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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.

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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

Richard Brown: How will Burnham treat London? How should London respond to Burnham?

The capital has good grounds for worrying about the 'Prime Minister presumptive' and the city's government must make a strong case for investment and new powers
Richard Brown

Andy Burnham arrives in London like a victorious warlord marching south. How will he treat the capital? Will he plunder its coffers, poison its wells and send chests of treasure north? Or will he pause to think about where the treasure came from and consider how it can be grown?

It’s easy to get carried away with the “King of the North” schtick. But even without it, Londoners may worry about the Prime Minister Presumptive (is that the right constitutional title?) and his views on their city.

Burnham has railed against the “London set” who run the Labour Party (that sinister cabal comprising Keir Starmer and…err…Jeremy Corbyn). He has complained of unbalanced transport funding. Some argue that shifting economic growth away from London is a keystone of his programme.

This may all be politically convenient, particularly when seeing off a challenge from Reform UK in a Manchester suburb, but is it politically or economically sustainable as a programme for government?

Politically, such an approach might have made sense a year or two ago. London could be safely taken for granted electorally as the last Labour “Red Wall” standing, electing Labour MPs in 59 out of its 75 constituencies in 2024. However, following May’s local elections, in which Labour lost 40 per cent of the council seats that they won in 2022 and saw a 17 per cent swing against the party, that wall looks a lot less robust and lot less red. As Business London’s Muniya Barua said last week, “London is now back in play.”

The economics are questionable too. London generates 22 per cent of the UK’s economic output and raises a similar proportion of tax revenues with only 13 per cent of the country’s population. But, while the capital’s productivity (economic output per hour worked) remains nearly 30 per cent higher than the UK’s, it has been slower-growing than average since 2008, and particularly slow growing in London’s traditional economic core (City of London, Westminster and the north of Tower Hamlets), as well as across most of outer London (with the notable exception of Croydon).

This is an issue for the whole of the UK: London tax revenues support public services and public investment across the country, including the transport investment urgently needed in northern England. If London declines economically, the beneficiaries are as likely to be in Singapore as they are in Salford.

Andy Burnham probably knows all this. He will certainly be aware that Manchester is the only major conurbation that has outstripped London’s productivity growth since 2008. There has been much talk of what the secret sauce of “Manchesterism” might be and how its lessons could be applied more widely.

There are the much-vaunted public transport reforms (which Wes Streeting acidly described, in an interview last month, as the “TfL model”). There has also been a focus on attracting new investment, new development and new businesses to the city centre, a process which has been at the heart of Manchester’s revival and boosted by its charismatic Mayor.

Burnham has successfully ridden and amplified the wave of Manchester’s revival (as Ken Livingstone did when he became Mayor of London in 2000). The process began under Manchester City Council’s leader Richard Leese and its chief executive Howard Bernstein 30 or more years ago. Bernstein, who died in 2024, was tireless in deal-making and partnership-building, driven by a sense of place and the ability to work with government to get Manchester what it needed for growth. As the city centre grew, so other boroughs in Greater Manchester began to see the benefits.

There are lessons here for Burnham and for London. Manchester developed a strong vision and lobbied relentlessly for the powers and resources to turn that vision, at least partly, into reality. London’s civic leaders should be ready to make their case – the case for infrastructure investment, the case for control of tax revenues, the case for the resources to address the capital’s persistent problems of poverty, inequality and homelessness. As the politician who has benefitted most from devolution and who put it centre stage in his campaign, Andy Burnham should be receptive to their argument.

But London should also look to its own government structures, and consider whether these work as well as they could in enabling “good growth” in the capital. As Andy Burnham will know, other English city regions have an urban core that is more or less within one local authority; Greater Manchester certainly does. By contrast, London’s Central Activities Zone, which contains London’s and the UK’s economic, civic and cultural core, is spread between ten local authority areas, including the City of London.

While there are great examples of collaboration between these bodies, there are also plenty of areas – from planning and licensing policy, to street cleaning, to regulation of car clubs and bike hire – where central London would benefit from a more unified approach, as discussed in Friday’s OnLondon Extra newsletter.

This could mean new structures, local government re-organisation, or simply more rigorous partnerships and shared service arrangements. In making their case for the powers and resources they need, London’s civic leaders should also show how they will work together to use these to support economic growth in the capital and across the country.

