Some Thoughts for 2026.

This article is published before the results of the Plaistow North by-election are known. If Labour storms through with a substantial victory, we’ll have egg on our collective faces. We suspect that this will not be the case and that the best Labour can hope for is to hold on with a massively reduced share of the vote. In 2022, Labour took 68% of the vote. If we wore hats, we’d offer to eat them in the event that Labour came close to matching that total on the 23rd.

This is one of a series of articles that we will be producing on the reasons behind the current malaise in Newham Labour.

It is axiomatic, that when one party is in power in Westminster, they get punished in council elections.

The chart above shows the numbers of council seats held by the major parties since 2005.

Labour won the 2001 general election and the chart continues the decline in council seats that followed. In 2005 another general election returned Labour to power in Westminster, but their tally of council seats continued to decline, (being matched by that of the Lib-Dems at one point).

In 2010 the Tories won the general election and in the next five years, their numbers began to decline in the Town Halls across the country. Labour, now in opposition saw their numbers begin to climb though largely at the expense of the Lib-Dems, it seems.

By the time of the 2017 and 2019 elections Tory council seats had begun to drop significantly and the Lib-Dems appear to have been the net beneficiaries.

In 2024 there will be a general election. The expectation is that Labour will win a resounding victory.

In 2026 Labour will have been in power for two years, just enough time for disillusion to set in. Then there will be council elections in London.

There is a problem for Newham Labour.

• They will be defending a local record that is looking increasingly unpopular. Even now, when the Labour vote goes up nationally, the vote in Newham goes down.

• They have, for the first time, an organized opposition that actually wants to win.

• The popularity of the Labour Party nationally is likely to be in decline two years after the general election, and whilst this might not cause Labour voters to vote against them, quite a few of those voters might simply stay at home.

• Labour is about to embark on a round of budget cuts; they have spent five years raising taxes and finding new ways to relieve residents of their money; they show no sign of being able to manage the budget nor collect the money that is owed to them; and 

• Most councillors don’t actually realise that there is a crisis.

They are led by a mayor who is increasingly unpopular with both voters and her council colleagues. And one who seems incapable of accepting responsibility for the situation, (“it's everyone else’s fault”).

The Labour Party in Newham has to make some tough decisions. A radical review of both policy and practice in Newham Council is needed. Just what happened to take Newham from being one of the most popular councils in the country, to one of the least popular; from a council with satisfaction ratings in the 80s to ratings in the 20s?

Mayor Fiaz has been accused of spending on vanity projects by her own colleagues. It is indisputable that she is spending money without any idea of what benefits accrue to the people of Newham. Her response to her own financial mismanagement is to cut services.

In 1995 Newham was a council that was largely unpopular with residents but which was regularly returned as Labour, because there was very little real opposition. It bumbled along at the bottom of every national and regional performance indicator. 

By 2018 it was a popular council in the top decile of all those same indicators. There might be a lesson in this.

Newham Labour has two and a half years to get its act together. Labour has shown that it can transform the council and in a way that is popular with the voters. It is unclear whether they have the energy or the inclination to do so again. 

Given Mayor Fiaz’s proclivity for disparaging her predecessor, we suspect that she will be unwilling (and probably unable) to make the changes necessary. 

Thus, it may be that Labour needs to think about a change of leadership, and sooner rather than later if they wish to avoid humiliation in 2026.