The Runners and Riders Have Been Announced

The candidates have been announced and there is plenty of choice before the electors this May.

We have covered the mayoral candidates previously so won’t dwell on them here. Suffice to say that there are now eight candidates, with Laura Willoughby for the Lib-Dems, the Christian People’s Alliance represented by Bhareth Swamy and the perennial candidate, Kamran Malik trying yet again under the Communities United banner.

What is more interesting is the spread of candidates for council, and the interesting strategies that some parties have adopted.

If size matters, then the Conservatives, the Greens, Labour and Newham Independents are off to a good start with the four parties contesting every seat.

Reform are contesting 24 wards, but often only fielding a single candidate. Likewise the Lib-Dems who are contesting 18. The CPA are challenging in nine wards. Independent independents are challenging in six wards and TUSC, The Workers Party and Kamran Malik’s Communities United Party all contesting a single ward. 

Now we try to read the tea leaves. It appears that Newham Independents have sought to establish themselves as the dominant local party. Publicly they may be asserting that they are fighting for every seat, but the demographics make that unlikely.

Early reports were that Labour was struggling to stand a full slate of candidates, but if that was a problem, it is a problem they have overcome.

The Greens’ strategy seems to be to establish a presence rather than win. Feedback from those on the ground suggests that they are concentrating their efforts on the more affluent areas of the borough, in the north and the new developments in the south of the borough. They may well pick up support from the middle classes disenchanted with Labour.

The Tories are fielding a full slate, but without any expectation of winning a seat. We struggle to remember the last time a Tory won a seat in a Newham election, as opposed to acquiring a seat by a defection from Labour.

There is some geographical clustering in the wards that are being contested by the CPA, tending to be in the south and south west. That cannot be said for Reform and the Lib-Dems who seem to have taken a scatter gun approach to the seats that they are contesting.

The only prediction that we feel confident in making at the moment is that the new council will look radically different from the current one. We suspect that the time of one-party rule in the borough is coming to an end. We could well see Labour and Newham Independents vying for the place as the largest party with a healthy contingent of Greens and Reform snapping at their heels. This will make for more exciting council meetings, though not necessarily more productive ones.