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: Andy Burnham, Central Activities Zone, Muniya Barua

Lewis Baston: Greens scrape home in Lewisham by-election

The party met far more resistance when defending a seat in the middle-class Crofton Park ward than it had when winning it last month
Lewis Baston

One door closes, another opens. Last Thursday, 18 June, the final piece of business of the 2026 borough elections was concluded with the postponed election in Hillingdon West, while in the Lewisham ward of Crofton Park there was the very first by-election of the 2026-30 term of office.

The Crofton Park contest arose because one of the winning candidates on 7 May, the Green Party’s Liam Shrivastava, had also been elected as the executive mayor of Lewisham on the same day. The mayoral election votes were counted first and the result meant Shrivastava was unable to take up an ordinary seat on the council as well.

There are a few by-elections pending because of parties’ (OK, the Green Party’s) incompetence in running candidates who were ineligible. Crofton Park was not one of them and neither is the by-election to be held later this week (25 June) in Dalston where a vacancy has been created by the new Green Mayor of Hackney, Zoë Garbett, being in the same position as Shrivastava.

It is perfectly reasonable for a leading figure in a local party to run for Mayor and seek election as a ward councillor at the same time. It means that, should the candidate’s mayoral bid fail, he or she, who is likely to be an effective local politician, might still help form the council’s opposition group.

This is a good thing for democratic scrutiny, even if it also means that if a candidate wins both the mayoral and their ward seat, they have to resign from the latter, resulting in a by-election that costs the the council money and creates inconvenience for local electors.

Crofton Park is a residential area to the south west of central Lewisham, between Brockley and Catford. It is served by Crofton Park and Honor Oak Park stations, the latter on the Overground’s Windrush line. The name of Crofton Park first appeared in 1881 and the area was previously regarded as being the south side of Brockley, hence the number of roads and local features that bear Brockley’s name.

The development of what is now Crofton Park started in the late 19th Century and continued into the interwar period on a site previously occupied by Brockley Hall, which was demolished in 1931, and towards Honor Oak Park. Most of the housing is terraced. Interwar suburbia starts just to the south. A stretch of the congested South Circular Road marks the ward boundary.

Crofton Park is one of the more settled middle-class wards of Lewisham, which is reflected in its electoral history. It has the highest proportion of mortgage-holding households (38 per cent) and the lowest proportion of social tenants (16 per cent) in Lewisham, and a typically high (58 per cent) proportion of graduates for an inner residential area. Crofton Park had the highest proportion of any Lewisham ward of people who identified as White British in the 2021 Census (49 per cent) and, unusually, that proportion had risen by a couple of percent since 2011 – often a sign of gentrification.

A long time ago “respectable” suburban wards like this used to be capable of voting Conservative, although the last time Crofton Park did so was in 1982. Social change and the changing social bases of the parties made it first a safe Labour seat and then more recently a Labour-Green battleground. It was the Lewisham Greens’ third-best ward in 2006 (25 per cent) and second best in 2022 (33 per cent).

The cluster of wards that includes Crofton Park and the area to its north (Brockley, Ladywell, Telegraph Hill) has long been one of the Greens’ best areas in London. In the context of the 2026 borough elections as a whole, it was no surprise that the party swept all of them. On the 2026 results, Crofton Park was the second-safest Green ward (after Ladywell). It was more of a shock that the Greens did so well in Deptford and Sydenham, which helped power Shrivastava to his mayoral election win.

However, in the by-election, the Greens had an unexpectedly bumpy ride. The first few weeks of their control of Lewisham have been marred by a row over a campaign pledge to cut the mayoral allowance by 20 per cent. It instead increased to £93,795 a year, a rise of 5.4 per cent since the previous mayoral term.

The Greens point out that it is offset by a 20 per cent deduction that will go to local food justice charities, but it is a bad look for an insurgent party to suddenly start arguing about definitions and defending the work of the independent panel that set the allowances. Having made a big issue of this ultimately minor issue before the election, the Lewisham Greens can hardly complain if their local political rivals do not help them put the best construction on the matter.

The Green candidate defending Crofton Park was Esther Lie (pictured) who works for King’s College London on volunteer engagement. She was criticised during the campaign for inappropriate but long-ago (2013) social media posts, for which she made a clear apology. Her Labour opponent was Alex Brooks, vice chair of a local housing charity and former president of the student body of Greenwich University.

Brooks, in the unfamiliar position for a Lewisham Labour candidate of being the challenger, was one of the party’s trio of defeated Crofton Park candidates in May. The local organiser took the opportunity of urging activists to come and support “AB” for the by-election. Candidates stood from the other three of the “big five” parties: Paul Newman for Reform, Richard Elliott for the Liberal Democrats and Caitlin Pugh for the Conservatives. An Independent, Roger Mighton, joined them on the ballot.

