Referendum, What Referendum?

The London Mayoral Election is coming up and Sadiq Khan is facing competition from a handful of candidates that no-one has ever heard of. If he fails to get an overwhelming mandate, that would be something of an embarrassment.

In Newham, alongside the Mayoral election there will be a referendum on the future of the mayoralty in Newham. This was one of the pledges Mayor Fiaz made in her selection campaign.

We have seen how well she has fulfilled the second part of the promise in terms of better parking for shoppers, residential permits etc. 

On holding the referendum, it seems that she did have to be encouraged more than a little by the members of the Labour Group. And under threat from Democracy Newham who sought a Leader and Cabinet model. But she got her way, when the voters pick up their papers they will be offered the choice of Leader and Committee model or Mayor.

The trouble is that no-one has heard anything about this. The only people concerned about it are activists in the Labour Party. The council has distributed nothing to inform the electorate. The Labour Party has done nothing to argue for the change that they say they want. Yet they expect the voters to decide on an issue that has absorbed Newham Labour and been ignored by everybody else.

Local elections never have large turnouts, we anticipate that the turnout this time will, if anything be smaller than 2016.

Quite how many of those who decide to register a vote in the referendum will be interesting. 

You might think that the Mayor and the Labour Party did not want voters to know about the referendum. Now why might that be?

Stop Press: We see that backbench councillor, John Whitworth has penned a piece for the bottom of page 3 in Newham Voices. It’s hardly going to set the world on fire! (No offence Cllr Whitworth.)

It looks like everything, if there is anything, will go into the few weeks prior to the election day. As we suggest above, neither the Labour Party nor the Mayor seem to have their hearts in this.