The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington). You can control which of our emails you receive in your Substack settings.

24 days to go…

FRANK TALKING

YOU may have seen from last week’s Camden New Journal that Sue Vincent has put the cat among the pigeons with a heavy parting shot at Labour, the party she has served as a councillor for in Holborn and Covent Garden for 24 years. She said in a letter to residents in Camden’s most southerly ward that they should vote Green this time – and for candidates living in the ward, referencing the council leader Richard Olszewski’s ward switch from Fortune Green.

It was a coup for the Greens because Ms Vincent has been Labour for so long and was once the deputy leader of the council, even if the current Labour councillors will not have been so surprised that she should say such things. The bit which has caused the most rancour, however, is not the familiar ‘chicken run’ accusation, but a claim that the late Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson had told her that if he was starting out in politics again he’d join the Green Party.

Of course, Mr Dobson died in 2019 and isn’t here to verify the conversation, and this has been a sore point since the letter was circulated. Mr Dobson’s wife, Janet, and his son and daughter were less than impressed that words have been put in his mouth, and everybody saw how Frank had stuck with Labour even at low moments when he disagreed with lots of what Tony Blair did as prime minister, such as the Iraq War. He was quite open about this frustration and did not save it for secret squirrel chats.

Whichever party you support and what you make of Cllr Vincent’s claim, perhaps the most striking thing of the episode is that Mr Dobson, seven years after his death, is still the endorsement they all want in Holborn. That in itself is a testament to his popularity, but also might make us wonder why nobody has been held in quite the same esteem since.

You can see all the people standing at the council elections in Camden here.

ON FACEBOOK

ALMOST as soon as the deadline passed for the council election candidates to be registered – as in, too late to take them off the ballot paper – a Green Party candidate in Haverstock was being reminded of past Facebook activity. The Independent reported that Aziz Hakimi had shared a post claiming that the Golders Green attack on Jewish ambulances was “a false flag” and another claiming “zionists” organised 9/11.

The New Journal has attempted to contact him about these shared posts, but it is understood their emergence has already caused anger inside the local party, with some members wanting swift action to be taken. Haverstock is one of the wards that had been noted down as a possible surprise result, if things were to really go badly for Labour on polling day.

We have asked the national Green Party what happens next, and there should be updates later this week.

Labour council leader Richard Olszewski said: “His views have no place in our borough. The Camden Green Party must drop Hakimi immediately and make this clear to voters in Haverstock that they no longer support his candidacy.”

SPLITTING BALLOTS

IN Islington, the Greens have opted to label their candidates as “first choice” and “second choice” in a select few wards in Islington, according to the official list of candidates published on Friday.

For example, in Bunhill, they are encouraging voters to opt for Alan Clark Gutierrez if they want to vote for a Green, whilst in Laycock they have picked Joy Hunson as the top choice.

Why have they done this? Both the Greens and Labour know that the unpredictable nature of the election will see some residents sharing their votes. We’ve seen in the past at elections where people get more than one vote that residents may give one to one party, and another to another. The Greens would rather these voters concentrate their selections on at least one preferred candidate to increase the chance of at least getting one seat in these very contested wards.

‘First choice’ labels are a new thing though, and it has left some Labour canvassers saying it’s unfair and questioning whether it was even within the rules. A check suggests it is.

But NLB understands that the decision was not only made in an effort to concentrate the anti-Labour vote.

Some figures in the Islington Greens are hoping that it can help independents who are standing in some wards. Former Labour councillors turned independents Ilkay Cinko Oner and Phil Graham have worked alongside the Green group on the council.

NLB has previously reported on the sense of betrayal felt after members of Zack Polanski’s party voted to reject a deal that would see the Greens taken off the ballot paper altogether in some wards where independents are standing.

THE JOURNEY

EVEN readers from further afield know who Chris Philp is now – the shadow home secretary is cemented on the Conservative front benches at Parliament.

Twenty years ago, he was celebrating the Tory victory in Gospel Oak, as a surprise conqueror of what is normally a pretty solid Labour ward. The picture above shows him celebrating with Keith Sedgwick and Lulu Mitchell, who also became Conservative councillors for the ward for four years.

Fast forward to now and Mr Sedgwick is still doing his bit by standing in Holborn and Covent Garden, albeit a ward which could be politely described as not a target seat for the Tories.

And what of Lulu? Well, the well-known florist is back standing in Gospel Oak at the May 7 elections, but this time she will be wearing a Reform rosette.

She is not alone among former Camden Tories to be standing for Reform. Marx de Morais is doing the same in the Frognal ward, not long after trying to get selected as the Conservative candidate there.

It’s quite a journey to reach the party led by Nigel Farage. In 2018, Mr de Morais stepped down from the Tory candidacy in Gospel Oak amid frustrations over Brexit and said the party had to shift left.

“Hate and assault, division, xenophobia and belief in one’s own superiority, they are challenges of our time,” he said then. “I joined the Conservatives as it was a party where open, liberal people wanted to shape the future… This has changed over the last few months. It is the right wing that has been able to expand and take over more and more relevant positions.”

Douglas de Morais, similarly, has left the Tories and is standing for Reform – he’s in South Hampstead.

Leave a comment

INDEPENDENT INDEPENDENTS

ALL the splits amongst the Islington independents came out into the open as Friday’s list of candidates confirmed the confusion.

The majority of the original group are running under the ‘Islington Community Independent’ banner, albeit with distinct slogan descriptors tagged on to the end.

There is “ICI - for the many’; ‘ICI - People before Profit’, and ‘ICI - Empowering Your Community’. Insiders insist that this was simply personal preference, but it’s easy to see why sceptics have been raising Monty Python’s People Front of Judea sketch.

Several of the original group have thrown off the “ICI” banner altogether, instead opting for just an “independent” label. This is where it gets ever more confusing, because three of these candidates, Sharon Matthew, Sadiq Yusuf, and Rupert Wilkinson, have been backed by Your Party — whereas the others are not.

Stick with us because we’re still trying to get answers for why this is, considering there are more candidates who have requested an endorsement. Some individuals have expressed confusion as to how and why the endorsement decision was made, given that Jeremy Corbyn individually — who is now in control of Your Party — has given them his blessing.

“I’ve been arguing that whatever you think of Jeremy’s behaviour, Jeremy is still the most popular left-wing politician in Britain, and it seems crazy not to move heaven and earth to have him on every independent leaflet”, said one person familiar with the disagreements.

“Most people don’t follow the ins and outs of party politics. They see Jeremy and they trust Jeremy, and they won’t bother to read the blurb. They’ll just say ‘I’m going to support Jeremy”.

It seems this message has cut through to a certain degree, as the Islington North MP is seen standing arm in arm on the leaflets of independents’ on both sides.

ASK A QUESTION

FINALLY, don’t forget you can register for the Islington Tribune’s election hustings at the QR code below. It’s at Nambucca in Holloway Road on Wednesday April 22 at 6.30pm. Isabel will be hosting and it’s a interesting panel. Come along.

Thanks to everybody supporting NewJournal+

The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington). You can control which of our emails you receive in your Substack settings.

29 DAYS TO GO…

YIMBIRYIANI

THERE was uproar this week after it was revealed that the government’s housing secretary, Steve Reed, had attended a £2,000-a-seat “curry night” with major developers — just as he plans to slash affordable housing requirements that could otherwise limit their profits.

Look a little closer at the photos and you can spot one of Islington’s own rising stars in a prime seat at the table. Councillor Shreya Nanda donned the obligatory “build, baby, build” hard hat for the event, which she had helped organise as a member of the Labour YIMBY (Yes, in my backyard) alliance.

The group is funded by construction firms, trade bodies, and large-scale property managers, and is supportive of Mr Reed’s vision of fast-track housebuilding, even in cases where significant local opposition emerges.

That could be an awkward spot for Cllr Nanda, as her colleagues in the Town Hall are publicly firm in their desire to retain the current 50 per cent affordable housing obligation for new builds.

That said, this percentage has sometimes been more of a starting point for negotiation — and Islington Council has signed off on projects that don’t meet those requirements if they are deemed otherwise ‘financially unviable’. They may have to ask Mr Reed whether a curry with developers can help make discussions run smoothly.

MARTIN HAY

OUR condolences go to the family of Martin Hay, the Liberal Democrat candidate in Highgate who passed away suddenly last week.

The party’s group leader, Councillor Tom Simon, said: “Martin was a very warm, friendly and intelligent man who had been very much involved in the activities of both Camden and Haringey Lib Dems for many years and he will be much missed.”

And his family said in a statement: “The family of Martin Hay are deeply saddened to confirm his sudden death on April 1, 2026. Martin was a much-loved husband, father, stepfather, grandfather and friend, and his loss has been felt profoundly by all who knew him. The family ask for privacy at this time as they grieve together.”

