It’s all getting very nervy. In recent days there have been dire predictions that Labour could lose anywhere between 600 and nearly 750 council seats in elections to the capital’s town halls in May. In east London, desperate times are leading to desperate measures.
Faced by the threat of an Independent winning the Newham mayoralty, the Labour candidate is ditching one of his Labour predecessor’s key policies on car use, parking and air quality. It could bring him into conflict with Sir Sadiq Khan and his net zero agenda at City Hall. Some say it looks as if Labour have decided that only by matching the insurgent candidate’s populist pledges can they avoid failing to win a majority of council seats for the first time since 1968, and the only time in the borough’s existence – and even then it was the biggest party and retained control.
Serious opposition to Labour is something few have known in these parts, but that could all be about to change because of a heady mix of toxic local intra-Labour politics, disillusionment with Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, anger over Gaza and the emergence of a grouping of Independents tapping into people’s local concerns about quality of life and cost of living issues.
What could come to be seen as the moment the tide turned came in July 2023, when Mehmood Mirza, a local lawyer and landlord, defeated Labour in a by-election in the Boleyn ward in East Ham. It may have been a surprise then. But Mirza is now leader of the Newham Independents, a registered political party since June 2024, and their mayoral candidate. He could be just weeks away from moving into Newham’s imposing glass headquarters overlooking the Royal Albert Dock.
Over the last 18 months the Newham Independents’ momentum has continued. They have won two more by-elections – one in Plaistow North in November 2023, the other in Plaistow South last September – and a councillor elected for Labour in 2022 has left and joined their council group, which forms the borough’s official opposition. Four other councillors have also deserted Labour, one to join the Greens, the other three to sit as Independents for their wards (they’ve formed their own, separate, Independents council group).
Add the two Greens elected in 2022, and there are now ten councillors doing their best to make mischief for the current Labour administration. That has not been too difficult. Recently, Newham has appealed for government financial help, hiked Council Tax last year by nearly nine percent, been sharply criticised by the Regulator for Social Housing and received a “best value” notice from government raising concerns about its governance and culture.
The current Labour Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, has been in power since 2018, serving two terms. For several years local party activities have been suspended and the process of choosing the 2026 mayoral candidate was done by Labour headquarters. Fiaz was not re-adopted and Labour instead selected a former Newham councillor, Forhad Hussain, to try to counter the Mirza surge.
Despite the borough’s financial situation, Mirza is promising a Council Tax freeze and “more social housing”. His most controversial policy is to dismantle the borough’s emissions-based parking system, whereby people pay different amounts depending on how polluting their vehicles are. He is promising residents a free parking permit for their first vehicle and two-hours free parking anywhere in the borough.
Labour’s Hussain has vowed to match the free permit pledge and offer one-hour free parking. This puts him directly at odds with the current administration. Local Labour figures say the policy would reduce the incentive to switch to less polluting vehicles and lead to more car journeys, particularly short ones. The Green mayoral candidate Areeq Chowdhury, one of the defectors from Labour, is likely to try to capitalise on this. Visitor parking charges would remain unchanged. Both Mirza and Hussain have been approached for comment.
Simon Munk from the London Cycling Campaign has criticised the permit policy, claiming that it was unlikely to change the votes of many car users but would penalise the 60 percent of residents without a car who would see less money spent on active travel schemes as a result. “It incentivises car use and car ownership. If you can do it free, you will do it more. And then it cuts your budget for spending on the majority of people who don’t have a car.”
Next week (Tuesday March 17), with the elections less than two months away, Fiaz and her cabinet are due to approve a statutory air quality plan for the next five years in a borough where seven percent of deaths are attributed to some degree to pollution – significantly higher than the national average.
The new plan explicitly endorses the decision in 2021 to introduce the emissions-based parking strategy to reduce car ownership overall and encourage drivers to switch to less-polluting vehicles. Newham had seen the biggest drop in registered vehicles across London, a reduction of four percent or 2,860 vehicles, and this helped lead to a significant decrease in levels of the No2 pollutant, the report to cabinet says.
Town hall sources estimate the parking give-away could cost around £20 million over the next four years and some of Hussain’s Labour colleagues are concerned that it will hamper efforts to tackle air quality and climate change. It could also put Newham on a collision course with Mayor Khan, who is already struggling to get close to two key targets – making the capital net zero by 2030 and ensuring 80 percent of journeys in the city are by foot, bike or public transport by 2041.
Seven years ago, Newham became one of the first councils in the country to declare a “climate emergency”, adopting a pledge to be carbon neutral by the end of this decade. This was more than a gesture. Its subsequent strategies have been focused on encouraging more walking, cycling and the use of public transport, reducing waste and ensuring homes, workplaces and schools are energy efficient. Some Labour activists are said to be finding it hard to campaign on Hussain’s new parking policy.
Mirza is also promising to hold a consultation on whether to keep the borough’s existing Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and says he will cancel future ones. Hussain has pledged that there will be “community ballots” on all future schemes.
Not only a feature in Newham, the future of LTNs and safer street schemes is also being weaponised elsewhere in these elections. In Croydon, the Conservative mayor Jason Perry is under fire and in difficulty after the High Court ruled he acted unlawfully by making LTNs permanent primarily in order to raise money. Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman is insisting he will appeal against a ruling that his removal of LTNs was unlawful.
The Newham mix also includes Conservative Terri Bloore and Reform UK. At a press conference last week, Reform leader Nigel Farage unveiled former Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales as his new director of London government and Clive Furness, a close ally of Wales, as the party’s mayoral candidate in Newham.
Wales was de-throned by Fiaz in 2018 – after an internal Labour coup – having been at the helm of the borough for almost a quarter of a century, first as council leader then as its first ever directly elected mayor. He may have left the scene, but his ghost lingers. Politics here is still seen largely through the prism of whether you are or were “pro or anti-Robin”.
The flame has been kept alive by an online news site, Open Newham, often acerbic in style and highly critical of the current Fiaz regime. It was founded by Furness, himself a former Newham Labour councillor, and co-author with Wales of a book critical of the party.
The impact Furness may have on the race is hard to predict, although the strongest early impression was that he will take votes most from Labour and make an Newham Independents victory more likely. Such is the entrenched, dynastic nature of Newham politics that Furness and Hussain know each other well. They were colleagues in the clique which formed Wales’s inner circle a decade ago.
Furness told the press conference that both his Independent and Labour rivals had put forward policies that were similar to those of Wales, but that he would be the only one to control spending and curtail the reckless use of people’s Council Tax.
Where Furness stands on car use and parking was not revealed, although Reform UK are clear they will upend net zero polices wherever they find them. Labour expect Furness to match Mirza’s free permit policy and go further on LTNs by stripping them out without further consultation.
At the Farage event, Wales’s diagnosis of Labour’s current ills was strikingly focused on the national picture, offering little on where Newham or any London council run by Reform might find savings and do things better at a local level.
Both he and Furness revealed a seething preoccupation with the transgender debate, scornful of Labour’s “experimenting on children”. This was taken to be a reference to the controversial clinical trial of so-called puberty blocker drugs involving around 220 children under the age of 16.
It gave a flavour of the kind of issue Reform UK might be happy to discuss on the doorstep, though they may find the people of Newham more interested in their streets and bin collections – and how it looks very much as if they won’t have to pay to park outside their home for much longer.
Tim Donovan is the former political editor of BBC London and now a trustee of Centre for London. Follow him at LinkedIn. Photograph: Forecourt of Stratford station, Newham.
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.