WALTER CRONXITE, political editor, crunches some figures
Croydon’s residents may well be relieved, delighted even, that apart from the possible, occasional local by-election along the way, it’s likely that there will be no more need to visit their polling station again until May 2026.
Thin mandate: Keir Starmer has two-thirds of MPs after Labour got just one-third of the vote
Last week, nationally, 42.6% of voters did not vote Conservative or Labour. But with the possible exception of the far north of the borough, and not quite four years since the council’s financial crash, Croydon remains resolutely a two-party contest after these parliamentary elections.
Tory Jason Perry is already more than halfway through his term of office as Croydon Mayor. He’s said he wants to run again in 2026, but after last week’s election results, he might wonder whether it’s worth bothering.
Overall, the borough-wide share of the votes across Croydon on July 4 were:
LAB 67,284 44.02% (vote share down 4.74%*)
CON 40,310 26.37% (-11.55%)
GRN 14,316 9.37% (+6.63%)
LBD 13,928 9.11% (+0.09%)
REF 13,076 8.55% (+7.46%)
Others 3,951 2.58% (+2.11%)
* compared with 2019 General Election. Reform comparison with 2019 Brexit Party vote
These figures assume that voters in the Croydon North part of the new Streatham and Croydon North parliamentary seat voted in the same fashion as their Streatham neighbours.
In 2022, in the fresh flush of voter anger with Croydon Labour, Tory Perry was elected as the borough’s first executive Mayor with a meagre majority of just 589 votes. Can he make up the 17.65% gap between the Conservatives and Labour as seen in last week’s General Election before the locals in 2026?
Having spent the entire election campaign working to get Chris Philp re-elected in Croydon South, after the encouragement of holding Park Hill and Whitgift ward in May’s council by-election, Perry might consider that July 2024 represents the high water mark for Labour in the south of the borough, buoyed by the national wave of enthusiasm for Keir Starmer and a change of national government.
A very active Labour campaign in Croydon South will have provided them with a lot of data on voter preferences. But unless the Conservative meltdown continues, with Reform and the “PopCons” on their case, it seems likely that the tide will turn on Labour in the most southerly part of London.
In the bin: Tory Chris Philp was lucky in his election opponents
Philp was fortunate in the opponents he faced.
Labour’s Ben Taylor has extended his record of being an electoral liability. If another Croydon South resident, Stuart Brady, for example, had sought selection in his home constituency and secured the huge swing that he achieved in Reigate, Philp’s parliamentary career would now be over.
Philp also faced a strong Liberal Democrat candidate in Major Rick Howard, but his party opted to campaign in Sutton instead. Only in the last two weeks did Howard, a bomb disposal expert who saw service in Afghanistan and Iraq, put out a video that seemed to suggest he was adept at defusing bombs, while Philp, when in government, managed to blow up the UK economy.
When Taylor was selected by Labour members in Croydon South, one of the losing candidates for selection was Natasha Irons, who proved to be doubly fortunate in being given a second chance in the more winnable Croydon East, where she is now MP.
The Green Party was celebrating its raft of second-placings across London, including in three of the four Lambeth seats. But as the Green vote share matched the LibDems, it was the election savvy LibDems who won parliamentary seats in the capital, including the two Sutton seats and Wimbledon.
In Sutton, the Tories’ council group leader, Tom Drummond, saw his party’s vote share in Sutton and Cheam vote fall by 21% – one of the worst drops in votes across south London. Drummond blamed Reform, although Labour’s paper candidate, Croydon councillor Chrishni Reshekaron, saw a 3.5% vote increase, thanks to help from Tamil activists.
Largest falls in Conservative vote in south London’s 30 parliamentary seats were:
1, Bexleyheath and Crayford down 29.5%
2, Old Bexley and Sidcup down 26.3%
3, Orpington down 23.9%
4, Eltham and Chislehurst down 21.3%
5, Sutton and Cheam down 21%
6, Richmond Park down 18.5%
Back in Croydon, Mayor Perry will also note the extraordinarily low turnout in Croydon West. Low turnouts in the generally Labour-supporting north of the borough were one of the reasons that Perry took the Mayoralty two years ago.
Lowest turnouts in south London’s 30 parliamentary seats were as follows:
Croydon West 48.9%
Erith and Thamesmead 51.2%
Streatham and Croydon North 52.6%
Peckham 53.8%
Vauxhall and Camberwell Green 53.9%
Bermondsey and Southwark 54.1%
It is unlikely that Croydon Labour and its MPs will be enjoying an extended political honeymoon. Labour’s 2024 landslide victory is not underpinned by a surge in Labour votes.
Keir Starmer, the new Prime Minister, has secured a majority similar to Tony Blair’s 1997 triumph. The Conservatives have even fewer seats compared to 1997 (178).
But Blair got 43.2% of the vote. Starmer got 33.7%.
Starmer’s mandate is broad, but shallow, and vulnerable to the smallest falls in Labour support.