There are more important things than local politics and we mean not to intrude on the grief being felt by Mr Hay’s family, but his passing has led to checks about what it means for the May 7 council elections and a potential delay to voting in the ward. Some interpret the rules as meaning that it must be put back, but Camden’s elections office told agents yesterday that it would not be countermanded.

LEAFLETWATCH

EVEN the Tories seemed to see the funny side of the chart they put out in the Belsize ward of Camden, after we shared it in last week’s Camden New Journal. It’s probably the biggest stretch Leafletwatch has seen during this year’s campaign: the label ‘only a vote for the Conservatives can stop Labour winning again’ next to a graph which shows the Lib Dems in the lead.

Meanwhile, if you’re a resident in South Hampstead, you have some detailed cartography to study. Both Labour and the Lib Dems have drawn up maps to show exactly what they say they have done at each reference point. The labels include ‘enlisted Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey to clear litter from Harben Estate'.

NO FIZZ

WE know there is still a sizeable readership of our paper in Camden that votes for the Conservatives, or at least has been inclined to in the past. Those people may fairly wonder where our coverage of the Tory election campaign launch is, after reading about the recent events at which the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos were released.

NLB has to tell it to you straight: for the first time in forever, the Conservatives are not organising a manifesto launch or holding a kickstart public event to rally the troops. Despite this, party organisers say defiantly that the Tories will have more councillors after May 7 than they do now. The starting figure is three.

IN THE PINEAPPLE

HIC… for those playing ‘backyard bingo’ — a drinking game bound to need pumped stomachs if you partake every time somebody uses the term ‘backyard’ in relation to our council elections. This time it was The Times, which sought out Camden’s sole Green councillor, Lorna Jane Russell, for predictions on what will happen in the prime minister’s patch on May 7. To complete the recipe, the interview took place in The Pineapple — famously Sir Keir Starmer’s favourite pub.

We weren’t flies on the wall for the questioning, so we don’t know how much policy was discussed or what was edited in or out — but the final article was all centred on people voting for the Greens to punish the PM.

Cllr Russell told the paper: “A lot of this backlash is actually personal against Keir. A lot of the decisions that are taken nationally by his government will reflect even more strongly on the doorstep here because there is that personal connection to him.

“And I think when voters want to punish the Labour government, they will be trying to punish him directly by getting some of his councillors out. And there are some good Labour councillors in Camden who will lose their seats.”

Meanwhile, Mail on Sunday columnist Dan Hodges, former Labour MP Glenda Jackson’s son, somehow managed not to use the word ‘backyard’ when he wrote: “Current polling shows that as many as 19 of the party’s 21 councils in the capital could now be under threat. What’s more, Zack Polanski’s insurgents aren’t simply at Keir Starmer’s gates - they’re at his front door. One of the Green’s key aims is snatching away control of Starmer’s own Camden Council, even though they currently have only a single councillor.”

We have the nationals watching closely.

THE NLB continues below.

Get 25% off for 1 year

Read more

The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington). You can control which of our emails you receive in your Substack settings.

As we go under 40 days until polling day, the final outcome of the council elections hasn’t been more unpredictable in 20 years. We’ve had some national pundits take a stab at some Camden guesswork because it’s ‘Keir’s backyard’ and predict the Greens will do well, but it’s vague. Nobody has really done any earth-shattering polling on a borough by borough basis, let alone estimate ward by ward forecasts beyond samples collected by the parties themselves.

The most common thread is that Labour will lose some seats in Camden and its huge majority will be reduced — but it will still keep control. But that’s not to say there aren’t people who believe it will end up better — or a whole lot worse – for the ruling party.

This week NLB look at five reasons why things could go right for Camden Labour — and five reasons why it could fall apart. No, this isn’t all that’s at play here, but it’s a start.

THE ELECTION WHERE EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT FOR LABOUR

1.
LOYALTY TO LABOUR
The writer AN Wilson once made a crass joke that Labour could put a farmyard animal on the ballot paper and still win in this neck of the woods. “I live in Camden Town — you could put a pig up for election and it would get in so long as it had a Labour rosette in its ear,” he said during a radio appearance. It was accidentally insensitive, as Frank Dobson – the long-term Holborn and St Pancras MP — had by then had a valve from a pig inserted into his heart during an operation in the 2000s. Dobbo saw the funny side of the comment, and there was a mock-up of a pig winning the election published in the CNJ. Wilson’s sentiments, however, point to layers upon layers of families who have an entrenched loyalty to Labour in Camden, through thick and thin.

2.
OUTSTANDING SCORES
IF you speak to people in other local authorities, you will find council leaders and chief officers wanting to be ‘more like Camden’. In these unseen circles, Camden is seen as a bit of a big head: the council with the posh King’s Cross offices that thinks it always does things first — but it walks the walk in the local government league tables, winning awards and securing ‘outstanding’ inspection reports. Only the housing department has not achieved this stellar rating. The only trouble for Labour candidates, however, is that this councilspeak does not get pulses racing on the doorstep. Residents don’t ask to see gongs and award certificates, and ‘…but we’re outstanding’ needs a longer conversation to explain how grades are awarded and why. Camden Council had just been named ‘Council Of The Year’ in the year before Labour lost control of the Town Hall in 2006, as an example of how these laurels do not always translate to resident feeling. You can’t blame the Labour teams for trying to explain that Camden is very much considered high-performing beyond these borough boundaries, though.

3.
NO SWIMMING POOL CLOSURES…
WHEN Labour lost control of Camden Council to a Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition in 2006, the defeat was largely blamed on the Iraq War — but there were many self-inflicted wounds locally too. A good example was the proposed sale and closure of the Kentish Town Sports Centre — the beautiful Prince of Wales Road Baths. This was a significant pain point, which saw the Lib Dems win seats in the area for the first time. Those single-issue stories can cut deep at election time. That’s not to say that it’s all plain sailing now: Labour is leaving itself open to frustration with its apparent unwillingness to do the right thing on teaching assistant pay in primary schools, and there will always be arguments about the scale and content of major developments on the doorstep. But this time around, there is not a raft of ward-by-ward battlefronts; there is no big ‘save the…’ campaign against a specific council cut.

4.
SPLIT VOTING
LABOUR strategists may feel like they are being attacked on all fronts, but this might, in the end, prove to be a good thing for their prospects. Those drifting away from Labour in Camden will have a choice to make, and there will be no guarantee that they will all end up in the same place. While the Liberal Democrats are looking to corner the north west of the borough and the Greens want to advance south from Highgate, in other places it will not necessarily be clear who the main opposition to Labour will be. We might see a lot of split ballot papers — maybe a real rainbow of choices. We might see people voting for only one candidate instead of three. We might see losing candidates come very, very close to winning. Labour suffered surprise losses in 2006 in wards where defeat didn’t seem possible, but at that time most disaffected voters coalesced around the Liberal Democrats — even in areas where nobody had done much doorknocking. This time, protest voters have to choose between the surging Greens or the Liberal Democrats — or indeed left-wing independent candidates who will emerge. There will also be a question as to who dilutes whom when it comes to the Tories and Reform. It could all pave the way for Labour to hold more than the commentators claim.

5.
MORE PEOPLE
THIS is a slightly moot point because Labour Party organisers would have liked to have amassed a bigger war chest than they have been able to in recent years. They would argue that the party is the only one that needs to be ready with campaign material in nearly every ward in the borough, while their rivals can pick and choose where they print and canvass. That all said, Labour still has by far the biggest membership of all the political parties, and even if most supporters are not willing to give up evenings and weekends to spread the word on the streets, they at least pay their monthly subs, and some, in theory, could be mobilised with encouragement on election day. At many polling stations, Labour are the only ones with tellers. The amount of work that goes into these boroughwide campaigns should not be underestimated, and certainly it’s helpful if the load can be spread across more people. Also, in terms of resources, there is an unsaid advantage for sitting councillors in their place within the current infrastructure: Nobody is going to be arrested if photos of their faces are not removed from estate noticeboards and community centre walls in time for the election.

THE ELECTION WHERE EVERYTHING GOES WRONG FOR LABOUR

1.
A MESSAGE TO SIR KEIR
WE’VE already used that hackneyed phrase ‘Starmer’s backyard’ — and as the big day gets nearer, expect Camden Council’s elections to receive more focus from the national media than some other London boroughs, as people wait to see if residents are ready to give him the proverbial bloody nose. And, let’s not beat around the bush, there is a wave of people in Camden who say they want to deliver just that. Whether all of them will actually vote in council elections is an unknown, but there is an obvious feeling among the discontented of disappointment at the low end and rage at the high end over his performance as prime minister. Anybody who has a grievance, domestically or internationally, with Mr Starmer and the Labour government’s first two years in charge may vote with him in mind rather than council business. So while Labour candidates still, mostly, like him and see him as one of their own — and the prime minister turning up to your campaign launch is no small thing — there is extra pressure on them on May 7. His own future is clearly at stake. If the campaign capsizes, it will translate into even uglier headlines. ‘He can’t even convince people in his own backyard to vote for Labour… etc’. You can guess the tenor already.

