A “Bizarre Letter”. Rebranding the Mayor. A Story of Narrative over Substance

Newham residents will recently have received their council tax bill for 2025-26, together with a covering letter from the mayor.

The contents of the letter have been the subject of some comment on social media. We thought that we’d take a look. Just how, we wondered, does the mayor justify raising council tax by 40% during her time in office, particularly when working residents (according to Statista) have seen increases of 6%in total pay and 2.5% in terms of real pay during the same period?

For some reason, the basic allowance paid to councillors in 2018 was £10,842, by 2024 it had risen to £12,255; an increase of 13%.

The special responsibility allowance (SRA) for cabinet members who were expected to treat the role as a full-time job, was £33, 375. In 2024 it was £38, 430, an increase of 15% for a cabinet of part timers. This came from a mayor who promised to cut back on SRAs. She would, we were told,

But back to the letter from “Rokhs”.

It is apparent that “Rokhs” is trying to create a narrative. “Rokhs”, is apparently a hard working caring person who is “transforming and redesigning the council to better serve our communities and residents”.  (Interesting that she places communitarian interests ahead of residents, and it might be of interest to know why she hasn’t been doinig this important work for the last six years.) She is, we are told, “investing in long term solutions and embedding our values into every decision we make”.

This did not convince every recipient of the letter.

Our suggestion is that now that the mayor has gutted her communications team, she employs the contributor from social media as a copy editor. Clearly, she, or the underling who wrote the letter for her meant to say something like £2.40 per week, (for a Band D property). But that is not what they said.

Their basic incompetence created an entirely unforced error, but for residents merely adds insult to the injury of a 9% council tax hike.

Or as another writer on social media states,

This contributor reflects upon the mayor’s settlement agreement with the council. His assessment of “Rokhs” is not flattering.

Rokhs, our hard working and caring mayor has apparently been spending the last year, “fighting poverty, tackling inequality, championing anti-racism, and putting people at the heart of everything we do”.

There is not much by way of evidence, but there are a few of hints as to what she means in the succeeding paragraph. “We’ve built more genuinely affordable homes, invested in youth services, cleaned up the streets, cracked down on fly tipping, and expanded the 20mph zones…”

Building “genuinely” affordable homes. In short, “Rokhs” has used money supplied by the Conservative government and funneled through the office of Sadiq Khan to build subsidized housing. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a social good. But we’re not sure quite why she should be congratulated for spending money given to her for that purpose by the Tories.

She did indeed invest in more youth services, there was a massive hike amidst much fanfare (£1.4m) when she entered office. We were promised a reduction in youth crime. Following her election, overall crime rates continued the decline that had been trending for over a decade until there were two spikes in 2020 and 2022. Unfortunately, neither Newham nor The Met record “Youth Crime” as a category, which makes any judgment of “Rokhs’” initiatives rather difficult to quantify.

What is evident is that little attempt was made to assess the value of interventions. The number of recent stabbings by young people suggests that they have not yet had the desired effect. And now, having slashed the funding for youth work, they are unlikely ever to have the effect of reducing crime amongst young people. (See here and here)

But “Rokhs” spins a narrative in which she is the saviour of young people, ignoring the fact that she is slashing the budget for youth work at the same time as she promotes her virtue.

Concerning fly tipping and street cleanliness, one has only to follow the posts on X of Cllr Mirza or Open Newham to see that the state of the streets is not improving. There is something reminiscent of the Soviet Union about this sort of self-congratulatory narrative that fails to accord with residents’ “lived experience”.

Could it be that we are seeing Newham’s own version of alternative truths?

The mayor concludes with a reflection on the “unique pressures” that Newham faces. Of course, these “unique pressures” are all somebody else’s fault. Whilst she boasts “the lowest Council Tax in outer London”, she neglects to note that this is because of the legacy of Robin Wales, who despite the same “unique pressures”, managed to freeze council tax for 10 years and balance the books.

We suspect that the reality of another, even greater council tax hike will have more weight with residents than the letter from “Rokhs”.

Worryingly for Newham Labour, one writer on Next Door suggests the following.

“Maybe we need a radical person like Trump for a SHORT period of time to shake up the status quo. Enough surely is enough, how much more are they going to squeeze out of us. Absolute disgrace - just saying as a resident of decades. If you keep voting the same as always and expect a different result you are truly deluded. At next local election think about the consequence of your vote. Don’t follow the herd.”

But we are led to believe that that won’t be “Rokhs’” problem. From what we hear, she has been busying herself looking for a new job. Not with much success so far, and time is getting short if she wants to promote herself as the sitting mayor rather than the deselected Mayor of Newham.