With two weeks to go, ANDREW FISHER focuses in on your three, or four, votes in Croydon. PLUS: how you can make sure you have proper photo ID for election day
Every Croydon voter will have at least three votes to use on Thursday May 2.
X marks the spot: who gets your vote for London Mayor?
You get one vote for London Mayor, and have two votes to choose your representatives on the Greater London Assembly – one voting for your choice of individual to represent Croydon and Sutton, and then an additional list for your preferred party for one of the 12 top-up seats on the Assembly.
Some people might have already voted: postal voting packages should have arrived on Croydon doormats this week, following the 44-page booklet on how to vote that ought to have arrived with every registered voter from the London Elects agency last week.
This is the seventh elections for a London Mayor and Assembly. For the first time, the London Mayoral election is being conducted using the first-past-the-post system, rather than a supplementary vote system. What this means in practice is that whereas in previous London Mayor elections you could mark a ‘1’ next to your first-choice candidate and a ‘2’ next to your second choice, in this election, you simply mark an ‘X’ next to your chosen candidate – as you do in a General Election.
Current polling suggests that Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan will coast to an historic third term. YouGov has Khan ahead of Conservative candidate Susan Hall by 43% to 30%, while pollsters Savanta have Khan on a dominant 50%, with Hall trailing a distant second on 26%.
Latest figures: this week’s polling gives London Mayor Sadiq Khan a massive lead over the Harrow hairdresser
In previous elections, Khan defeated Zac Goldsmith by 44.2% to 35.0% in 2016, and beat Shaun Bailey by 40.0% to 35.3% in 2021 (delayed from 2020 due to the pandemic).
With national polling showing Labour an average of 20 points in the lead over the Conservatives, Khan should hold the London mayoralty comfortably. But in 2021 polling also gave Khan a healthy lead which proved much narrower when votes were cast. Elections are about getting your vote out, and Hall thinks she is on to a winner in outer London with her pledge to scrap ULEZ.
Despite loud opposition before its implementation, the policy seems to be working (initial findings show some reduction in air pollutants) and most people have realised they are unaffected. Hall is also pledging to scrap the current London Mayor’s free school meal policy. That may prove less popular with parents. Missing from most of her leaflets is mention of the Conservative Party, except in the small print.
The London Assembly’s 25 members, 13 of them representing super-constituencies, are there to scrutinise the work of the Mayor.
Labour gains: other polling suggests Labour’s ‘Mrs Anonyvoter’, Maddie Henson, will win in the Croydon and Sutton Assembly seat
And while London has shifted more towards Labour in the last decade, the Croydon and Sutton seat at the London Assembly has remained stubbornly Conservative.
In 2016, Steve O’Connell won with 38.6% of the vote with Labour second on 32.2%. That gap widened in 2021, with the Tories’ Neil Garratt winning by 41.4% to Labour’s 31.3%.
The available polling suggests this will be a lot closer this time and that Labour could win. The party has selected Croydon councillor Maddie Henson to contest the seat currently held by Garratt, who is the leader of the Conservative group at City Hall and a councillor in Sutton.
The Greens and the LibDems – growing forces in Croydon politics having taken council seats in 2022 – will be battling it out for a respectable third place, as they will in the final two contests …
Because if you’re lucky enough to be living in either the Woodside or Park Hill and Whiftgift wards, there are also council by-elections being held on May 2.
Votes could show whether MP Philp is really at risk of losing his seat
In Woodside, popular local councillor Mike Bonello has stood down due to the pressures of work. When Bonello won his seat in a by-election in 2021, just months after the resignation of the former council leader, Tony Newman, who he was replacing, he did so with 47.9% of the vote and a 1,000-vote majority. Labour should comfortably the seat in a ward that has consistently returned three Labour councillors.
The contest in Park Hill and Whitgift is more interesting, even though it was won comfortably by Conservative councillor Jade Appleton with 53.7% of the vote in 2022.
Since then, the national polls have switched massively in Labour’s favour (post-Partygate, Liz Truss and recession, as well as constant Conservative scandals) and the party is campaigning hard in a ward that will form part of the Croydon South parliamentary constituency at the next General Election.