2.
A DISAFFECTED LEFT-WING
WE’VE mentioned loyalty to Labour in Camden over the decades, but often it’s a loyalty to a more left-wing shade of the party. There has been noted affection for rebellion. At the last council elections, however, Labour effectively purged its ‘left wing corner’ in the council chamber by stopping them from being reselected as candidates. Wounded by the Corbyn leadership years, some organisers were unwilling to give an inch. The result was the election of a set of councillors who quickly learned that you got booted out if you didn’t exactly follow the script. A good example is the obvious private frustration among some Labour councillors with the retention of the two-child benefit cap. They had to sit on their hands, as nobody had a licence to encourage debate on the issue until it was clear that Chancellor Rachel Reeves was finally ready to remove it. By accident, it could be said the internal policing of 2022 has made it harder this time around, as there have been few alternative voices in the previously advertised something-for-everyone ‘broad church’. In Camden, Labour has actively decided to move ahead without that more left-wing share of its base, so it can’t be surprised if those same people turn to the Greens or independents this time.

3.
’COMING FROM BANGLADESH’… THE PM’S OWN WORDS

THIS is a super-sensitive one, but it comes up again and again when talking to people, particularly in the south of the borough: the shifting feelings of long-standing Bangladeshi residents. Many might have forgotten the blunder Sir Keir Starmer had to backtrack from in the run-up to the 2024 general election when, speaking at hustings organised by The Sun, he said he was frustrated people were not being removed on arrival and sent to several countries, specifically name-checking Bangladesh. This comment is still raised, and we saw his majority fall in Holborn and St Pancras against a confident challenge from independent candidate Andrew Feinstein. Not holding back, the Greens, meanwhile, recently sent an Eid Mubarak card to users of the Regent’s Park mosque — on the other side of the park — which said: “Our thoughts and prayers for our brothers and sisters facing genocide in Palestine, illegal attack in Iran and ethnic cleansing in Sudan.” The Tories used to say, sometimes in impolite terms under one of their former local leaders who later joined UKIP, that Labour took ethnic minority groups in Camden for granted. The view that a whole community votes as one is racist in itself and kind of formed the basis of Reform’s bad-loser response in the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election. But if Labour is sensible, it will not let this ugly narrative mask analysis of where it risks losing votes.

4.
ASSAULT FROM ALL SIDES
WHILE split voting and diluted opposition may turn out to be a lifesaver for some Labour candidates, it must be a headache to have so many opponents looking to seize seats in Camden on May 7. The omens weren’t good for the north west of the borough when West Hampstead emphatically elected Liberal Democrat Janet Grauberg in a by-election last summer. All the seats in the ward had been won by Labour at the last full council elections. Council leader Richard Olszewski has already conceded that his home Fortune Green ward is a face-off with the Lib Dems and has moved to stand in the safer, southern ward of Holborn and Covent Garden. There couldn’t really be a more public admission that it’s going to be tough up there. The party is then also facing a big threat from the Greens in Highgate, the eastern side of the borough and elsewhere. Then throw in independent candidates who will bring the regular Gaza protests at the Town Hall — the campaign wants pension fund divestment from arms companies used by Israel — into an election setting. The Conservatives, meanwhile, may be accepting that they won’t be the official opposition again in Camden for a very long time to come, but have eyes on Primrose Hill. And then there is Reform, which could pick up votes even without a powerful doorstep game. That’s a lot to contend with for Labour, and it comes with a need for a coherent message to counter each different challenger.

5.
CAMPAIGN STRATEGY
WHILE the Labour Party in Camden has more subs than any of its rivals, that doesn’t mean its campaign is drowning in money. In fact, some candidates have been concerned that fundraisers have not been as productive as in the past, while organisers have had to make several appeals just to get enough candidates to fill all the spaces on the ballot papers. This, by the way, is even trickier for the other parties, but Labour is supposed to have 4,000 members across Camden who could be persuaded to get involved. Privately, some have doubted the campaign strategies — and where the resources they do have should be assigned. Some of the twinning of wards for campaigning has confused others. Some haven’t really known what the agreed script is when people mention Israel and Palestine; although they are under instructions to tell people the UK isn’t getting drawn into Iran. There is also a lack of conviction in the reliability of the doorstep data on the pad — this is the information you willingly give them when they ring your bell after checking you are on the electoral roll. Camden is a transient place in terms of movement, but perhaps those who stay are less tribal than ever before. With residents willing to vote for candidates from different parties on the same day — you get up to three choices in most wards — it becomes even harder to work out from where to organise lifts to the polling stations.

***

Now, of course, what you’ve read above are not the only factors that will be at play when we reach May 7 (and the postal ballots before then), but it’s a start. When we write on this subject, we always get messages about how we’ve missed this or that, forgotten the biggest thing of them all or overplayed something minor. That’s fair enough — but you can always add your thoughts in the comments for everybody to read, rather than just us.

You can also read about Labour’s manifesto launches in both Camden and Islington in this week’s print titles.

The next email you will receive will be our weekly news digest summing up everything that has been going on in Camden and Islington.

NORTH LONDON BUBBLE

The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington). You can control which of our emails you receive in your Substack settings.

45 days to go…

Read more

The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington). You can control which of our emails you receive in your Substack settings.

A paid subscription is about more than the emails you receive, as every penny we get from subscriptions goes into protecting the free, printed newspaper published each week and our news websites. Please do, if you haven’t already, consider supporting us by upgrading at the discount link below

Get 25% off for 1 year

Days to go until the council elections: 59.

Read more

The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington). You can control which of our emails you receive in your Substack settings.

A paid subscription is about more than the emails you receive, as every penny we get from subscriptions goes into protecting the free, printed newspaper published each week and our news websites. Please do, if you haven’t already, consider supporting us by upgrading at the discount link below

Get 25% off for 1 year

Days to go until the council elections: 66.

ONLY LABOUR CAN BEAT REFORM?

YOU will have no doubt read endless analysis of the Gorton and Denton by-election victory for the Green Party at the end of last week, but naturally there has been speculation as to how much the result should be seen as a precursor to what might happen in north London at May’s council elections, and whether international issues will trump local debates when people get inside the polling stations.

Rather than consider that perhaps voters were unhappy that the Labour government had not made any strident differences to many people’s daily battles with the cost-of-living, or might even have made it worse by being sluggish to remove the two-child benefit cap and the lead balloon policy of removing the winter fuel allowance (before a u-turn), and so on, figures like Lord Tom Watson insisted the defeat was purely down to whipping things up on Gaza.

His assessment is the sort which is keeping Labour organisers assured it wasn’t them that lost it, but populism at the “extremes” wot won it. “The Green Party did not win Gorton and Denton because of the quality of their policy platform or the depth of their thinking on immigration reform,” Lord Watson wrote. “Let us not dress this up. The Greens ran a single-issue campaign on Gaza with the discipline of a military operation and the moral certainty of people who will never have to govern.”

We share this as an indicator of what to possibly expect over the next eight or so weeks, with the Green Party in Camden and Islington expected to be pelted with attacks on its drugs, crime and prostitution policies, and relentless claims that it now rides with extremists on foreign affairs.

The question may be whether any of this will actually work, given the size of Hannah Spencer’s win for the Greens in what has always been a Labour stronghold. Camden and Islington are also Labour strongholds where local elections have in the past been used to send messages about national or even international policy.

In contrast to Lord Watson, the Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, perhaps sees the lie of the land in London a little clearer and wrote for the Guardian in the wake of the result: “A political strategy of taking liberal, progressive voters for granted is clearly flawed. The national Labour party and government doesn’t just need to reflect on this result, but fundamentally rethink its approach.”

One past speech from Sir Keir Starmer being dug up is the one where he said: “If you don’t like how we’ve changed the Labour Party, the door is open. You can leave.” We will know soon if as many people in London constituencies accepted the offer as they appeared to have done at this by-election in Gorton and Denton.

It’s often said that one of the canny things Tony Blair did was to allow a left-wing corner in the House of Commons, a small gaggle of Labour MPs who would complain about his privatisation, PFIs, foreign wars and so on. Never would their speeches change party or government policy, but the fact they were there meant Labour could stand by its inclusive ‘broad church’ cliché.

When Blair began to frustrate left-wing voters here, people would say: I’m not happy with the PM, but I’ll vote Labour for Frank, for Jeremy, and for Glenda (even if she was more of a rebel than a dyed-in-the-wool socialist). We also used to have a little left-wing corner in Camden, before what was seen as a purge of such candidates before the last council elections.

Not much of this is there now, by design – Labour has actively decided to fight elections in Camden without its leftier left wing. Without the overhead cover line of a dead Conservative government needing to be removed, it’s opened up more space for the Greens.

Whether a party with only one councillor and pressure for activists to go to their biggest London targets elsewhere has the resources to do more than ‘score well but not get the seat’ in wards around Camden remains to be seen, but in Islington and certainly in Hackney at least there are growing expectations over what might be possible.