The result was a nail-biter, declared only after a recount. The Greens held the seat but with a majority of only 10 votes. Lie polled 1,340 (45 per cent) and Brooks 1,330 (also 45 per cent). The others were far behind. The Verdict was not a victory for this Paul Newman, who came third with 127 votes (four per cent), ahead of the Lib Dem (106 votes), the Conservative (73 votes) and the Independent (10 votes).

The Greens had a majority of around 1,100 in May and the swing back to Labour was over 10 per cent, sufficient if repeated across the borough to build a large majority even if not Labour’s previous monopoly control. Turnout was 27 per cent, down from 51 per cent in May.

One should be beware of reading too much into the Crofton Park result. It might have been a particularly adverse result for the Greens given the local circumstances, but we will have more evidence about that shortly as there are five London by-elections next week, four of them Green vacancies.

It may be that Labour’s organisational strength in Lewisham meant that they were able to turn out more of their vote while the Greens were vulnerable to the drop in engagement and enthusiasm since the main elections in early May. But Crofton Park does suggest that the obituaries for Labour’s dominance of inner London might have been a bit premature.

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: Green Party, Labour, Lewisham Council

Hillingdon: Tories win with ease in delayed ward election

Any hopes Reform may have had of making gains in the postponed two-seat contest were resoundingly dashed
Dave Hill

The Conservatives have consolidated their control of Hillingdon Council with a decisive double victory in the two-seat Hillingdon West ward, a contest that was postponed from its original date of 7 May when the rest of the borough’s and the capital’s local elections took place.

The two seats were successfully defended by their Tory incumbents, who had remained in post until the delayed vote took place yesterday. Their wins confirm their party’s comfortable majority of eleven in the outer west London borough.

The postponement was brought about because one of the original candidates, Reform UK’s Sean Cooling, died after the official campaigning period for 7 May began and before the election could take place.

The re-elected winners, Adam Bennett and Reeta Chamdal, defeated eight rivals, receiving 1,084 and 949 votes respectively. They were followed at a distance by a cluster of candidates from three other parties. Labour’s Tiffany Beales came third with 470 votes, followed by Reform’s Margaret Forrest with 433, Labour’s Imran Razak (362), the Green Party’s Rui Patel (353), Reform’s Justin Anderson (347) and the Greens’ Alicia Windsor (341). The candidate line-up was completed by two Liberal Democrats, both of whom attracted fewer than 100 votes.

Hillingdon West lies just outside Uxbridge town centre in a part of the borough characterised by owner-occupied, interwar Metro-land suburbia. It encompasses Dowding Park, named after Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, who led RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain from an underground control centre there. This is now memorialised by a museum. (Dowding himself is honoured by a statue at the Temple end of the Strand in front of St Clement Danes church, which was badly damaged by bombing during the war).

The postponed election’s outcome completes a story of disappointment for Reform in London, after the far-Right party’s leader, Nigel Farage, said at the turn of the year that it stood a “very real chance” of winning six London boroughs. After the council elections last month, Hillingdon Conservatives nominated Chamdal (pictured), who was first elected to the council in 2022, to be the borough’s civic mayor, a position she duly secured. The choice suggested confidence that Chamdal and Bennett would retain their seats when the Hillingdon West votes came. If so, it has been fully justified.

Hillingdon seemed to offer potential for Reform to make a significant mark on the Tory-run borough, which had been struggling with financial problems and contained a number of hotels where asylum-seekers were living. However, in the end it has won only four Hillingdon seats compared with the Conservatives’ 32 and Labour’s 16. One Green candidate is represented on the council as well. Across the capital, Reform gained control of only one London borough, Havering, and fell well short in all its other targets.

The completion of Hillingdon’s full council elections wraps up a moderately acceptable sets of campaigns for the Tories, who have ended up winning only five more seats than their lowest ever total in 2022 – 409 out of 1,817 compared with 404 – but recaptured Westminster Council and have formed minority administrations in Wandsworth and Enfield, both of which were previously Labour-led. They have majority in control in six of the 32 boroughs altogether and also retained the mayoralty in Croydon.

Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky and at LinkedIn. Photo from Hillingdon 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. Thanks.

Categories: News
Tags: Conservatives, Hillingdon Council, Reform UK