there was no sign of a large movements since 7 May. There was a slight swing to Green in the two in Haringey and in Ealing, and a more pronounced swing to Labour in Hackney, although this owed a lot to the drop in turnout in two of the Greens’ safest wards.

The by-elections were chances for five Labour councillors defeated in the May to return to the council chamber, but only Ajda Ovat made it. Recently-defeated councillors have local government experience and are well-known in the ward, but selecting them as candidates also looks as if the party is asking the voters to regret their recent decision. There was some evidence, as in Lewisham, of punishment for the party that caused the election to take place.

Weatherwise, Thursday 25 June must have been one of the hottest polling days in British electoral history. The temperature in Hackney peaked at around 35 degrees, enough to put off all but the most determined voters from going to the polling station.

The turnout in all these by-elections, even the crucial ones in Haringey, was very low, ranging between 14 per cent in Dalston and 24 per cent in Woodside. Most of that will have been pre-arranged postal votes. Voters will also have been reminded about the climate crisis. Perhaps it is not surprising that the Green Party’s vote share was resilient.

Follow Lewis Baston 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: Analysis
Tags: Ealing Council, Hackney Council, Haringey Council

John Vane: Alfie’s London

The capital in the Swinging Sixties wasn't as lit up as we might imagine
John Vane

This man doesn’t need to tell you what his name is – neither his real name, nor the name of the character he’s playing in the clip below. Enjoy his performance, filmed on Waterloo Bridge. Enjoy the way he says “a car”. And don’t miss the role played by London and the Thames.

The city looks, in the words of a friend, so dark and forbidding. It was 1966, England’s World Cup winning year, but only 25 years since the Blitz. “Swinging London” had been invented, but few parts of the capital were doing it. Much of the place was still blackened, traumatised and scarred.

You see more of that old London in the clip below, which picks up where the closing scene of Alfie above leaves off. It is also a reminder that in the film, Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s title song is sung jazz style by Cher. It is not the most famous version.

Alfie was though, one of Michael Caine’s most famous roles in the early part of his career, further defining him as a cockney anti-hero of his culturally disruptive times.

Many other members of the cast were illustrious, too. Romford-born Millicent Martin, now aged 92, was best known to many as a singer, though she was a successful actress too. Jane Asher, from Willesden, was still working as recently as 2023. Shirley Anne Field, born in Forest Gate, who died two years ago, would later play a prominent role in another classic London film, My Beautiful Laundrette. The career of Eleanor Bron, from Stanmore, has encompassed everything from a Beatles film to The Archers. Alfie Bass, a son of Bethnal Green, seems to have been in almost everything in the 1960s and 1970s.

There are some very good sites documenting other locations where Michael Caine’s Alfie, adapted by Bill Naughton from his 1963 play and produced and directed by Lewis Gilbert, was shot. See here, here, here and here. As for the best-known rendition of the song of the same name, there is some fabulous footage of it being recorded at Abbey Road studios by a young woman from Liverpool. Perhaps we’ll look at that some more another day.

John Vane’s London novel, a political satire called Frightgeist, can be bought from this very website. This article originally appeared on the Substack John Vane: London Stories.

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. Thanks.

Categories: Culture, John Vane's London Stories
Tags: Alfie, Michael Caine, My Beautiful Laundrette, Waterloo Bridge

Barnaby Towns: London’s Tories are still going backwards. What should they do?

At first sight, the Conservatives staged a small a recovery in the borough elections, but a closer look shows that big problems remain
Barnaby Towns

Seasoned observers of London politics weren’t surprised when Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch rolled up at Westminster Council’s 20-storey, 1960s, Victoria Street headquarters on the day after May’s London local elections, declaring “the Conservatives are coming back”.

The prestigious borough’s Tories had won nine seats from Labour, enabling them to recapture the 54-seat council, which they held continuously from its very first elections in 1964 until losing control to Labour in 2022.

Regaining this council as a Tory flagship while also keeping hold of Bexley, Bromley, Harrow, Hillingdon and Kensington & Chelsea, increased the number of Tory-controlled boroughs from five out of 32 to six. They have also formed minority administrations in Enfield and Wandsworth and retained the mayoralty of Croydon. However, a closer look at the results contradicts first impressions of Tory progress.

In Westminster, the Conservative vote share actually fell to 35.1 per cent, down 3.5 per cent from 2022. The swing to the Tories across the borough resulted from Labour’s vote share falling more steeply – to 30.2 per cent, a 16.1 per cent decrease. This pattern was repeated across London, with the overall Tory vote share falling in 30 of the 32 boroughs.