The North London Bubble continues below

Read more

The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington). You can control which of our emails you receive in the Substack settings.

A paid subscription is about more than the emails you receive, as every penny we get from subscriptions goes into protecting the free, printed newspaper published each week and our news websites. Please do consider supporting us by upgrading at the discount link below.

Get 25% off for 1 year

GO TABBY!

BEFORE we start, good luck to Tabby Stoecker at the Winter Olympics today. She is a British medal hope as one of the world’s best skeleton racers. Hailing from north London, you can read more about her in today’s Islington Tribune.

So why is she in the politics column? Well, there’s always a link back to here.
Not to take any concentration away from an Olympian doing amazing things, but her mother, Alison Stoecker, will be known in Islington as an independent election candidate.

She stood in the Hillrise by-election in 2024 — collecting 539 votes and finishing second to Labour’s Shreya Nanda. Her second try will come in May, under the different complexion of boroughwide elections and a potentially higher turnout.

OLD PALS

IT seemed a little unfortunate that Labour’s strategists decided that Georgia Gould should take a turn representing the government on the TV media rounds in a week when the Peter Mandelson scandal was shaking the foundations of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership. After all, Ms Gould, Camden Council’s leader for seven years until she became an MP in Queen’s Park and Maida Vale at the last election, has never attempted to hide the fact that Mr Mandelson has been a family friend for her whole life.

When she appeared on Sophy Ridge’s show on Sunday, she was asked whether the “interconnected” nature of friends, spouses and relatives in politics and media power circles created the environment in which Mr Mandelson was able to keep coming back to positions of influence despite all the indicators that it was unwise to bring in somebody nicknamed the ‘Prince of Darkness’ and rather known for backstage scheming. Ms Gould has said that regardless of her friendship she was “shocked” and “devastated” by what she has read.

But had Ms Ridge prodded at a blind spot in Labour’s famously tribal factionalism, perhaps? If not for Ms Gould, certainly for others in the party, and that, of course, works both ways, right and left.

Sophy Ridge asks Georgia Gould a ‘bit of an awkward’ question

The irony of the way Ms Gould is often portrayed in political columns — and mean tweets — is that, rather than use all of her obvious connections to become an MP as soon as possible, she spent a long time in the unglamorous world of local government with sleeves up at endless council debates and hectic community meetings — the sort of raw interaction with the public which becomes less and less common the further you progress up the tree.

You could compare her to David Miliband, for example, who also grew up in Camden but never seemed to have any intention of becoming a local councillor to try and resolve a broken boiler on a council estate and was instead fast-tracked to the Commons in a safe constituency far away. His brother Ed, another former Haverstock School pupil, also skipped the local council bit.

But for every example we could show you of Ms Gould’s grassroots leadership in Camden, another comment will pop up on X about how everybody seems to have personal loyalties to someone else in an influential position — much of which can be mapped across political personalities from north London. In another interview we had the continued awkwardness of ITV using Labour’s former shadow chancellor Ed Balls to interview ministers from the same party, including Ms Gould. It’s just accepted as a normal thing.

One clip being shared online this week was archive footage of the PofD himself talking to Andrew Rawnsley about shaving his moustache off and how this was decided in Majorca, where he was holidaying with the families of both Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s communications chief, and the late Lord Philip Gould, New Labour’s trusted pollster and focus group analyst. Lord Gould, as is no secret, was Ms Gould’s father. They were watching on in the audience.

Prolific video sharer Saul Staniforth unearthed Mr Mandelson’s facial hair debate clip on X

Ms Ridge suggested in the Sky interview that people go harder on “random people than friends and family”. That’s an approach which is probably natural in most people, whatever the situation or occupation, but in this case it’s a man at the height of British politics accused of passing on confidential documents to a paedophile trafficker who had already been convicted of procuring a child for prostitution.

Mr Campbell wrote about his own long, up and down friendship with Mr Mandelson this week, concluding: “it’s complicated”.

SPECIAL ADVICE

AFTER nights of watching political analysts on the telly telling us that Sir Keir Starmer could resign within 48 hours, quite the opposite has happened.

The prime minister (and our local MP) was met with applause and backing when he appeared before Labour’s parliamentary party on Monday evening. In a tough spot amid criticism for hiring Mr Mandelson to an ambassador role, Labour MPs shared their support – for now.

Read more

Welcome to our weekly politics column. North London Bubble (NLB) is compiled by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

If politics isn’t the bit you signed up for, you can toggle the NLB on and off in your personal Substack settings – but look our for our free news digest going out to all subscribers at the start of the week.

Read more

Welcome to our weekly politics column. North London Bubble (NLB) is compiled by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

As always, if you want to help protect our journalism – and that’s everything from our print newspapers to our online offerings – please consider a full subscription.

Get 25% off for 1 year

If politics isn’t the bit you signed up for, look our for our news digest going out to all subscribers, free and paid, at the start of the week.

Have a good week!

‘MENDACIOUS’

COUNCILLOR Awale Olad has been pretty open for some time about how he doesn’t think the Lime hire company really cares about the mess of dumped bikes and overflowing bays in London, so it was unfair for anybody to suggest that he only had the handbrake off last week because he will be stepping down from the council in a few months.

If you missed the fireworks, it’s on the front page of the CNJ this week and saw the chair of Camden’s culture and environment committee begin reeling off negative descriptions of the company to its public affairs chief across the council meeting desks.

Rather than us describe what happened, maybe it’s just easier for North London Bubble readers to see him in action – as you don’t hear councillors talk tough like this often. Here’s one of the clips:

Cllr Olad is not against a hire bike service – he has just made it clear that he doesn’t think Lime cares enough about the negative impacts as the company establishes itself as the main operator in the city.

Jack McKenna, Lime’s representative at the meeting, said that the popularity of the service suggested that it has actually become a very valued part of London’s transport options, with millions of trips on the green and white bikes through Camden alone a year.

Some of these are rides taken by Camden councillors themselves, including Labour councillor Nina de Ayala Parker – who told the meeting she commutes on one every day to work. In general, Cllr Olad’s vehemence is not shared among senior councillors, who want to work with Lime rather than be in a constant battle.

Maybe Cllr Olad could sense his party colleague, Cllr de Ayala Parker, disagreeing as he spoke – stopping the session for a second to ask why she was “huffing and puffing” next to him as he read out bad reviews for Lime he had found online.

There’s a lengthy report of what went on at this tense meeting in the print edition of the CNJ, and Lime are on the front page of the Islington Tribune too, as councillors in Islington have taken a more threatening tone with the company – hinting that the contract might not be renewed in March.

Some might even say what is being whispered on that side of the borough border is even more tough-talking than anything Cllr Olad said.

“We’re at the end of our tether with Lime”, said one person involved in the negotiations. “They’ve consistently been evasive and dishonest. This isn’t a game of brinkmanship and they don’t seem to realise we can exist without them.”

Lime says it has worked hard to address problems and have more people out on the street tidying up than ever before.

More NLB continues below – the news digest, free to all subscribers, will be in your inboxes at the start of the week

Read more

Welcome to our weekly politics column. North London Bubble (NLB) is compiled by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

If you want to help protect our journalism – and that’s everything from our print newspapers to our online offerings – please consider a full subscription.

Or you could give someone a subscription as the perfect Christmas gift.

Give a gift subscription

RED SEATS

THERE was much fury and frustration about how the peerage system works when Baroness Charlotte Owen was handed a place in the House of Lords by former prime minister Boris Johnson. The audacity of his choice almost seemed like a moment when the whole process might be brought to account and surveys show that an overwhelming majority of the public want to see reform of the unelected second chamber. The same goes when they poll Labour members and Sir Keir Starmer himself once called for its abolition.

Once in power, however, politicians love to say that it’s a low priority… for now, while all the time seeding the red sofas with friends – the practice of more or less every government we’ve seen, be it Labour, Conservative or coalition.

Last year, critics watched Mr Starmer hand free ermine passes to Labour MPs voted out of parliament, such as Thangam Debbonaire in Bristol last year. She herself had previously complained loudly about Johnson’s alleged cronyism in relation to his peerage choices. There were elevations too for past candidates who fell short in their efforts to get elected to the Commons, like former Camden councillor Mike Katz – now Lord Katz of Fortune Green.

And the trend has continued this year with the prime minister’s next set of choices: Shama Tatler, who lost in Chingford at last year’s general election to Iain Duncan Smith; the former Conservative leader knows he might have lost his seat if Labour hadn’t got in a mess by forcing out Faiza Shaheen and replacing her as their candidate with Ms Tatler in the last knockings of the campaign.

But there has been special interest in Islington for the prime minister’s latest picks, announced on Wednesday, as both Councillor Sara Hyde and Geeta Nargund were told they too will become £370-a-day peers. Local Liberal Democrats in Islington can’t really scoff at the patronage of a councillor being given such a helpful jump up, as their own Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece (of Highbury) enjoyed the same route back in 2010.

