What are the Long-Term Voting Trends? Is Newham Changing?
For the first time since the introduction of the mayoralty, the mayor has polled a smaller percentage of the vote than have the Labour council candidates.
Additionally, Newham had the second lowest turnout of any borough in London, which suggests a degree of disillusionment on the part of the voters.
Incumbent Labour mayor Rokhsana Fiaz has again taken top spot, with a total of 35,696 votes.
This was some way ahead of second-placed Conservative candidate Attic Rahman, who came away with 7,390, and third-placed Green candidate Rob Callender, with 7,003.
However, it represents a significant drop when compared to 2018, when Ms Fiaz received 53,214 votes. 20,000 Labour votes have evaporated.
Turnout for the mayoral election was 63,487, compared to 72,473 four years' ago, down by some 9,000, so this doesn’t account for the 20,000 that Fiaz has lost.
In percentage terms, this is down from 73.4pc of the vote, to 56.2pc. 38% next time? Unlikely, but the voters have given Labour and Ms Fiaz a warning. On top of this her abrasive personality has created a new cohort of enemies within the Labour Party.
Although Rob Callender came behind Attic Rahman, it was only by 400 votes. Across the borough, the Greens made a strong showing taking second place in a significant tranche of wards and vying with the Tories for second place in the remainder. Of course, they took the two new seats in Stratford Olympic Park. If the Greens are now the second party in Newham, what does that imply for the Lib-Dems? Historically, the Lib-Dems could be relied upon to run regular campaigns; to target seats and work those wards. But not for some years and not in Newham.
In the even that the Lib-Dems decided to make a serious attempt to break onto the council who is it that they would see as their main opponent? Would they be fighting Labour or would they see their main impediment as being the Greens who chase the same general demographic?
Standing a credible candidate, whom nobody had heard of an on the back of no work was a predictable disaster, with Saleyha Ahsan taking fewer votes than Independent, Mehmood Mirza and only just beating TUSC and the CPA.
It is difficult to see what the Tories will do. Nothing probably. That has been their modus operandi for several elections when they raise their heads in a few wards in the weeks immediately prior to the ballot. It does appear to be that they have given up on Newham.
A Muslim Party. This is an interesting case. Next door, in Tower Hamlets, Lutfer Rahman appears to have taken the council and the mayoralty by targeting, not just the Muslim community, but the Bangladeshi Muslim community exclusively. It was an effective strategy. With no website, little traditional campaigning material, no presence on Facebook and minimal presence on Twitter, Rahman managed to win 55% of the vote; to take the council and the mayoralty. There is an interesting take on this from Richard Tice on Talk TV, (starting at 55 seconds).
In Newham the success of exclusive religious parties has been limited. The late Abdul Karim Sheikh failed in his attempts to be elected as a Muslim candidate. Respect garnered somewhat more success in 2006, but the party rose and fell with the fortunes of their leader, one George Galloway and the inevitable internal conflict between conservative Muslims and radical Trotskyites.
Nonetheless, there have been attempts to build communitarian support for Muslim candidates of whatever party. The most bizarre example of this was undoubtably the 2014 election, where some radical Islamist candidates sought office as candidates for the Conservative Party, with the apparent blessing of Andrew Boff MLA. (See more in the publication Roxi and the Tablighis.)
In Tower Hamlets, Rahman and his supporters had originally been members of the Labour Party. In Newham under Robin Wales, the council and the party to a large extent had been anti-communitarian leading to the inevitable accusations of Islamophobia. The party rule changes and the 2015 election of Jeremy Corbyn changed that. Subsequently hundreds, (certainly in excess of 1000) new members came into the Newham party from the Muslim community. These came from the Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian communities with the aim of supporting a Fiaz mayoralty.
It did not take long for Fiaz to fall out with the Pakistani wing and they in the main were the supporters of the ex-Labour Independents arraigned around Mehmood Mirza in 2022 (remember we raised the issue of a party-within-a-party). They based their appeal on three planks; running an efficient council-being genuinely socialist-campaigning on community grievances. Mirza was probably disappointed to take only 8.5% of the vote, with almost 5400 ballots.
Bangladeshis appear to have increased their presence on the council and have done so whilst evicting liberally minded Bangladeshis who were sitting councillors. Quite what this will mean in the future is something we will have to watch.
It is worth noting that the influx of new councillors backing Fiaz in 2018 brought a tranche who were implicated in antisemitism in the 2018-2022 term. We are far from confident that the Labour Council in Newham will do better in this term.
Mirza could reasonably have hoped to pick up community votes, but it seems, they weren’t there. This may be a reason for the strategy that Fiaz has adopted to secure her third term.
TUSC (3.3% of the vote) pops up at every election, quite why they didn’t have a conversation with the ‘Independents’ aligned with Mirza beforehand is anyone’s guess. They both seemed to be going for the same vote.
Ex -CPA councillor and ex-Labour Party member, Simeon Adomelake stood for the CPA and took some 4% of the vote, which is about what we would expect and where the CPA seems to have settled following the defection of former Newham councillor and former national leader of the CPA, Alan Craig to UKIP.
A very useful analysis of the voting in May 2022 is provided by Josephine Grahl, former Chair of West Ham CLP.