This yr’s native elections principally bypassed London. They befell primarily within the shire counties of England, because the capital took a yr off between the Mayor and Meeting races of 2024 and subsequent yr’s full spherical of borough contests. However two by-elections to fill vacancies on borough councils befell yesterday, one in a single in Redbridge and the opposite in Lambeth. Every supplied a glimpse of various elements of London’s complicated electoral scene.
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Whereas Labour’s luck was out within the Runcorn & Helsby parliamentary by-election, dropping the seat to Reform UK by six votes, a small comfort for the social gathering was that its toast landed buttered-side up within the Redbridge Council ward of Hainault – the Labour line held by a single-vote margin.
Hainault is on the north-east periphery of Larger London, within the north east nook of a north japanese borough. For hundreds of years, the realm was all forest. The lengthy, straight primary New North Street was initially a logging observe. The ward’s exotic-looking identify has nothing to do with the Belgian province of Hainaut, and is a modification of the thirteenth Century identify Hyne Holt, which means a woodland owned by a non secular group.
Within the twentieth Century, builders began to eye up this tract north of the burgeoning suburban city of Ilford, and a department of the Nice Japanese Railway opened in 1903. However lack of passengers brought about that the shut over the interval from 1908 to 1930, and alter probably not take maintain till vital choices had been taken in within the Nineteen Forties: in 1948, the sleepy little railway line to Hainault and Woodford was integrated into London Transport’s Central Line, and improvement accelerated massively with the acquisition by the London County Council (LCC) of a parcel of land within the space, with the intention of constructing a big housing property to accommodate overcrowded and bombed-out Londoners.
Regardless of post-war austerity, building moved forward quickly, and between 1947 and 1953 a Hainault group, like a small New City, was constructed from scratch. The design of the property was low-density, primarily based on household homes that not very totally different from these in-built mid-century, privately-developed suburbia. The road format integrated grassy verges.
It was a practical utopia, a deliberate working-class group with clear air, group services and spacious homes. Hainault was one of many first locations the place the extra prosperous council tenants’ aspirations to dwelling possession had been met, when the Conservative-controlled Larger London Council (GLC) instituted one of many first programmes of council home gross sales there within the early Seventies.
Hainault’s electoral historical past is attention-grabbing and displays broader social and political traits. After the property’s building, it was for many years a formidable Labour stronghold. The ward caught with the social gathering even in its native election nadir in 1968, and within the borough elections of 1971 over 3,000 folks turned out to vote for the Labour slate. Hainault was additionally the inspiration for Labour’s wins within the then-Tory inclined Ilford North constituency in October 1974 and 1997.
However council home gross sales and altering attitudes among the many white working-class introduced the Conservatives into nearer rivalry, and Labour’s dominance led to 2002 when the Conservatives topped the ballot and gained two out of three Hainault seats. And there have been much more shocks to return: the British Nationwide Social gathering (BNP) stood one candidate in 2006 and he got here in first, sharing illustration with two Conservatives.
The Tories ejected the BNP in 2010, nevertheless it was outstanding that, on a normal election turnout, solely round 1,500 voters had been now turning out for Labour. The social gathering regained all three Hainault seats in its first-time Redbridge borough win in 2014, however UKIP, to which one sitting Tory councillor had defected, took a 26 per cent share. The ward has since remained marginal between Labour and the Tories, with straight two-party fights there in 2018 and 2022. However there may be clearly a powerful populist-right custom within the ward.
The 2021 Census confirmed that Hainault has come a great distance from its origins, demonstrating that even deliberate communities evolve. It’s now solely 25 per cent social rented and majority owner-occupied. Additionally, regardless of its popularity as a white space, it has grow to be extra ethnically numerous. In the present day, the white inhabitants stands at 58 per cent and that of Asian heritage accounts for 22.5 per cent, of whom 17 per cent are Muslim.
The by-election arose following the arrest of incumbent Labour councillor Samuel Gould for indecent publicity and his subsequent resignation. He has since acquired a suspended jail sentence. The large 5 events, plus an Unbiased, stood to interchange him. Labour’s defence was within the fingers of Helen Mullis, challenge chief on the Christian Academic Challenge.
She squeaked dwelling with 835 votes (28.8 per cent). The drop in Labour’s share was its second worst in London in 2025 thus far – solely in a earlier Redbridge by-election, in Mayfield ward final month, has it fared worse – and Mullis’s win regardless of this owes a lot to a three-way division in the appropriate wing vote.
In whole, this attracted 64.4 per cent of the votes forged, however was cut up between Conservative Theresa Blohm, Reform UK’s Raj Forhad, who final yr stood in each Ilford South within the normal election and Wanstead Park in a by-election, and, thirdly, Unbiased Glen Haywood. an area civic activist and animal rescuer, who had stood as a part of the Conservative slate in Hainault in Might 2022 however has since left the social gathering.
Haywood’s election pitch was nostalgic and Reform-like, saying he needed to “deliver Hainault again to the nice group and space it was after I first moved right here” 23 years in the past. He painted a grim image of recent Hainault as a crime-ridden, fear-stalked space the place fly-tipping is rampant.
One might speculate about why Haywood, whose marketing campaign was described by native Labour MP Wes Streeting as “sensible and clear”, did higher than Forhad in interesting to right-wing voters in a ward that after elected a BNP councillor. Haywood’s enchantment, as a widely known native, can also have gone past the Proper. He fell one vote quick with 834. Forhad got here third with 611 votes (21.1 per cent) and Blohm, fourth (421 votes, 14.5 per cent). The Greens (125 votes) and the Liberal Democrats (73 votes) had been nowhere.