Ms Nargund, meanwhile, is mother to Islington councillor Praful Nargund – possibly most famous (so far) for losing Labour’s seat in Islington North to Jeremy Corbyn last year, and recently teased in Private Eye for how many of his projects and pursuits seem to be connected to his mum.

Over in Camden, there was more of a surprise about who wasn’t on the list, rather than who was. It has been privately suggested many times that the former Labour councillor Abdul Hai, who missed out in that last-minute rush for a safe seat before last year’s election, will one day become Lord Hai. We already have two barons of Camden Town, so he may have to choose another location if the call ever comes.

GOOOALL!

AFTER last year’s spicy football tournament held between the New Journal and the local Labour and Lib Dem groups, our journalists thought it might be a good idea to leave them to it this time around. So, it was a straight winner-takes-all match at Castlehaven on Friday night between the two parties.

Yet once again there was a little bit of aggro on the pitch as accusations and counter-accusations flew about whether the Lib Dems were time-wasting and if Labour mayor Eddie Hanson, the timekeeper, added on some ‘Eddie time’ to allow Sagal Abdi-Wali to score a last-second equaliser. We are not getting involved in the disputes after last year’s arguments about who actually won the Hamper Cup.

They could have left it at a 6–6 draw and headed off to the pub for a convivial post-match drink, but instead there had to be a penalty shoot-out in which more players missed than scored and the Lib Dems eventually emerged victorious. They could be heard singing ‘champion–ee, champion–ee olé olé olé’ from the Lock, but will the result be an omen for the council elections now just four and a half months away?

PICK FROM THESE THREE

ONE of the key areas where Labour and the Liberal Democrats will go head to head at the ballot box is Fortune Green. We have already seen council leader Richard Olszewski switch wards to the safer ground of Holborn and Covent Garden, and his fellow ward colleague Lorna Greenwood is not seeking re-election. The other seat is already held by the Lib Dems.

So Labour needed a whole new slate of candidates, a selection decided at an online Zoom meeting last week. Party members are supposed to have a choice on this, as per the standing rules, and could have expected a minimum of four but hopefully more contenders to make their case to be the ones to stand. Instead, insiders say, they were given a list of three available people to choose three people from.

Perhaps it’s a symptom of the party’s struggle to find enough people to actually stand for Labour next May; as detailed in previous NLBs, the process was paused so a secondary call-out for interest could be issued. Either way, having fewer contests for selections means less debate but also fewer internal headaches for campaign organisers.

Kasia Kramer, Matthew Houlsby and Suber Abdikarim will be the Labour candidates tasked with trying to fend off the Lib Dems here.

Coming up: the ban on banners spreads, how parties can turn their press releases into ‘news stories’, and are there any candidates good at TikTok?

Read more

Welcome to our weekly politics column. NLB is compiled by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

If you want to help protect our journalism – and that’s everything from our print newspapers to our online offerings – please consider a full subscription.

Get 25% off for 1 year

We know some people find NLB a little niche, but love our digest emails and NewJournal+ features. You can toggle on or off whether you want to include North London Bubble in your NewJournal+ emails in your Substack settings.

This weekend, Isabel went to Merseyside where Your Party was having its founding conference.

YOUR PARTY BECOMES YOUR PARTY

PRESENTING a united front was the aim of the Your Party conference in Liverpool — but all the nice statements did little to paper over the deep differences clearly present among both its leaders and its membership.

‘Your Party: Divided’ was the slogan on leaflets handed out by some groups outside the conference centre on Merseyside, and Zarah Sultana barely made an appearance inside on the first day. Instead she spoke to the media outside and from the Hilton Hotel ten minutes down the road.

Meanwhile, members of the SWP [Socialist Workers Party] were outraged to find out they had already been suspended from the party – pending a vote on whether dual membership is allowed. They had already paid for their trains and accommodation only to mill about in the drizzle outside the security check.

Some members – many with ties to Islington – had made the journey, in their words, ‘for Corbyn’.

“He’s a political heavyweight”, one told NLB about the Islington North MP. “There’s no one else who would draw this many people”.

Others were more sceptical. They either see Ms Sultana as the future, or are advocating for both MPs to get out and let the membership achieve real revolution as they see it – change not via a parliamentary route but through community organising that creates parallel structures and systems of government.

Some members complained about a lack of democracy at several points as motions were blocked, but letting everyone who wants to speak actually speak means you would never get anywhere, organisers warned.

At least they decided on a name for this new party… Your Party will be called Your Party after all. That didn’t come without disputes, however. More complaints emerged about the choice members had been presented with and a lack of transparency in creating the shortlist.

A knife-edge vote revealed more contrasting differences of opinion when, on Sunday, it was agreed that it would move forward with ‘collective leadership’ rather than one individual at the top.

“I just want to see Zarah and Jeremy up on stage holding their hands in the air,” a slightly despairing teenage member said.

Look out for coverage from Isabel in the CNJ and Tribune this week and bits on the Peeps Youtube channel.

‘JAILED FOR TWO YEARS’

THE headlines are out: MP Tulip Siddiq sentenced to two years in prison.

This is the verdict coming out of a Bangladesh court where the Hampstead and Highgate MP has been convicted of using her influence to help her aunt, the country’s deposed leader Sheikh Hasina, on dodgy land deals. Hasina has already been sentenced to death by the courts over the killing of students during the rebellion which led to the end of her ruthless, autocratic rule last year.

Ms Siddiq did not attend the trial, denies all the charges and said in response: “The outcome of this kangaroo court is as predictable as it is unjustified. I hope this so-called ‘verdict’ will be treated with the contempt it deserves. My focus has always been my constituents in Hampstead and Highgate and I refuse to be distracted by the dirty politics of Bangladesh.”

Read more

Welcome to our weekly politics column. NLB is compiled by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

If you want to help protect our journalism – and that’s everything from our print newspapers to our online offerings – please consider a full subscription.

Get 25% off for 1 year

We know some people find NLB a little niche, but love our digest emails and NewJournal+ features. You can toggle on or off whether you want to include North London Bubble in your NewJournal+ emails in your Substack settings.

POULTRY DASH?

CAMDEN’S council leader Richard Olszewski has been around long enough to know all the political lingo, so he can’t have expected his switching of wards – finally confirmed this week – to escape a familiar tease. “Chicken run” is the term opponents always use when a politician moves from an area where their electoral prospects are risky to safer ground.

Given anybody who reads this column has known for months that he was ready to trade Fortune Green, where the Liberal Democrats are an obvious threat, for the Labour fortress of Holborn and Covent Garden, it’s been strange that it has taken so long to reach this point. It might have been easier to rip the plaster off back in the summer rather than drag the speculation out. The fact it has rumbled on made it look like Labour’s defeat to the Lib Dems in the recent West Hampstead by-election was a key motivation, but the transfer was being talked about long before that.

Labour organisers were keen for it not to look like a selection stitch-up, however, and Julian Fulbrook, the long-standing councillor in Holborn and Covent Garden, made a special effort to tell members that it was simply a sensible choice as losing the party’s leader at next May’s council elections could not be countenanced. The vote was taken on Tuesday evening.

Cllr Olszewski said in his explanation: “I was urged by colleagues to consider that my role as leader places significant responsibilities on me and demands on my time, both in dealing with council business and within the Camden Labour Group I lead, which would prevent me from spending the time I would need to campaign in Fortune Green, not just during the election period itself, but in the months beforehand.

“Therefore, with encouragement and support locally, I stood for selection in Holborn and Covent Garden ward.”

Of course, it isn’t a great look for the Labour candidates who will end up standing in Fortune Green – three brand-new faces will be chosen at the start of next month – and in a more opaque way, the message for voters in Holborn and Covent Garden isn’t sparkling. It’s kind of telling them: we know you are going to vote Labour anyway, so the leader can have a safe landing and won’t need to spend as much time canvassing for your votes.

But it’s true: this part of Camden always does vote Labour.

There was an earthquake once, when a Labour council leader supposedly in a safe ward did lose his seat – Raj Chada to the Tories in Gospel Oak. That was almost 20 years ago, however, and it would need an even bigger shake to ever dislodge the ruling party from Holborn.

Oh, and last week’s NLB prediction was correct: Livia Paggi was also selected as a third Labour candidate in the ward.

North London Bubble continues below

Read more

Welcome to our weekly politics column. NLB is compiled by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

If you want to help protect our journalism – and that’s everything from our print newspapers to our online offerings – please consider a full subscription.

Get 25% off for 1 year

You can toggle on or off whether you want to include the politics column in your NewJournal+ emails in your Substack settings.

Read more

Welcome to our weekly politics column. NLB is compiled by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

If you want to help protect our journalism – and that’s everything from our print newspapers to our online offerings – please consider a full subscription:

Get 25% off for 1 year

You can toggle on/off whether you want to include the politics column in your NewJournal+ emails in your Substack settings.

Read more

Welcome to our weekly politics column. NLB is compiled by Richard Osley and Isabel Loubser.

