... here's what happened in my manor (Croydon) in the Elected Mayor stakes:
Yup, at first glance it appears Reform dented the Tories a lot less than the Greens dented Labour.
It was an interesting campaign. The Tory Mayor (whose majority last time was even slimmer) is a solid, worthy and honourable guy, who was dealt a dreadful hand by the outgoing Labour regime that had bankrupted the borough to what I believe to be the deepest degree in the annals of UK local government failures. The least one could say is, he stabilised things: more positively, he made the best of a bad hand, broke some crazy impasses and has made some visible improvements. But he has been subject of a relentless and dishonest sniping campaign (hey, it's politics), not by the official Labour opposition leadership - who publicly paid due regard to the fact it was their predecessors that brought the town low - but by a rather by the young woman councillor who eventually became Labour's (losing) mayoral candidate.
She's a bit of an object lesson. She thoroughly suborned the widely-read local website, Inside Croydon, which started life as a fairly even-handed platform but latterly became her mouthpiece - presumably by her giving it a great deal of her attention including, allegedly (let her sue if she dares), leaking a lot of Council stuff to them. She also ran a fairly adroit social meejah campaign; and put herself about the town bigly wearing bright red coats, to the extent her personal recognition factor was quite astonishingly high for a local politician. She promised all things to all people (naturally) and there were no surprises whatsoever when Labour adopted her as their candidate. Based on all this, very many people - and most certainly Inside Croydon (noticeably reticent this morning, haha) - bruited it about that she'd win easily, in spite of Starmer. After all, the demographics of this "diverse" London borough seem strongly to favour Labour anyway, and we have no history of third parties whatsoever since the last of the "Residents and Ratepayers" candidates were elected more than 40 years ago.
But here we are. How so?
(a) the Tories waged a fairly adroit campaign themselves. (Running as "Local Conservatives" was a good start.) Somehow, on our canvass returns, some bright spark took it upon themselves to classify electors into "anyone but Reform" or "anyone but Labour" - I'm not sure how - and voters got personalised letters accordingly. The "abL" letter was signed by the single most well-known and admired woman in the borough, a long-time Labour stalwart and councillor of 36 years who has for decades been an omnipresent and ultra-personable networker at civic and civic-related occasions, and a tireless, nay saintly, and highly entrepreneurial charity worker. She has long been vocally disgusted at the behaviour of said Labour mayoral candidate-woman, and gave the Tory her glowing endorsement. In a 1,000-vote majority, I'm guessing her backing alone made the 500-voter difference.
(b) as reported earlier, Reform here are, in the immortal words of Father Jack, a shower of bastards, and certainly not sufficiently organised to take a fatal bite out of the Tories. (Farage even cancelled a campaign visit when the infighting made it look to o risky for him.) A better-run Reform effort could have made serious inroads into the vast traditional white working-class estate of New Addington (meriting 5 councillors - that's big) where even the Tories often have success. At the time of writing, we haven't had the councillor results through, so maybe they did; we'll see. But whatever, it wasn't enough to impact the mayoral outcome.
(c) as also written here before (in the context of the 2011 riots) the population of Croydon is quite exceptionally diverse and, unusually, no single ethnic group predominates. If anything, it's black and Tamil, with Hindu and Moslem in the mix: but the latter not in remotely such numbers as make it a Green prospect (there aren't lots of "young unemployed graduates" either) - just enough to take a fair bite out of Labour in a close race. Also, the Tories have long had very decent representation among all these groups (and the Poles) excepting possibly the Moslems - though we did have a very prominent Tory Moslem Deputy Mayor; and the blacks are very split between progressives and deeply, deeply socially conservative (= hostile to LGBTIQX+Y).
So there we have it. A story of just one specific local situation. But it could very well be that local situations will be more of a factor in English politics going forward, than ever before.
More on the overall results when we have them, no doubt.
ND
UPDATE - Croydon remains 'no overall control' - but that's a misnomer in this borough as the executive remains in the hands of the (Tory) elected mayor. Though given that the Commissioners are in, because of the bankruptcy, even he lacks genuine control. Other aspects:
- Minimal impact by Reform is confirmed but they did get 2 of the 5 New Addington seats (see above)
- Kier Starmer's 20-something niece, parachuted in from absolutely nowhere with the ink still wet on her membership card, secured a seat (involving the deselection of a pretty reasonable Labour incumbent councillor and no selection process at all, needless to say)
- Mark Adderley, husband of Nadia Sawalha, is returned as a Green despite being suspended for allegedly antisemitic remarks (and not just a few).
All good Toytown fun.
FINAL UPDATE: here's the map. Geo-explanation (see also above):
- the wedge on the eastern side is the mighty New Addington estate: when I was on the council, donkeys years ago, it was Labour's last and final bastion when the 'Falklands Factor' reduced them to a tiny rump. Since then, Labour have retreated to the northern end of the estate - terraces of '60s houses & flats, 'diverse' occupants. The Tories have worked hard on the trad white / mostly houses / right-to-buy southern end: we finally took it a few years ago but now Reform have taken over. The only surprise is, that's about all they managed.
- The stripy top north-east sector is Crystal Palace and its lower slopes: it's gentrifying fast, with the result you see. Labour being squeezed out accordingly, into ...
- ... the western wilds of 'Fort Neaf' (Thornton Heath) and Norbury, where I grew up. NOT gentrified - yet - but look at Brixton!
- the rest: essentially aspirational of whatever colour or creed; plenty of successful first-generation wealth and easily recruited for the Tory cause, as can be seen from the colouring. The odd LibDem occasionally sneaks in.
In sum: if the Tories can weather the multi-decade 'urbanisation' of the north of the borough while the gentrification spreads west and south from the top corner, there's no reason to give up on being politically competitive here; and the ghastly 8 years 2014-2022 when Labour had total control and bankrupted the place, could seem like an aberration. Demographics, eh?
And something of a lesson with wider application?
