How did the London Labour Mayors Fare?

The Big Story is clearly, that on a vote that saw the Labour Party increase its numbers across the country, in East London, their vote went down. The big loser was John Biggs, former mayor of Tower Hamlets. The big winner was (disgraced former mayor) Lutfer Rahman who has taken the mayoralty and with it, the council. A slate of male Bengali candidates has taken 24 of the council seats, where Rahman’s Aspire Party now holds a majority.

With a 41% turnout, Tower Hamlets had by far the largest turnout in the 2022 election.

Local elections are notorious for small turnouts and in this context, 41% is creditable, though it begs the question as to the rate at which the different communities voted in Tower Hamlets, (raising the question should be enough to set someone off shouting ‘racism’). That 80% of one community may have voted and in another only 20%, does not invalidate the vote, but it is an indicator of the perilous state of community cohesion and identity politics.

In Hackney and Lewisham, some 34% turned out; and the incumbents were returned.

In Newham, a mere 28% turned out and just 56% of these voted for Fiaz; less than the 58% of a larger number voting Damien Egan and less than the 59% voting for Philip Glanville. 

What is most marked is that it is massively less than the 73% of the vote she took in 2018, (53,213 votes in 2018 as opposed to 35,696 votes in 2022), and is the lowest percentage of the mayoral first preferences since 2006. The raw figures hide some worrying trends for Labour in Newham, where the mayor was returned with the actual votes of about 15% of the electorate.