If you want to help protect our journalism – and that’s everything from our print newspapers to our online offerings – please consider a full subscription:

Get 25% off for 1 year

BOOK TOUR

A SEISMIC moment for the Royal Family has seen Prince Andrew defenestrated by his brother, King Charles, and he shall now be known simply as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. No more prince.

Clive Myrie announced on the BBC’s News At Ten that his “fall from grace was complete”, which perhaps isn’t quite what people who would like certain allegations to be investigated further were thinking.

Mr Mountbatten Windsor, whose image was taken down from the Duke of York pub in Fitzrovia earlier this year, was last seen on royal duty in Camden in 2016 when he was given a tour of Camden Lock. He tried some whisky and, as our picture shows, saw the book stall,

Mr Mountbatten Windsor denies any wrong-doing in his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and claims made by the late Virginia Giuffre.

POLANSKI ON PACTS

IT might be interesting to let readers into a little discovery from the statistics of the video channel connected to the Camden New Journal and Islington Tribune, which this week features clips from a studio interview with Green Party leader Zack Polanski. As North London Bubble has noted before, he has been pushing his way onto more television shows and is racking up the hits with his social media heavy game.

When we uploaded the video ‘Green Party leader Zack Polanski: ‘Don’t split the Left’’ to YouTube, however, there were hardly any views. We then changed the headline to simply ‘Zack Polanski: Don’t split the Left’ and almost immediately it got pushed into people’s algorithms. It’s just one anecdote and who can really decipher what YouTube promotes and doesn’t, but it makes you wonder whether Mr Polanski is becoming more popular and well-known than his party.

If that’s the case, at some stage more figures, if there are any as equally energetic and calm under questioning in the party as him, are going to need to be played in to back up a surge in the polls.

Isabel asked him during that interview whether people who felt politically homeless, particularly on the left of the spectrum, would split themselves when it came to elections.

He used the moment to suggest that the Greens shouldn’t be the ones to always be asked to step aside, and that Andrew Feinstein, the independent challenger on a mission to cause the biggest shock of them all by unseating Sir Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras, would increase his numbers if he joined Mr Polanski’s party.

AI BOBBY

WE’VE known that being ITV News’ political editor has not been enough to fill Robert Peston’s time since seeing him screaming through the punk rock hits with his band Centrist Dad at the York Rise Street Party in Dartmouth Park over the last couple of years.

He also has his political talk show and, to keep the wolf from the door, he is now getting in on the podcast game with The Rest Is Money, another arm of Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger empire. Mr Peston, who we’ve often seen potter past our office while living in Camden Town, told viewers and listeners this week that he was “struck” about Google’s research into how AI was improving productivity for businesses – the clip being sponsored by, um… Google.

NewJournal+ knows as much as anybody about how new forms of revenue are needed to keep the show on the road (subscribe, subscribe) but Goalhanger is going beyond flashing up ads up before the content or using a support logo stamped into its films, and instead has its star turns awkwardly reciting the promo. Steph McGovern is a seasoned presenter but even she can’t make it sound natural, and the eyes pinned to the script were also seen when Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell were required to do something similar on the big Daddy podcast The Rest Is Politics.

CLIP: Robert Peston, Steph McGovern, Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell marvel at Google’s AI

The response on social media to these ads – and they are marked as ads – has included envious assumptions about the presenters’ wealth and whether they really need to be performing for Google in this way.

More interesting is the blurry line which Mr Peston perhaps is most in need of monitoring. Ads and sponsorships are part of this world, but a growing point of the debate in British politics is how much tech firms, like those who have made the King’s Cross railwaylands their base, should be taxed and what the fallout from AI will mean for employment, or possibly mass unemployment.

No doubt there will be viewers of ITV News at home urging the unbiased Mr Peston to ask searing questions of these companies (and the politicians who sometimes seem frightened of upsetting them), rather than reading out paid messages on how great they are.

North London Bubble continues below with the latest development in the council elections candidate search and more. Please support NewJournal+ with an upgraded subscription.

Get 25% off for 1 year

Read more

NLB is compiled by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

If you want to help protect our journalism – and that’s everything from our print newspapers to our online offerings – please consider a subscription:

Get 25% off for 1 year

‘ALL WE ASK…’

IN years gone by there was jostling within Camden’s Labour party to be a candidate for the council, and, given the party was competitive in essentially all but two wards at the last boroughwide elections, you might have expected there to be similar competition ahead of the next contest in May.

But, with little more than six months to go, it’s emerged organisers are finding it difficult to put up somebody for every place available in the council chamber. From a membership of more than 4,000, they haven’t so far got enough interest to fully fight 55 seats.

This was revealed in an email to members this week which said the applications process is being reopened. It came with encouragement to think about giving it a go.

There was also plea for more women to come forward. The party rules demand that at least one woman stands in every ward.

“All we ask is that you are willing to work hard as part of a team, play an active part in campaigning, and be committed to making a difference to the lives of your neighbours,” the message said.

A couple of sitting councillors who saw it said this rather underplays how many emails anybody who actually wins a seat will get per day. Most of them are currently swamped with problems – mainly to do with housing – that need resolving, and that’s before the number of meetings they will be expected to attend…. Hang on, we’re not selling public service very well here. That wasn’t the aim.

Why is it all proving difficult?

Well, partly it’s perhaps that the workload and expectations from the public are higher than ever before, as intimated above.

Then there’s council leader Richard Olszewski’s honest assessment since the West Hampstead by-election defeat to the Liberal Democrats that the challenge will be more difficult than the last because of where the party is polling nationally. He himself has been linked to a move from a tough battle with the Lib Dems in Fortune Green to a safer ride in Holborn and Covent Garden.

Then there is the left-wing of the local party, past and present, which says it’s a consequence of the iron approach taken by selectors last time around when it felt purged by the refusal to allow existing councillors who had been enthused by Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto to stand again.

The idea here is that the centrists felt good about winning their parochial turf war and defeating the Corbynistas in Camden, but part of the party was either forced out, left of their own volition due to the change in direction or just didn’t like how it was handled, and now the organisers are wondering why they have a smaller pool of interest in being a councillor, or even a candidate.

Or maybe the incident in 2022 where Adrian Cohen stood as a ‘paper candidate’ for Labour in Hampstead Town only to find himself woken from his sleep on election night to be told he’d actually won a seat serves as too much of a reminder that the unpredictable nature of politics right now means nothing can be taken for granted. He stepped down a few days later causing a by-election. So, are any paper candidates safe from not being elected?

Whatever your theories, Labour’s search for a full slate of candidates continues.

DINNER WITH CHRIS PHILP

IN the last edition of NLB, we noted Chris Philp, while appearing on the main stage at the Conservative Party conference, had been as funny as your unfunny friend trying to do stand-up at a pub open mic. There were painfully polite chuckles as he attempted a switcheroo and a ‘my wife’s wildest dreams’ gag.

North London Bubble continues below

Read more

Welcome to our weekly politics column – now a midweek feature to help space out the NewJournal+ emails in your inbox. If you like the digest and features but the North London Bubble is a bit too niche, then you can toggle whether you receive this section or not inside your Substack settings.

NLB is compiled by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

If you want to help protect our journalism – and that’s everything from our print newspapers to our online offerings – please consider a subscription:

Get 25% off for 1 year

GOOD COP, BAD COP?

THERE are some competing styles to get used to when following the Camden Conservatives to Manchester.

The group’s leader Steve Adams is the methodical architect who is taking on the Labour council leadership and their Lib Dem rivals in Hampstead ward with cautious jabs on process. It wasn’t clear last month whether he was more annoyed by the actual idea of a car-free day in Hampstead High Street or the fact the Tories hadn’t been warned in advance.

His attack lines are on things like poor consultation surveys and he willingly called the areas of interest “mundane” when interviewed by Hannah Badawi-Crook, a freelance journalist working for the Camden New Journal this autumn. It’s very much a get-the-basics-right pitch from him.

But then there is Ewan Cameron, a former councillor who has been away but is right back into the fold and has perhaps a more direct approach to trying to turn the Tory ship around with local elections looming ever closer. Just as some campaigners may not think that trying to win by being deliberately unglamorous will gain traction, there is both support and surprise among members for Mr Cameron’s recent appearance in the Daily Telegraph.

While Labour was running with its commitment to ‘borough of sanctuary’ status for refugees and asylum-seekers, Mr Cameron appeared furious that money was being spent on support, such as haircuts and football sessions for children.

“Our Labour-led council remains fixated on showboating their support for minorities, as opposed to doing the hard work that would actually improve the lives of Camden residents,” he told the paper.

There was an awkward face-off at a recent full council meeting when the Labour leader Councillor Richard Olszewski asked Cllr Adams whether he agreed with Mr Cameron’s uncompromising comments. Cllr Adams did not, in return, ask Cllr Olszewski whether he agreed with Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ speech, which many have felt has clanged with the local party’s pledges of sanctuary.

