Newham Political Earthquake Leaves Labour Clinging To Power
Forhad Hussain - Labour Mayor of Newham
Newham politics has changed forever.
After decades of near-total dominance at the Town Hall, Labour has emerged from the 2026 local elections battered, bloodied and hanging onto power by the narrowest of margins.
In what many seasoned observers are already describing as the most explosive election Newham has ever seen, Labour retained the mayoralty but lost its commanding grip over the council chamber.
Forhad Hussain won the mayoral contest for Labour with 25,538 votes, securing just over 30% of the vote in a fractured eight-way race.
Mehmood Mirza, the sitting councillor for Boleyn ward and leader of the rapidly growing Newham Independents party, came a close second with 20,234 votes an extraordinary result for a party that did not even formally exist at the last full borough election.
Green Party candidate Areeq Chowdhury came third with 18,999 votes, confirming that the borough’s political landscape has fundamentally fractured.
image showing the number of councillors (BBC)
The final council composition now stands at:
- Labour — 26 councillors
- Newham Independents — 24 councillors
- Green Party — 16 councillors
For the first time in modern political memory, Newham Council has entered genuine No Overall Control territory.
Technically, Labour will still form the administration because they retained the directly elected mayoralty. But the reality inside the council chamber is far more complicated.
They no longer command a majority.
And that changes everything.
Across the borough Labour were pressed hard not in isolated pockets, but virtually everywhere. Multiple Labour councillors survived by wafer-thin margins, with some reportedly scraping through by as little as three votes.
Cllr John Morris - x post
What was once considered one of Labour’s safest boroughs in the country has now become one of London’s most politically volatile battlegrounds.
From East Ham to Royal Victoria, from Little Ilford to Wall End, Labour’s vote collapsed under pressure from two insurgent forces moving in very different directions.
The Newham Independents succeeded in consolidating large sections of Muslim and anti-establishment voters, particularly in wards where local grievances and anger over national Labour policy had been simmering for years.
Newham Independents celebrating alongside Your Party leader Jeremy Corbyn MP.
Meanwhile the Greens surged across Stratford, Maryland, Forest Gate and the Royal Docks, capitalising on younger progressive voters increasingly disillusioned with Labour nationally.
Many keen observers of Newham politics will know that this decline did not begin overnight.
The warning signs have been visible for years.
Labour’s dominance under former mayor Rokhsana Fiaz had already started to erode at previous elections and by-elections. In 2018, Fiaz swept to victory with a commanding mandate. By 2022, however, her vote share had already significantly dropped as dissatisfaction inside the borough steadily grew.
The by-election victories secured by the Newham Independents in Boleyn, Plaistow North and Plaistow South over recent years were not isolated incidents. They were early indicators of a structural political shift now fully visible across the borough.
Peter Mandleson and Prime Minister Keir Starmer
National politics also appears to have hit Labour hard.
The Newham result did not happen in isolation.
Across London and other urban authorities, Labour suffered major setbacks amid growing public frustration over the direction of the national government. Labour lost the Hackney and Lewisham mayoralties and also lost control of Waltham Forest outcomes that would have seemed almost unthinkable only a few years ago.
The scale of the collapse in Newham is particularly striking when viewed historically.
In 2022 Labour held 64 council seats.
Tonight they have just 26.
That represents one of the most dramatic electoral collapses seen anywhere in London local government in recent memory.
And yet despite the scale of the losses, Labour still controls the mayoralty, meaning Newham now enters a deeply uncertain political era where executive power and chamber arithmetic are pulling in opposite directions.
The next four years are likely to be turbulent.
Every budget vote, every planning battle, every scrutiny meeting and every controversial policy decision now carries genuine political risk.
Gone are the days of Labour simply waving decisions through unchallenged.
The chamber has become fragmented, unpredictable and politically charged.
Newham voters have not merely elected a different mix of councillors.
They have fundamentally rewritten the borough’s political map.