It is a result that Chris Philip – who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury for Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget that we are all still paying for today – will be watching closely. The result here may give us an insight into how much at risk Philp’s parliamentary seat might be at a General Election.
The deadline to register to vote has now passed, but even if you’ve overcome that obstacle, another barrier lurks in wait.
These are the first set of elections in England for which you will be required to bring approved photo ID with you when you vote.
Moving up: the Greens, with candidate for Mayor Zoe Garbutt, are being watched carefully by Labour and Sadiq Khan’s supporters
A passport or driving licence is fine, but your photo bus pass might not be deemed good enough.
If you’re in possession of a 60+ London Oyster Photocard from Transport for London, that is accepted as valid ID.
But if you’re a young person with a bus pass from TfL, or have a young person’s railcard, that is not valid ID.
Some have pointed out that pensioners are more likely to vote Conservative, while younger people are less likely to – and this is a fairly blatant piece of partisan voter suppression. It’s not just cynics saying this, but anyone with a modicum of objectivity.
The deadline to apply for free voter ID for the 2024 elections on is 5pm next Wednesday, April 24 – and you can apply here: https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-photo-id-voter-authority-certificate
Elsewhere in the country, there are council elections across England, more than 30 Police and Crime Commissioner elections, and 10 metro mayoral elections. The ones to watch are the mayoral contests in West Midlands and Tees Valley, currently Conservative-held, to see if Labour wins those mayoral contests for the first time.
There is also a parliamentary by-election in Blackpool South. The Conservative Scott Benton resigned in disgrace following a sting by undercover journalists from The Times, posing as gambling industry lobbyists, in which Benton offered to break parliamentary rules. Expect a comfortable Labour gain in a seat the party only narrowly lost in 2019.
Overall, expect another bad night for the Conservatives (though maybe not quite as bad as the night that Fylde MP Mark Menzies had last December…, just the latest scandal to hit the Tories).
These seats were last contested in 2021, at a time when the Tories were just ahead in the polls. With a General Election only a matter of months away, these will be an even more closely-watched than usual set of elections.
For more information on where to vote and who is standing for election, use our widget here:
From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn. Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- How myth of shared ownership has made housing crisis worse
- Finally Labour members will have a say in Croydon East saga
- There’s good reason politicians are more unpopular than ever
- It’s the same in Croydon and Birmingham: Pay More, Get Less
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Thank you for highlighting how the new ID requirements may hurt many voters, particularly younger and poorer voters. I’ve seen many right-wing commentators display a casual attitude to these new rules, the argument being that if someone really wants to vote, they will apply for and access the right ID, but poorer voters are less likely to have a (up-to-date) passport or driving licence, and many voters live such chaotic, difficult and busy lives, that they won’t register for a ‘Voter Authority Certificate’, or are, understandably, suspicious and wary of applying for such ID. My fear is that we might even see some voters turned away on election day because their legitimate ID photo is old and unrecognisable from the voter.
In view of how miniscule the actual incidence of electoral fraud is (according to The Electoral Commission, of 1,462 alleged cases of ‘electoral fraud’ between 2019 and 2023, only 10 of these led to a conviction), I cannot help thinking that this is yet another unnecessary and draconian law from an increasingly autocratic central government, and one that will potentially exclude far more legitimate voters (particularly of certain demographics and, thus, political persuasions) than it will clamp down on fraudulent ones (which, of course, is the entire underlying purpose).
Active Labour Croydon canvasser Mr Hill is right to highlight how older voters are caught up in this new ID to vote requirement.
On the Croydon doorstep I find older voters, often Conservative inclined voters, concerned about not having the relevant or aged ID.
I noted Mr. Hill’s concern about autocracy.
This concern must include Labour where autocratic tendencies are woven into the very fabric of the party as seen in the way the local Croydon Labour Party is managed not by its members but instead by regional officers, has its Croydon local council candidates chosen by regional officers, associates itself with hacking Inside Croydon, deselects or expels those who were whistleblowers on the failed governance of the last Labour council and whose Labour government tried legislation to introduce national ID cards.
I voted in Parliament against ID cards.
The new autocratic anti protest powers introduced by the Conservatives will be dangerous weapons in the hands of a possible Labour government.
Chris Philip, Chief Secretary to the Treasury for Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget.
It says it all. Time for change in South Croydon.