The Conservatives are in need of a personality, locally. Former leader Oliver Cooper had a knack for winding up his opponents with confident no notes speeches. Perhaps, Mr Cameron, emerging from the pack as a lively organiser of the coming campaign, will inject some energy into a group battered down to just three councillors at the last local elections.

CAMERON’S STIFF

CHRIS Philp has always seemed to have a thick skin. During the 2010 election, when he was running Glenda Jackson close as the Conservative parliamentary candidate in the old Hampstead and Kilburn constituency, one of his action days saw a host of MPs arrive in packs to support his campaign.

CNJ reporter Tom Foot was sent out to find out what was going on and took a photo of Mr Philp and his gang. It was by complete coincidence that an estate agent’s board behind them said ‘Cameron’s Stiff and Co’. David Cameron being the leader of the party at the time made this seem very silly.

That picture drew many sniggers, but Mr Philp rarely showed any hard feelings over it. Maybe he will draw on that inner resolve as the shadow home secretary, and it’s possibly needed particularly this week after his cringey attempts at stand up comedy during his speech at the conference in Manchester.

We had an innuendo joke about what his wife’s wildest dreams might be, and a switcheroo – seen coming from several miles off – which swapped up Labour cabinet members and illegal immigrants.

The Best for Britain group has shared a mini-compilation of the groan secretary’s routine.

The North London Bubble continues below

Read more

The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

Look out for our complete news digest from around the boroughs going out on Mondays. You can control which emails you receive in the Substack settings.

Plus look out for bonus features later this week.

A paid subscription is about more than the emails you receive, as every penny we get from subscriptions goes into protecting the free, printed newspaper published each week and our news websites. Please do consider supporting us by upgrading at the discount link below.

Get 25% off for 1 year

DOES ANYBODY ELSE WANT TO STAND TO BE A COUNCILLOR?

THE Labour Party in Camden has finally started selecting candidates for next year’s council elections and, in the main, they will be drawn from existing councillors who want to extend their stay at the Town Hall.

There are 55 seats up for grabs and only 48 names on an email circulated this week listing people who have declared their interest in standing, however. That suggests there is still a bit of arm-twisting to do to make sure Labour, as it usually does, has as many candidates for the seats available.

At most past elections, it has had an even longer, flexible list and people have had to win their places at branch meeting votes.

The names on the email that went out last week were: Adam Harrison, Anna Wright, Arun Kumar, Camron Aref-Adib, Dan Corby, Eddie Hanson, Edmund Frondigoun, Francesca Reynolds, Heather Johnson, Izzy Lenga, James Slater, John Carr, Jonathan Simpson, Joseph Ball, Julian Fulbrook, Larraine Revah, Leo Gordon, Liam Martin-Lane, Livia Paggi, Lorna Greenwood, Lotis Bautista, Marcus Boyland, Matt Cooper, Matthew Sudlow, Meric Apak, Nadia Shah, Nanouche Umeadi, Nash Ali, Nasrine Djemai, Kemi Atolagbe, Pat Callaghan, Patricia Leman, Rebecca Filer, Richard Olszewski, Rishi Madlani, Robert Thompson, Sabrina Francis, Sagal Abdi-Wali, Samata Khatoon, Shah Miah, Sharon Hardwick, Shuab Gamote, Simon Lickert, Suber Abdikarim, Suleiman Osman, Sylvia McNamara, Tamsin Mitchell and Willow Parker.

Not on the list, then, were Awale Olad and Sue Vincent – who we already knew were not seeking re-election in Holborn and Covent Garden, the safe Labour seat which would be the first port of call for any chicken run transfer. Anna Wright, the Highgate councillor, has assured NLB she won’t be making the dash south.

Former mayors Richard Cotton and Jenny Headlam-Wells had also already announced they were stepping down. Nazma Rahman, another former first citizen, did not appear on the list – she’s a Labour councillor in West Hampstead where the party has just been thumped at a by-election by the Lib Dems. Also not there were Jenny Mulholland in Gospel Oak, Athian Ajok (Primrose Hill) and two of the South Hampstead councillors: Nina de Ayala Parker and Tommy Gale, the latter only being elected two years ago in a ward by-election.

The final selections should now come thick and fast, with Bloomsbury councillor Rishi Madlani first to tweet a picture celebrating being picked to stand again over the weekend.

THE PERFECT LETTERS

AS we have told you many times, NewJournal+ does not use AI to write or curate our newsletters, digests and features. That means there might be some typos, but we can’t join the trend seen in some news organisations where human reporters have been replaced with robot alternatives spitting out quick web copy of varying quality and prone to factual errors.

The spread of synthetic text is growing, however, and in our office we’ve already seen it flow into our inboxes with everything from automated press releases to people trying to compose legal threats against us on the basis of ChatGPT’s ill-advised encouragement.

But what about our local politicians? The North London Bubble has been told that one Camden councillor in particular has suddenly begun producing sharper emails in their exchanges and almost poetical prose in some casework letters. It might sound like a good idea to save time or to elaborate a point with AI-generated wavy words, but it’s a slippery slope.

MORE FROM STARMER’S BACKYARD

WITH one of our MPs as PM, we’ve noted a few times how dull ‘Keir Starmer’s backyard’ has become as a description for Camden when anything political happens now.

It does, however, add a little more pressure to the local Labour group whose organisers must know what the headlines for the prime minister will look like if they lose too many council seats on his home patch at next May’s council elections.

The nationals are already sniffing blood and councillors were warned this week not to talk to one journalist in particular from the Financial Times who has been offering off-the-record chats about how Mr Starmer’s local constituents are feeling and asking to shadow them on canvassing sessions.

“Do not respond in any way… You are not obliged in the least, even to answer or respond to his message,” councillors have been told by party leaders.

THE GO-TO GUY

A LOT of things can change before the UK next has a general election, but as it stands now any Labour councillors who want to step up to the House of Commons may be relying on retirements and a bit of luck to find a decent shot.

There could be a lot of parliamentary constituencies with thin majorities to defend rather than ones to gain next time, really emphasising the ‘last bus to Westminster’ feel for those who got elected last year and those who didn’t.

Islington councillor Praful Nargund may expect some reward for the pain of a bruising campaign in which he lost to Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North last year and is now working the rooms hard with regular appearances on TV. Last week, he was back on ITV’s Good Morning Britain programme for its ‘Starmer charmer’ discussion.

He’s regularly talked about as being on a fast track, but that track will only go somewhere if the government figures he is booked to defend on TV start to perform better in the polls.

HE’S REALLY BAD, THEY TWEETED

SIR Keir Starmer has some stern words for Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who beamed into Tommy Robinson’s Uniting The Kingdom march earlier this month to tell an amped up crowd that they should be doing more to improve their lot. “Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die,” Mr Musk said to a raucous reaction, after complaining about “uncontrolled migration”.

Mr Starmer responded by writing a column in the Sun on Sunday, as owned by Rupert Murdoch – seen last week sitting next to the PM’s princely adviser Morgan McSweeney at the state dinner for Donald Trump.

“When populist politicians, convicted criminals, and foreign billionaires take to the stage to encourage violence, make racist comments, and threaten our democracy, it casts a dark shadow of fear and violence across our society,” Mr Starmer wrote.

The new home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is among several government figures who have also condemned the tycoon’s big screen flame-fanning comments.

But what would Mr Musk really have to say for them to ever give up using his social network X – still known to most as Twitter?

MEDIA CIRCLES

YOU may have spotted policy adviser, commentator, podcaster, you name it Livia Paggi on the list of people interested in being a Labour councillor above – and you may have spotted her in the pages of last week’s Camden New Journal too.

As chair of the Queen’s Crescent Community Association, she was hosting a fund-raising talk by The Guardian’s former editor Alan Rusbridger and Janine Gibson, the paper’s former US editor, revealing behind-the-scenes details of the Edward Snowden data surveillance world scoop.

See the current edition of the Camden New Journal for a report on what they said.

The North London Bubble continues below for those on a paid subscription.

Read more

The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington).

Look out for our complete news digest from around the boroughs going out on Mondays.

Plus on Tuesday, we have a bonus feature for members from Dan Carrier about a greengrocer who has confessed to a famous mail bag heist after going a lifetime undetected. It’s a cracking yarn coming your way.

Get 25% off for 1 year

THE OLD MANDELSON

AS it’s the third time, Lord Peter Mandelson’s departure from the government has not been met with unadulterated shock among the north London Labour figures who know him so well.

Even those who have counted him as a friend for many years, will tell you how curt he can be. This snippy, uncompromising manner did not always get written off as simply Mandy being Mandy by Sir Keir Starmer, who it’s been reported felt a little miffed when Lord Mandelson used a podcast to say the prime minister needed to “shed a few pounds” last year. There is a scale where people with power, influence and a nice villa near Regent’s Park probably think they can say anything.

It must all seem a long time ago since young Peter was selling the Morning Star outside Kilburn tube station and signing up to the Young Communist League. He’s reminded of that a lot, presumably because he hates to be.