Citywide, Labour won 25.6 per cent of the popular vote (down by 16.9 per cent from 2022), followed by the Greens on 22.3 per cent (up by 10.5 per cent), the Conservatives on 20 per cent (down 4.8), Reform on 13.0 per cent (up 12.8) and the Liberal Democrats on 12.4 per cent (down 1.9).

That Tory share was its lowest in all 17 sets of full London borough council elections ever held. It was also smaller than every vote share won by the Conservatives in the Greater London administrative area – formally created in April 1965 – in the 16 general elections held since that year.

It was smaller, too, than the Tories achieved in all six elections to the Greater London Council (GLC), held between 1964 and 1981, and all seven subsequent Greater London Authority elections for a Mayor and members of the London Assembly (four-yearly since 2000).

May 2026 was the first time the Tories had finished in third place as a whole in the capital in any of those nearly 50 election events of various kinds. Notably, the Tory vote share fell compared with May 2022 despite those elections being held at the height of the “partygate” scandal, just 66 days before Boris Johnson’s resignation as Prime Minister.

The party’s London council seat total rose by only six – from 403 to 409 out of 1,817, once a delayed ward contest in Hillingdon had taken place. This statistically insignificant increase, from 22.2 per cent of all London councillors to 22.4 per cent, falls well short of outcomes in previous periods of Tory national opposition, when the party has made significant gains in local and regional elections and gone on to recover nationally.

In 1968, 1,438 of the 1,863 London borough councillors elected were Conservatives. That was 77.2 per cent of the total, as the party chalked up 60.1 per cent of the popular vote. In that landslide year, Tories won control of 28 of the 32 boroughs, putting them in charge of Town Halls as unlikely as those of Camden, Hackney, Islington, Lambeth and Lewisham. The party’s runaway success in London foreshadowed 1970’s general election victory under Edward Heath, which saw Tories win 49 of London’s 102 parliamentary constituencies of that time.

In 1978, the Tories had another good year, winning nearly half of all the votes cast (48.7 per cent), 960 of the 1,908 London seats (50.3 per cent) and control of over half the boroughs (17 out of 32). Again these successes set the stage for a national victory. The Tories won the following year’s general election, their first under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, helped by prevailing in 50 of Greater London’s 92 parliamentary constituencies (54.3 per cent).

In 2006, London again saw a Tory recovery of sorts as the party attracted just over one third of the London vote (34.9 per cent) and got 785 councillors elected out of 1,861 (42.2 per cent). This was enough for them to take control of nearly half of the boroughs – 14 out of 32. In the subsequent general election of 2010 – held on the same day as the next set of borough contests – Tories won 28 of London’s 73 seats, 38.4 per cent of the total. This was a weaker comeback than in 1968 or 1978, but it contributed to the party being in a position to oust Labour and lead the coalition government formed with the Liberal Democrats.

The Tories’ performance in London’s boroughs in 2026 not only falls far short of strong showings in comparable periods in the past that have signalled wider Tory recoveries, but also suffers by comparison with previous elections held during Tory wilderness years.

In 1998, one year after Labour’s landslide first general election win under Tony Blair, the Tories, by then led by William Hague, and still seriously underwater in national polling, won 32 per cent of the London borough vote –12 percentage points higher than in 2026 – and 538 councillors out of 1,917, or 28 per cent of the total. That’s rather more than this year’s 409 or 22.4 per cent. It was followed by the Tories winning only 13 out of 74 London parliamentary seats (17.6 per cent) in 2001. This suggests that the 2026 borough results are not exactly a great omen for the next general election.

A deeper dive reveals that the party is now a significant force in less than half of London’s 32 boroughs, finishing first or second in vote share terms in just 14 of them. In seven boroughs, they returned only between one and five councillors and in 10 the Tories won no seats at all, which was even worse than their seven zeroes in 2022. On average, London boroughs have 57 seats up for grabs.

Tory-free zones now include outer London boroughs as varied as affluent Richmond in the south west, which is now completely dominated by the Lib Dems, Havering, which borders Essex and is now controlled by Reform UK, and the poor and strongly Labour Barking & Dagenham. These can be added to the inner or “middle London” boroughs of Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham and Southwark, where the Tories have long struggled.

May 2026 also saw no sign of a Tory recovery in the five boroughs with directly elected Mayors. Precise comparisons with 2022 aren’t possible, because in that year the Supplementary Vote (SV) system was used and in 2026 those contests were determined by First Past The Post (FPTP). Nonetheless, a comparison between 2022’s first preference votes under SV and this year’s FPTP outcomes points to the Tory vote share falling in all five London borough mayoral contests.

