By a Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP member

Barely one in five of the London borough of Hackney’s electorate turned out for a special election on 9th November for the post of executive mayor, first established in 2002. Six candidates contested the £87,000 a year post, which Labour councillor Caroline Woodley is now set to occupy until May 2026.

Woodley becomes the third person – and first woman – elected as the borough’s senior politician since a referendum created the position in 2002. Her share of the vote fell below 50% (49.5%), marking Labour’s lowest tally in proportional terms since Jules Pipe secured re-election in 2006 with just under 47%. The result marked a fall of more than nine percentage points from previous mayor Phil Glanville’s score in May last year. The election also saw a significant rise in the Green Party’s vote share from 2022 with Zoe Garbett capturing 24.5% of this month’s poll, compared to 17% a year and a half ago. While the Tories came a distant third, their percentage surprisingly saw a very modest increase compared to 2022.

Uncomfortable Questions

At one level, of course, Labour’s victory still looks decisive and Woodley, widely viewed as being on the Party’s “soft left” prior to the campaign, will enjoy an overwhelming – 49 to seven – majority on the council (with a possible 50^th Labour seat, depending on the outcome of a by-election to fill the vacancy for her own seat in Cazenove ward). Nonetheless, both the result and the election campaign pose several uncomfortable questions for the Party.

The background to the election itself proved challenging as it came hard on the heels of the resignation of incumbent mayor Phil Glanville, whose political career came to a juddering halt in September. Glanville found himself caught out in a lie about his contact in May last year with disgraced former councillor Tom Dewey, his one-time housemate. The ex-mayor had suggested publicly that he had neither seen nor spoken to Dewey after learning of Dewey’s arrest and the nature of the allegations then under investigation. By his own account Glanville received this information on 14th May 2022. Only after the publication of a selfie in late August this year did Glanville admit that the same evening, he hosted a small Eurovision with Tom Dewey very much in attendance. In the meantime, Dewey had entered guilty pleas on 18th July to multiple counts relating to pornography depicting extreme acts of child sexual abuse.

The scandal sent shock waves through the two CLPs in Hackney, with Labour’s London regional machine intervening on 14th July in Hackney North & Stoke Newington to strip elected local officers of access to the party’s Organise software, making it impossible to convene any official meetings. Then in early September the same London regional machinery, seizing on the pretext of boundary changes, ousted the previously elected chair, secretary and treasurer from their posts and imposed three Starmer loyalists, two of whom had not been on the existing CLP executive.

Following Glanville’s resignation, which took effect from 22th September, parties moved swiftly to select candidates for the by-election. A selection process, tightly controlled by London Labour officials, allowed a shortlist of two with Woodley pitted against fellow council cabinet member Mete Coban. After two online hustings Woodley emerged the nominee by 36 votes out of more than 600 cast.

No Enthusiasm

Combined with anger over the continued suspension of MP Diane Abbott from the Parliamentary Labour Party, there was already precious little enthusiasm for the by-election among many Labour activists, especially on the left. The five-week campaign witnessed a de facto boycott by much of the Party membership with a heavy reliance on councillors to canvass and leaflet. On election day itself MPs Stella Creasy and Emily Thornberry along with Mayor Sadiq Khan made up the numbers, backed by regional officials.

Woodley refused twice – apparently on instructions from London region – to join hustings organised by the Hackney Cycling Campaign. She gave only one interview to the local media with a Labour press officer in attendance.

These developments fuelled frustration, but far more significant was the campaign’s complete refusal to engage with, much less support, widespread calls to back a ceasefire in Gaza. While seven of the borough’s Labour councillors signed an open letter to Keir Starmer backing a ceasefire prior to the 9th November election and at least four more have done so since, the group’s leadership including Woodley simply ignored a protest of several hundred Palestinian supporters on Wednesday night 1st November, which the Green candidate joined.

The local leadership’s stance may have partly reflected a genuine concern about community relations against the backdrop of a rise in anti-Semitic incidents. Hackney includes one of Europe’s largest Charedi Jewish populations, accounting for 7% of all residents, albeit largely concentrated in three wards, two of which consistently vote Tory. The control freakery of the pro-Starmer regional office is also likely to have played a part, while Woodley’s campaign had also received backing from Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) supporters. The JLM has continued to oppose calls for a Gaza ceasefire.

Perhaps the most shocking sight of the campaign was the return to Hackney of Luke Akehurst, the leader of the Labour to Win hard right on the party’s national executive and the non-Jewish founder of We Believe in Israel, an unabashedly pro-Zionist lobby group. Akehurst posted an image of himself running a committee room on election day in Woodley’s own ward.

Tremor not Quake   

The Hackney result was ultimately a mild tremor rather than a political earthquake. It does, however, illustrate Labour’s increasing vulnerability in long-standing strongholds as the Starmer machine’s contempt for internal democracy and its rightward march erode Labour’s activist base and alienate a significant slice of its electorate.

Finally, an election where nearly 80% of eligible voters abstained raises a fundamental question about the political legitimacy of the executive mayor’s office in Hackney.

Full results from Hackney mayoral by-election: Simon De Deney (Lib Dems) – 1,879; Zoe Garbett (Greens) – 9,075; Peter Smorthit (Independent) – 1,382; Simche Steinberger (Conservative) – 5,039; Annoesjka Valent (Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition) – 1,265; Caroline Woodley (Labour) – 18,474. Total turnout: 20.69%.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Hackney#/media/File:Hackney_UK_locator_map.svg. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0