What can the Plaistow South results tell us about current political trends?
Firstly, Newham Independents are riding high. Their victory in Plaistow South, where they totally humiliated Labour should set the alarm bells ringing for Labour.
But there are some caveats. This was a byelection, (and although the turnout was low, it was only 5% points below the 2022 election turnout).
By-elections are typically the place where the electorate show their displeasure at unpopular incumbents, and as we have noted elsewhere, Labour are unpopular both locally and nationally.
The Newham Independent vote is predominately Muslim and South Asian. In areas where a high percentage of south Asian voters can be mobilised, the Independents do well. We saw something similar post 2003 when George Galloway’s Respect Party made a creditable showing (taking 23% of the vote) and secured the Green St West ward with 40% of the vote.
Respect capitalised on Iraq; the Independents have capitalised on Gaza. The 2003 effect wore off. It is unclear whether the Gaza effect will also wear off. One notable difference is that the Corbyn (and Sultana?) party now have a handful of South Asian MPs forming a communitarian block, unlike Galloway who always seemed to use Respect as a vehicle for personal self-promotion.
We might be in the early days of the Balkanisation of British politics clearly accelerated by demographic changes (over 40% of the Newham population was born outside of Europe).
Currently about 30% of the population identify as white, (this includes those from other parts of Europe. The population that identifies as white British is closer to 13%.
This chart (from the 2021census data) shows this by age, illustrating that the white population is growing older and smaller, and the Asian population is growing younger and larger.
So, if we are seeing South Asians voting en masse for communitarian parties (it’s very unlikely to be 100%), we can expect Newham Independents to grow. Labour’s vote appears to have either switched to the Independents or stayed at home.
The Conservative vote has collapsed as markedly as Labour’s. In 2018 their candidates polled between 500-600 votes. This dropped in 2022 to between 300-400. In the 2025 byelection they took 123 votes. Reform took 349, effectively hoovering up two thirds of the Conservative vote, with little more than 100 votes separating their candidate from Labour.
We make an assertion, but feel confident in it, that most of the Reform votes came from people voting on the basis of identity, in this case, white and British. We note that Reform are reported to have done very well in the number of postal votes they obtained, which is suggestive of popularity amongst an older population, (see graphic above). And nationally, Reform are way ahead of Labour in the polls.
Not much to say about the Greens and Lib-Dems. Neither seemed to have their heart in the competition and it looks very much like they put up a candidate simply for the sake of putting up a candidate. Gone are the days when Liberals campaigned over years focusing on ward issues and building credibility with the electorate.
Undeniably, Newham Independents are the big winners. Labour must be smarting. The Tories didn’t fare any better, but they have pretty much given up on Newham anyway. The other group who will be quietly pleased will be Reform. Without much of a campaign and with a candidate with no name recognition they stole most of the Tory vote. If they were to put sustained effort into several wards in the south of the borough, they may yet cause something of a stir.
It is not impossible that the new council might have a light blue streak in the south, a Green streak in the north and north-west and a black/yellow-independent mass in the centre and north-east. Labour’s red would probably be the largest group, and possibly a majority across the rest of the borough, but it would be a very different council.
Messers Mirza and Farage should be thanking Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz for her help in breaking up the Labour monopoly in Newham. She has done in two terms what the Tories failed to do over decades.
An interesting footnote. In the past we have noted how ideology seems less important than identity and access for a number of Muslim candidates. For instance we reflected upon the career of well-known former local councillor, Abdul Karim Sheikh BEM. He began as an independent, joined Labour, then Respect, then the Tories.
We noted in our research for this article that in 2018 a certain Nazrul Islam stood for the Tories in 2018. Was this the same Nazrul Islam as the one who stood for the Independents in 2025, we wondered?
And lo and behold,