But it’s not always so remembered how he played a key role in setting up The Winch in Swiss Cottage – or The Winchester Project – the community centre which rose from a squatted pub and has been a vital part of life in the area since the 1970s.

"I went to the meetings,” he once told the old Independent on Sunday newspaper. “I really can't remember what led me to the YCL. It was short lived. I felt no identification.

“I spent far more time setting up a tremendous youth club at the Winchester Arms at Swiss Cottage, tearing it apart with my bare hands, then rebuilding it to make it structurally sound.”

Lord Mandelson has been on quite a journey.

SCHADENFREUDE IN ISLINGTON NORTH

MEANWHILE in Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters have been unable to resist recalling the day that Lord Mandelson was sent to the constituency, or at least sent himself, before last year’s general election.

He was one of the ‘big hitters’ bussed in by the Labour Party to try and save a seat it had held for decades but was now losing to Mr Corbyn, its former leader standing as an independent. He knocked on doors for candidate Praful Nargund and they had a cheery photo together with the placards, as if the endorsements from divisive faces from the past would be a game-changer.

Mr Mandelson then went on Times Radio and predicted Mr Nargund would win, albeit only after checking the candidate’s name on a piece of paper. Hopefully, nobody lost any money at the bookies after listening to that.

Mr Corbyn looked rather gleeful when recounting Lord Mandelson’s less-than-effective visit to the frontline during a Peeps Studio interview last week. You can see the exchange with Isabel here.

“I’ve always found him a very strange, manipulative figure, both in his dealings with the media, and so much more,” Mr Corbyn said. “I just think I'm glad he's resigning”.

The trouble for Lord Mandelson is that even some Labour members who abhor Mr Corbyn’s politics are so revulsed by the content of his Jeffrey Epstein emails that they can’t help but agree with him on this one.

SOMEWHERE UP NORTH

WHEREFORE art thou, Your Party? People interested in a new left-wing political party seem to be getting a little tired of the many trailers without a full big cinematic release.

Speaking last week, Mr Corbyn said it’s coming, it’s coming – like a kid rushing down a corridor with their late homework. He insisted that it would all be up and running in time to be part of the autumn political conference season which, after Reform went early, begins in earnest this month.

Co-leader Zarah Sultana, the now independent MP for Coventry South, was the headline act at a warm-up event in Brixton on Friday, which Mr Corbyn did not attend.

Your Party, or whatever the final name will be, will have a conference in November “somewhere up north”, Mr Corbyn said, which sounds like quite a lot to organise in a short space of time. He is nonetheless promising poetry, songs … and economic policy.

Council sources had suggested to NLB that one of the original plans had been to stage the launch on the steps of Islington Town Hall, before council officers issued a strong reminder that public buildings can’t be used for party political purposes.

We also wait to find out how far all of this will lead to a list of names ready to stand for either Islington or Camden councils next year.

MORE MONEY FOR MUSK

THIS was the scene at the old 1940s bomb site in Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park, after this weekend’s ‘Uniting The Kingdom’ march led by Tommy Robinson. ‘Our flag represents our diverse country and we will never surrender it to those that use it as a symbol of violence, fear and division’, Sir Keir Starmer said on X.

X is owned by Elon Musk who appeared by videolink at Saturday’s demo, unhelpfully and dangerously whipping things up by saying: “Violence is coming… you either fight back or you die”.

Read more

The NLB is our weekly politics column on NewJournal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington). Also look out for our news digest later.

Get 25% off for 1 year

GOING UP

MOST-MESSAGED about development of the weekend was the rise of former council leader Georgia Gould to become an education minister in Sir Keir Starmer’s reshuffle. This is because there have always been gossips in Camden who believe she is on a fast-track to the very top, a suspicion usually caused by the connections she was born with as the daughter of the late Lord Gould, Tony Blair’s favourite pollster, and a good friend of Alastair Campbell and so on.

It always seems a little bit of a harsh characterisation when matched with the reality of her career, as most people with such a network don’t even bother with the stage of being a councillor, let alone spend seven years as a council leader.

That said, when the last bus to Westminster left just before last year’s general election, Ms Gould did not have too much trouble claiming her ticket in the final candidate selections before it was too late for others to get on board. Now little more than a year later, she has quickly ascended to the trusted ranks in government – a friend to the prime minister when he’s in need of some stability following Angela Rayner’s tax resignation.

How far will Ms Gould go? Let’s wait and see, but there were also openings for two former players in the Labour party in Islington. Lucy Rigby, who did a brief two year stint in the Holloway ward and is now an MP in Northampton North, has been elevated to a job in the treasury while Anna Turley, once a familiar activist in these parts, was named a minister without portfolio attending cabinet.

Sir Chris Bryant, whom older readers will remember as being Frank Dobson’s election agent in a previous life and the author of a queasy biography of Glenda Jackson, is the new business secretary.

LANDSLIDE LIB DEMS

THE dust has settled on the West Hampstead by-election with several campaigners heading off on a late summer break away after an August spent knocking on doors. The winner, Janet Grauberg, will be back in a full council meeting for the first time since 2010 when councillors in Camden reconvene on September 25.

The Labour campaign knew they were going to be up against it after only keeping Ms Grauberg out by 38 votes last time and with the national poll ratings bleeping with red alerts all around. There has been some surprise, however, at the scale of the Liberal Democrats’ victory. This wasn’t a clip around the ear for taking away the winter fuel payment, but a bruising gut punch for lots of others things too.

The clear frustration for local Labour is that it feels it is doing a good, honest job with the running of Camden Council, especially with the short resources available to them, but their councillors are being left vulnerable by national and even international events.

Opposition groups will find the obsession over Labour’s performance unfair to their own efforts at convincing people to vote for them, but the only time the party has lost control of Camden was in 2006 when Tony Blair’s government might just have been at its most disliked, in a large part due to the Iraq War.

Back then, Mr Blair took the step of personally phoning local organisers to apologise for the local elections meltdown result.

Council leader Richard Olzsewski said in the post-match comments that his party had fought a strong campaign, but it was his Whatsapp message to colleagues, urging them to take nothing for granted at next May’s boroughwide elections, that caught the eye.

In it, he blamed the ‘turncoat Tory’ for making the vote difficult, referring to Shiva Tiwari, who had defected to the Conservatives not long before the parcel rage incident which led to his resignation and this by-election.

But he also said: “There’s only so much we can do to swim against the national tide… We are clearly being impacted by our national unpopularity, just like everywhere else.”

This was partly in defence of Francesca Reynolds, the candidate who is thought of highly and was given what in football would be known as a bit of a hospital pass by standing against Ms Grauberg in such conditions.

But it also shows what a bind the local party is in as the full council elections creep closer into view. Campaigners do not want to criticise Sir Keir, their local MP, for any of his choices or the government’s performance but avoiding discussion and public debate on what might be going wrong means they risk being chained to whatever happens at Westminster.

Privately, even some of those who feel the hard decisions needed to be taken due to the legacy of the last government and financial hard times wonder whether the communications strategy has been right. Talked about a lot is the doom and gloom tone of Mr Starmer’s very first speech as PM and the apocalyptic way the government spoke about its inheritance when the public wanted some cost-of-living hope in a new administration.

The resounding result in West Hampstead obviously leaves the other two seats in the ward, currently held by Nazma Rahman and Sharon Hardwick, at risk. The same goes for neighbouring Fortune Green where Lorna Greenwood and Cllr Olszewski himself share the ward with Lib Dem Nancy Jirira.

And this is why there is so much speculation as to whether the leader will switch wards to somewhere safer, even as far away from his home ward as Holborn and Covent Garden. It would be quite a dispiriting message for those he’d be leaving behind in the north west of the borough, but perhaps needs must.

Yet again, Labour’s candidate selections will be soaked in parochial intrigue.

HERE’S ZACK

SO Zack Polanski made it and has become the leader of the Greens and of course journalists who had never really heard of him before reached straight for the infamous article in The Sun in which it was suggested he could help women think their breasts bigger and save money on an enlargement operation.

Despite all the things the Greens have said on policy and amid rising support, Baroness Natalie Bennett could still be found on TalkTV being asked about what she thought of his days as a hypnotherapist. Every right-wing paper regurgitated the controversy too.

“I stand by the intention of the article — that rather than going under the knife, people can feel more comfortable with their bodies as they are,” Mr Polanski explained in his Medium posts a long time ago. “I also stand, without condition, for equal rights and challenging stereotypes and perceptions of negative body image. None of this is to say that the journalist did a bad job or misrepresented me.

“When I saw the article it was clear the attention on body image and being comfortable with exactly how you are was not given the focus I wanted. But that’s a lesson learned.”

By the way, for the geeks: Mr Polanski is now the third national leader of the Green Party to have stood in an election in Camden in the past. As you all know, all roads lead back to here. Ms Bennett and Sian Berry are the other two.

Get 25% off for 1 year

Read more