What Caused a 43% Swing Against Labour in Plaistow North?

Drawing up trends on the basis of three by-elections is clearly a dangerous exercise. However, there is clearly a substantial dissatisfaction with Newham Labour and this is being shown in the polls. Votes are going away from Newham Labour at a time when nationally the Labour Party is experiencing a swelling in its popularity.

Labour is clearly experiencing problems over Gaza, and we will look at that specifically.

Taking the byelections chronologically:

In Wallend the results were as follows,

This was pre-Gaza and there was no independent candidate standing. Nonetheless, there was a swing of 5.5%, Labour to Conservative, when nationally Labour was 15-20 points ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls.

On the same day, when there was an independent candidate standing the swing in Boleyn was 36.3%.

The difference was that in Boleyn there was an independent candidate who ran a very energetic campaign, and who, unlike most opposition candidates in Newham, wanted to win. He ran on purely local issues. These were repeated by Sophia Naqvi shortly after, in Plaistow North and resonated with voters.

Mehmood Mirza came from zero to take over 42% of the vote, ten points ahead of Labour. He picked up almost two Labour votes for every Tory vote he collected. And this was entirely on the back of the voters’ dissatisfaction with Mayor Fiaz and the current administration.

We suspected that Mirza had done a lot of work in the mosques, generating support for a communitarian vote. We still think that this is correct, but it is support built upon dissatisfaction with Labour locally.

His active campaigning convinced sufficient voters that there was a realistic chance of a non-Labour candidate winning. When the Tories were the main opposition, it was always unlikely that they would succeed in building a critical mass. A campaign based on cleaning the streets and excessive charges for motorists had a much greater chance of generating a wider appeal. And whilst Mirza had a history and was well known in Labour Party circles, he carried no baggage with the wider electorate.

This was a campaign model he was later to repeat in Plaistow, supporting Sophia Naqvi. And then there was October 7th and the Israeli response. This was an issue that was targeted at a single community, and Mirza showed the shape the campaign would take in his first leaflet.

He mixed Gaza and local issues and it had a resonance with the electorate. Sophia Naqvi trounced the Labour candidate taking 46% of the vote to labour’s 27%. If we count the vote that went to the ‘other’ Muslim independent candidate, the percentage for Muslim independents jumps up to 48.3%.

Labour, or at least its local mayor will seek to spin the Plaistow vote as a loss to Gaza. It wasn’t our fault it was the national party.

There is no doubt Gaza played a role, but how much?

Swing:

The key election is Boleyn in July, it gives us a pre-Gaza baseline. As we noted, we suspect that the appeal of the independent group will be in the north east of the borough and that they are unlikely to appeal to voters in every community and every ward. However, in July Mirza took 42.5% of the vote. In November Naqvi took 46% of the vote, (to Labour’s 32% and 27% respectively).

Gaza clearly had a massive emotional impact on (parts of) the Muslim community in Plaistow North, but this resulted in a difference in actual votes of less than 5% between Mirza in Boleyn and Naqvi in Plaistow. This suggests that the malaise is not with Labour, but with Labour in Newham.

This is reflected in the findings of a poll by Labour First. Muslim voters put Gaza as fourth most important, behind the NHS, the economy and the cost of living, and only just above housing as the most important issues informing their voting intentions. Two-thirds confirmed their intention to vote Labour even while the Gaza conflict continued.

There is clearly a swing against Labour in Newham, when there is a swing to Labour nationally and this is felt strongest when there is a candidate that has the ability to unify both disgruntled Labour voters and voters of other parties, who will vote for change in preference to voting for a party, when offered a realistic choice.

If Labour wishes to avoid an embarrassment in 2026, it must sort out its disastrous management of the council budget and begin to win back the trust of the voters.

The question for Labour councillors is can they do this with Mayor Fiaz in charge? Does she know how? Does she want to?

Blaming the result on the Gaza effect or on ‘events’ beyond their control might go down well with the comrades; it will absolve them of blame and put the responsibility on the national party. It will not help them to resolve their underlying problems. If this is the approach they take, reminiscent of a large flightless bird, they might as well give up on certain seats now.

Declining services and £40m worth of cuts on the horizon suggest that the next few years are going to be difficult for the council and difficult for Labour. There is no plan to turn the situation around.

How long can Fiaz remain in charge before the rumblings amongst Labour councillors turn into an open rebellion?