After a Labour landslide last time around, the red wall to the south of the Thames could crack under a Green onslaught, with housing the key local issue in what has traditionally been a two-way battleground between Labour and the Conservatives. Lewisham Council offers a window into another world. The borough’s last local elections brought a red landslide, with Labour winning every one of its 54 wards.
Back in 2022 this result was a sign of things to come, as the bitter anti-Tory sentiment here was reflected at large in the general election a few years later. While it was once ahead of the curve, Lewisham’s red wall now feels very uncool. The Green Party is putting this borough at the centre of its threats to make sweeping gains across the capital.
The south London borough has historically been a Tory-Labour battleground, with the Conservatives pinching council control from Starmer’s party between 1968 and 1971. Greens promise rent controls The borough fell into no overall control in 2006, though Labour regained the council in 2010 as the Liberal Democrats eclipsed the Tories to become their opposition. As with many of its targets in the capital, the Greens are making its fight in Lewisham all about housing.
Zack Polanski’s party is trying to woo Labour voters by promising rent controls – taking inspiration from his friend across the Atlantic, Zohran Mamdani, New York’s new mayor. Polanski was joined by his newest MP, Hannah Spencer, earlier this month when he met with Lewisham residents who claimed their housing estates have been abandoned to become “ghettos”. The Greens have already seized four council seats from Labour since 2022, with two defecting from Labour last year.
Gaza a key issue in Lewisham Lewisham will also elect a new borough mayor in May, and the Greens’ leader on the council, Liam Shrivastava, is himself taking cues from Mamdani by attempting to appeal to radical young voters. His campaign website sets Palestinian statehood and the cost of living as equally weighted priorities: “Labour’s complicity with the genocide in Gaza and inaction on the cost of living crisis has let us all down,” he writes. The tie-up between the Israel-Palestine conflict and this local London election doesn’t end there.
Labour’s former mayor here, Damien Egan, was the Labour MP at the centre of a political storm after a Bristol school cancelled his visit due to his involvement with a friends of Israel group. City AM is previewing local election votes taking place in every London borough. Click here for a full overview of May 7.