The party’s candidate narrowly retained the Croydon mayoralty with a 30.7 per cent of the vote, but that was 4.1 percent less than 2022’s first preferences. Their next best mayoral result was coming third in Hackney with 8.4 per cent (5.2 per cent less) and their candidates in Newham, Lewisham and Tower Hamlets all finished fifth, with 7.6 percent (down four per cent), 5.3 per cent (down 3.8 per cent) and  4.1 per cent (down one per cent) respectively.

Alongside the Tories’ decline in London’s boroughs, the party has fewer MPs in Greater London area than ever before. A defection to Reform has brought the number down from just nine at the last general election to only eight out of 75, or 10.6 per cent. The party’s number of London Assembly members is also at a record low. It currently holds only seven of the 25 Assembly seats, a number again depleted by one due to a defection to Reform. Of those remaining, five owe their positions to the proportional representation part of the Assembly elections and only two represent constituencies.

Plainly, the Tories have their work cut out if they are to become a citywide political force again. On current form, there is a real risk of them finishing third in the May 2028 mayoral election, behind Labour and the Greens, having finished first or second in all the previous ones. However, that contest also represents the next opportunity for a Tory comeback.

For three successive elections the party has chosen intellectually limited candidates with views that lie outside the London mainstream and lacking the experience required for running a £22.7 billion-budget organisation like the Greater London Authority. Party members unrepresentative of London voters have chosen from among candidates drawn from the dwindling band of London Tories at Westminster and in local government.

Failure at the ballot box has been then rewarded with a seat in the House of Lords or, in the case of Susan Hall – who achieved a swing against the Tories in favour of two-term Labour incumbent Sir Sadiq Khan – leadership of the Tory London Assembly group.

Breaking the Tories’ losing London streak requires addressing candidate quality for the next mayoral election in two years’ time. A mandatory “experience floor” should be introduced, requiring candidates to have completed a four-year term as a London borough council leader (or Mayor) or being able to demonstrate similar large organisation executive experience. For the future, the party could support introducing directly-elected mayors in every London borough, increasing the potential mayoral candidate talent pool long-term.

The Tories nationally should also allow their London mayoral candidate to differ from national policy so as to more closely align with London’s interests, opinions and political culture. Sixty per cent of Londoners voted to remain in the European Union at the referendum 10 years ago, and recent YouGov polling found that 66 per cent of Londoners want to rejoin versus 28 per cent who wish to stay out, Despite this, the Tories have reliably selected hardline leavers as mayoral candidates in the past.

A mayoral candidate interested in attracting votes beyond the core minority could support the forthcoming Youth Experience Scheme, which will allow young Londoners the right to work, volunteer and study in the EU27 on a time-limited basis, something the national party opposes.

Rebranding the Tories for London also entails focusing on issues that matter most to Londoners. Ipsos polling finds that housing affordability is Londoners’ top concern, yet the party’s only pledge on this issue – stamp duty abolition – would primarily benefit the home-owning minority.

For the renter majority, the party positions itself as the landlords’ friend, opposing the Renters’ Rights Act and thereby defending London’s despised high-priced, low-quality rental market. By championing mayoral development corporations – a model anticipated by the Tories’ 1980s initiative in Docklands – the party could commit to unlocking development of the near one-million new homes London needs on brownfield and “golf belt” land and at transport hubs.

There are also opportunities to develop policy where the Tories could own the issue, as they did when pioneering council home sales in the 1970s under the GLC. According to the Tories’ own polling, nearly half of Londoners – more than double May’s Tory vote share – back banning Tube strikes in return for compulsory binding arbitration. That would be a policy the union-backed Labour and the union-friendly Greens couldn’t match.

If the Tories in London are to recover from their record low, third party status, it will take more than their leader declaring victory in the midst of defeat.

Barnaby Towns was a campaign strategist for Steve Norris when he was the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London in 2000 and 2004.

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. Thanks.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Conservatives, housing, Kemi Badenoch

Dave Hill: Wanted – A London MP to battle Burnham

The would-be PM's attitude to the capital needs flushing out. Plus Palantir's Hackney connection, a lost wallet in Brixton and much more
Dave Hill

Below is the start of the lead piece from the latest edition of the On London Extra newsletter, published on Substack. It links to the rest at the end. Sales of On London Extra finance the whole of this website. A free trial is available.

***

Media coverage of Andy Burnham has soared to new peaks of absurdity, with every inch of yesterday’s journey by the Northern Messiah to Bad and Horrid London documented in worshipful detail. Oh look, he’s wearing a Man of the People T-shirt! Oh look, he’s done a selfie with a horde of adoring Labour MPs!

Today, the focus is on who might dare prevent Burnham’s elevation to the highest office in the land being secured by means of a doting Labour coronation. Will anyone put his ideas for running the UK to a proper test? Surely, one of London’s 59 Labour MPs should.

Read the full piece on Substack.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Andy Burnham, Labour, Palantir