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Thursday’s different by-election was in Lambeth. Herne Hill & Loughborough Junction is a cumbersome however correct identify for a slice of interior south London that encompasses the areas across the Thameslink stations from which the ward takes its identify. It covers a big land space because of containing numerous railway land plus two huge open areas in Brockwell Park and Ruskin Park.
A much less punctilious Boundary Fee may need referred to as it Brixton East, for it’s certainly to the east of central Brixton, whose personal ward was given the extra poetic and allusive identify of Brixton Windrush. It lies alongside the border with Southwark.
Inside London wards are nearly all the time extra of a patchwork than outer London wards, which regularly, like Hainault, have a dominant character that arises from the circumstances and period through which they had been constructed. Herne Hill is the type of space that will get dubbed “leafy”. It has all the time been fascinating because of its suburban housing and inexperienced parks.
Against this, to its north, Loughborough Junction has traditionally been a scruffier. It was right here, at 144 Coldharbour Lane, {that a} younger John Main lived throughout a interval of poverty. In 1992, he return to movie a celebration election broadcast. The forces of gentrification have colonised the hinterland of Coldharbour Lane, even when the primary street stays a bit rougher. Close to Herne Hill station, the ward additionally features a small part of Railton Street to the west of the railway line. It’s nearly unrecognisable from its early Nineteen Eighties position because the Entrance Line.
The demographics of the ward reveal its blended character. It’s 56 per cent white – which is excessive for the realm and solely two factors lower than Hainault, regardless of the contrasting reputations of Brixton and outer council-built estates – 23 per cent black and eight per cent blended race. These, too, are excessive proportions. Its Asian inhabitants, in the meantime, is under the England common, not to mention London’s.
It’s a youthful space, with a inhabitants bulge between 20 and 40, and extremely educated – 62 per cent to diploma stage. It has a big proportion of individuals with managerial {and professional} jobs (49 per cent in comparison with 32 per cent in England as a complete). It could not be stretching the reality a lot to outline it as a “yuppie” ward. Nevertheless, 31 per cent of households are renting within the social sector, in smaller blocks scattered across the ward and in a bigger property at its northern tip, close to Camberwell. There are 29 per cent in personal renting, together with the uncared for Artwork Deco Dorchester Court docket in Herne Hill.
The by-election arose from the election of long-serving native Labour councillor Jim Dickson because the MP for Dartford – he gained the normal bellwether Kent constituency, which had seemed a really lengthy shot judging by the 2019 outcomes, with a swing of over 17 per cent. Dickson had first been elected within the Herne Hill ward in 1990 and led the council for a interval after 1994.
Candidates to succeed him got here ahead from the 5 primary events and two smaller left-wing ones, the Socialist Social gathering of Nice Britain (SPGB), which was based in 1904 and has its headquarters in Clapham, and the Commerce Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), which was the brainchild of the late RMT chief Bob Crow and is a extra frequent participant in native elections.
Labour’s defence was performed by human rights lawyer Stephen Clark, however the Greens had been all the time going make a powerful problem, even had the nationwide image been much less cloudy for Labour: in 2022, the ward had seen the third highest Inexperienced share in Lambeth (38 per cent), and the Greens had topped the ballot within the predecessor Herne Hill ward in 2018.
The Inexperienced candidate was actor and commerce unionist Paul Valentine (pictured) and the Inexperienced message emphasised – with the assistance of Lib Dem-style bar charts – that the competition was between them and Labour. Marketing campaign points included the native Carnegie Library, housing redevelopment and the warfare in Gaza, in addition to normal London points.
As anticipated, the Greens had been victorious. Valentine was elected with 1,774 votes (47.7 per cent), with Labour on 1,459 (39.2 per cent). It was a transparent although not overwhelming victory in a marginal ward. Labour’s vote share dropped by a comparatively gentle 10.8 share factors in comparison with Might 2022, and the swing from Labour to Inexperienced was 10 per cent slightly than the 18 per cent of three weeks in the past in Haringey St Ann’s. All the opposite events polled poorly.
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The wards featured within the two by-elections symbolize microcosms of a bigger debate in regards to the course of the Labour Social gathering. Is it the social gathering of Hainault – working-class, socially conservative, contested with the Conservatives and Reform? Or is it the social gathering of Herne Hill – middle-class blended with poor, educated, younger {and professional}, to be contested with the Greens (or Lib Dems)?
Within the 2022 borough elections Labour was clearly each of these issues, if by slim margins. On the proof of 2025, it’s neither. Taken collectively, the outcomes are a conundrum. In Hainault, the vote share plunged however the social gathering held on for a flukey victory due to confusion on the appropriate. In Herne Hill & Loughborough Junction, the seat was misplaced regardless of a comparatively small Labour decline. Labour’s council and mayoral hopefuls will take a look at Lambeth and discover the prospect not with out hope. Labour’s nationwide strategists will take a look at Hainault and possibly take false consolation.
Help OnLondon.co.uk and its writers for simply £5 a month or £50 a yr and get issues to your cash that different folks don’t. Particulars HERE. Comply with Lewis Baston on Bluesky. Photograph from Paul Valentine marketing campaign video.
