Could Haringey Council, Labour controlled since its inception in 1965 except for a short period in Conservative hands between 1968 and 1971, go Green on 7 May? At first glance it seems unlikely: in the 2022 election Labour won 50 seats, the Liberal Democrats took seven and the Greens, none.
However, predictions so far have varied from a more or less narrow Labour hold to Professor Tony Travers’s view in his forecast for BBC London that it’s “hard to judge which party will be biggest”. With less then three weeks to go until polling day, findings by JL Partners have upped the ante, suggesting the Greens will attract the largest share of the Haringey vote, with 30.4 per cent against 28.2 per cent for Labour.
That doesn’t necessarily translate into the party winning the council, of course, as the company’s founder James Johnson pointed out in an explanatory tweet. It’s an MRP poll, too, extrapolating from a national one rather than being a borough-by-borough survey. Furthermore, the local elections outcome will be determined by seats won, not by borough-wide vote share. But it’s fair to say there’s all to play for in Haringey, as I discovered at the weekend when I joined around 20 Labour activists door-knocking in a ward the party retained in 2022 with some 66 per cent of the vote.
Canvassing can feel like a fairly thankless task: multiple unlabelled door bells, steep steps down to basement flats with no letterbox in sight, not even one of the all-too-common tiny ones that seem designed to not accommodate your “sorry we missed you” cards. Larger blocks often seems impregnable and so many people are either not at home or are unwilling to answer an unexpected knock. And all that’s before the rain starts.
But those who did come to the door were polite, aware the election was happening (not always the case), generally happy to be asked their opinion – plenty of “undecideds” still – and interested in engaging with the local candidate, who will often already be deep in conversation on another doorstep down the road.
Down my street at least, the man who told my fellow canvasser that Labour was “not welcome here after you supported the genocide” was an outlier (and already flagged on the party’s slick campaign app as “against” from a previous canvass). His wasn’t the only mention of the Middle East though. “I’m 50:50, I’m really upset about Gaza,” said another. Younger voters in particular were undoubtedly “Green-curious” – “Labour’s not been great” – although older residents, perhaps predictably perhaps, were much less so: “We’re going with Labour again…we’ve done our reading.”
How to deter those potential defectors? “Keep it local” was the message of the pre-canvass pep talk. The approach was to emphasise, again and again, that these are council elections not a referendum on the government, and to remind voters of the Labour administration’s track record – having one of the largest council housebuilding programmes in the country, for example – the importance of experience and continuity and the risks of an untried alternative.
Perhaps optimistically, my gut sense is that those arguments may be persuasive. Green positions are coming under increasing scrutiny, too. In Haringey, their deal with the Independent Socialist Alliance group, which entails giving way in three Tottenham wards to a slate that includes Socialist Workers Party members, might give some voters pause for thought.
Haringey Labour has been here before though. In 2005, it ceded its 10,000 majority in the Hornsey & Wood Green, a Labour-held since 1992, to the Liberal Democrats. The party itself acknowledged that it “could be attributed directly to Iraq”. The Lib Dems remain a perhaps underestimated force to be reckoned with, not fighting to win control, but squeezing the Labour vote in the west of the borough as the Greens take votes elsewhere, attracting former non-voters too. No Overall Control seems a distinct possibility, with its attendant horse-trading or even trench warfare. “That’s what scares me the most,” said one senior Labour council figure.
Will that prospect scare enough voters? As one experienced campaign veteran told me, it’s currently “very close”. Labour has a formidable campaign armoury and the last “get out the vote” days before the polling stations open will be critical.
Full details of all candidates standing in Haringey are on the council’s website. Learn more from the Haringey section of the comprehensive London Decides guide, written by Lewis Baston and Dave Hill.
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