A pleasing thing about the London Borough of Southwark is that it stretches all the way from the south side of Tower Bridge to the faraway north side of Crystal Palace Park. Its 6.5 mile length covers everything from regenerated, ex-industrial central London enclaves, to working-class inner city neighbourhoods, to village suburbia.
I didn’t walk the full distance when I went there on Saturday afternoon – my legs got tired and, anyway, it started raining – but I went as far as Rye Lane in Peckham before taking the Overground home. En route, I visited other places of personal interest and reflected on the many layers of London history Southwark contains.
Part of that history is Labour Party history. From 1980 until the mid-1990s it had its headquarters there in a building on Walworth Road that became named John Smith House in memory of the party’s late leader. The borough has been Labour-run ever since it was created apart from two four-year terms early this century when it came under No Overall Control and the Liberal Democrats formed minority administrations.
In 2010, Labour regained command and have maintained it ever since, winning 52 out of 63 seats in 2022 and leaving the Libs Dems with just 11. But the latter still enjoy significant support in the borough, and in 2026 the wider stage is set for perhaps the biggest political upheaval Southwark has ever known. Here are the concluding words of the Southwark section of my and Lewis Baston’s London Decides borough elections guide:
“Having a decent-sized group on the council already is advantageous for the Lib Dems, but they may find progress confined to the north of the borough. If Labour can hold steady in the centre – Peckham, Camberwell and Walworth – and lose only Nunhead & Queen’s Road, the party will have 26 seats and need only a further six from Dulwich and the north to retain a majority. Notwithstanding the challenge of the Greens, such a final result seems possible. But there are a lot of “ifs” in there.”
There really are. The Lib Dems are strongest in the north of borough. The seats they presently hold are clustered at Southwark’s long Thames waterfront, in wards in Bankside, Bermondsey and Borough. Wandering through these neighbourhoods, the signs of rapid development and accompanying social change were evident in the shops, bars and cafés where thirtysomething young professionals communed and grazed.
Along with modern and done-up housing, these neighbourhoods are dotted with ancient churches, pleasant parks and social housing, of which Southwark has a great deal. Labour too has seats in these parts, and the Greens got significant portions of support in several in 2022. A ward to watch might be Chaucer – solidly Labour since 2014, it could be a three-way battle this time. Again, consult the guide.
Meandering south, I soon entered core Labour country and wards where the party racked up vote shares of around 60 per cent four years ago. The Greens were distant runners-up, the Lib Dems not far behind. Which way will voters disillusioned with Labour turn and in what numbers?
The transformation of Elephant and Castle continues. Much has changed in recent times, most notably the demolition of the huge Heygate estate followed more recently by the destruction of the 1960s shopping centre, an architectural eyesore for some, an antiheroic icon for others, in part because others rubbished it.
At the rear of the station, a cluster of Latin American shops and cafés were still in business (main photo), belying dire predictions that regeneration would extinguish them. I bought a tasty arepa and ate it in Elephant Park, opened in 2021, which was alive with picnickers and and sunbathers.
Then it was on to Walworth Road, past the refurbished Walworth Town Hall, the enticing East Street market and the monumental Red Lion pub, before, on a whim, I turned right down John Ruskin Street. Quite a guy, that Ruskin, born in Brunswick Square and raised in Herne Hill. Then I turned left on to Camberwell New Road, where stands the Golden Goose theatre pub, and thence to Camberwell itself.
From there, Peckham Road leads you to where it says it will. At the junction of Peckham High Street and Rye Lane I took shelter beneath the Peckham Arch as a Christian preacher held forth across the way, undeterred by the sudden shower.
Back at Walworth, I had feigned interest in a poster on a wall in order to eavesdrop on three people, a woman and two men, discussing the pace and style of local change. The woman declared: “I’ve lived in Peckham for 20 years, and it is nothing like Brixton. In Brixton, they’ve got everything now, the nightlife too. But Peckham. No. Peckham is so dry.”
She knows better than I, although, as a visitor, I find much to interest me in Rye Lane – perhaps the very things that she derides. Its look and feel seem little different from when I first spent serious time there there, taking part in a Future of London field trip. A local man upbraided the group at the site of the then still new Peckham library, telling us we knew nothing because we all were middle-class.
I later joked that it had taken longer than usual on an inner London retail street to spot a café boasting that its bread was sourdough, but that I’d found one in the end. My assumption was that more would soon follow. Yet more than ten years later, the lane is much as I recall it, as it has been on subsequent visits.
it, as it has been on subsequent short visits. Plans for enhancements around Peckham Rye station are underway, though it is ten years since planning consent was secured.
The usual suspects warned that the charming Rye Lane movie, released in 2023, would unleash ruinous gentrification – the sort of thing the local woman I had earlier overhead appeared to crave – but its shops still speak of low incomes and hard lives. More from the Southwark section of London Decides:
“Peckham is part of a belt of exceptionally strong Labour territory stretching across south London between Brixton and Lewisham. Its Labour loyalties have rested on what have been secure foundations of social tenants, black voters and a sprinkling of precarious young graduate professionals in private rented flats.”
Mind you, the Rye Lane ward is, as a whole, less badly off than some. A by-election there on general election day saw the Greens come second to Labour with an impressive 32 per cent of the vote in what is Peckham’s whitest ward. They will be daring to dream of making inroads in all those in Peckham and Camberwell.
That was the end of my walking tour of Southwark, but there is plenty to say about the parts of it I didn’t reach, its southernmost and poshest. There are 13 council seats to be filled in and around prosperous, higher-educated Dulwich. The Conservatives used to be strong here, but the two seats they won in Dulwich Village way back in 2014 were the beginning of the end of their representation on the council, so steep has been London Tories’ decline.
In 2022, Labour won everything, with the Greens in clear second places in four wards, including Champion Hill, which is represent by council leader Sarah King. The Lib Dems were runners-up in one, and one tenth of a point separated the two challenger parties in another, Goose Green, where James McAsh, probably the most senior figure in London to defect from Labour to the Greens, will defend his seat under his new colours.
King became leader last summer after her predecessor resigned. McAsh had thought he’d won the contest for the succession, only for the close outcome to be declared void because invalid votes were cast. McAsh was just the last of Labour 2022 intake to cross the floor. In all, seven have left the group, four to join the Greens and three to sit as Independents
To what extent will their disenchantment be replicated by the voters of Southwark? Lib Dem group leader Victor Chamberlain set out his stall for me in a True London podcast, emphasising his party’s historical strength in Southwark, its focus on the local and making promises on affordable housing supply, addressing crime and antisocial behaviour and more. He think the Lib Dems could end up being the largest party and perhaps doing better still.
Southwark Labour’s manifesto, which you can read here, foregrounds similar themes. The Greens’ promises are here. How many seats will Labour lose? And to whom?
Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky and at LinkedIn. Dave and elections expert Lewis Baston have compiled the definitive guide to the 2026 borough elections in partnership with public affairs specialist Lowick Hedry. Read it here.
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