The Scream: Sarah Jones moments after the exit poll was announced on Thursday night. Did she know that less than half of Croydon West’s electorate had bothered to vote?
Unhappiness at even participating in the election was evident in Croydon West, where more registered voters opted not to exercise their democratic right than those who did cast their ballot.
Lack of participation in politics is even more acute in this socially deprived seat, which also exhibits a very high level of non-registration for the electoral roll.
The elections tell a story of disillusionment with politics. The only time there has been lower turnouts in more than 100 years was 1918 and 2001.
The 2024 national turnout dipped below 60% to 59.9%.
Mayor Perry will hope that Croydon South voters who came to Philp’s aid with much higher turnout figures than elsewhere in Croydon will be even more impactful in an expected lower-turnout local election (2024 turnout figures: Croydon South 65.9%, Croydon East 57.1%, Streatham and Croydon North 52.6%, Croydon West 48.9%).
Reform scored pretty much in line with their London vote share in Croydon when averaged across the borough, but the Faragists were notably strong in Croydon East, grabbing 13.4% of the vote, perhaps strongest on former council housing estates such as in New Addington.
Perry will know that Reform had no ground campaign at all in Croydon and so will hope to recapture a lot of their voters in a council election where local activity is important. Perry’s worst nightmare will be if Reform, buoyed by Farridge and four others becoming MPs, actually starts to get organised locally. If they do, then Perry is doomed to lose out in 2026, however much of a counter-reaction there might be to a Labour government.
And Perry’s national colleagues have left a legacy on electoral rules which do the Croydon Mayor no favours whatsoever. The abolition of the use of AV, the Alternative Vote system, for mayoral elections, means that piss-poor Perry can’t even count on getting far-right Reform voters’ second preference…
On the up: as Sian Berry, the former London Assembly Member, became one of the Greens’ four MPs, her party’s vote in London hit 10%
Here’s a thing, though. Across Greater London, one of the bedrocks of Labour and Starmer’s 2024 election victory, Labour’s vote share fell. As did those for the Conservatives and LibDems.
The Conservatives vote fell by 11% to 21%, Labour fell 5% to 43%, and the Liberal Democrats were down 4%, to 11%. The Greens more than trebled their vote, up from 3% to 10%. ” Others” were up 6% to 7%.
So how did Croydon local parties do against this benchmark?
For the Tories, it was worse than the regional party score in Croydon East (down 14.6%) and Croydon South (down 14.5%) but better in Croydon West (down 4.8%).
Smallest falls in Conservative vote share in south London’s 30 parliamentary seats
Croydon West down 4.8%
Peckham down 5.4%
Lewisham North down 6.1%
Streatham and Croydon North down 6.9%
Lewisham West and East Dulwich down 7%
Vauxhall and Camberwell Green down 7%
For Labour, Croydon seats were among the biggest vote share fallers in south London. The worst Labour vote fall was in Croydon West, the safer seat that Sarah Jones opted for after the boundary changes.
Biggest falls in Labour vote share in south London’s parliamentary seats
Croydon West down 12.6%
Peckham down 12%
Lewisham North down 11.8%
Lewisham West and East Dulwich down 7%
Tooting down 5.8%
Streatham and Croydon North down 5.7%
Croydon East down 5.7%
This, surely, is evidence of what Inside Croydon has dubbed “The Croydon Effect”, and what helped to save Chris Philp: the reluctance of Croydon voters, even Labour voters, to vote Labour in this borough after the catastrophic failings of the 2014-2020 council administration of Tony Newman and his Numpties.
So much, then, for Natasha Irons to dismiss it as “a load of nothing” when challenged on the issue at pre-election hustings. Here is the hard data that shows it is, indeed, a load of something.
Pressure points: the LibDems focused their campaigns in areas where they could win
Also impactful was how Labour’s national vote share with Asian voters fell 13% -the kind of reaction you get when, like Croydon North’s Steve Reed, you go out of your way to ignore genuine concerns over Palestine from Muslim voters, or if you say, in the days before a General Election, as fellow Blairite Jon Ashworth did, you want to “Send them back” when referring to Bangladeshis. Ashworth paid for his comments by losing his Leicester seat.
Nationally, the Greens were up 8% with these voters. Muslim voters’ shift from Labour to Greens or not voting was acute, with Labour losing the support of 300,000 Muslims nationally.
Tamil Muslim Jahir Hussain’s energetic campaign for the Liberal Democrats gained a bit of that Muslim vote which is especially concentrated in Croydon West. LibDem candidates in Croydon West, Croydon East and the two Sutton seats outperformed their party’s 4% fall in London vote share.
But the LibDems fought their election campaign cannily, not bothering to contest those seats where Labour was strong, but focusing on squeezing Labour votes in Conservative-held seats. The end result was 72 MPs in this new Parliament.
Top improvements in Liberal Democrats vote share in south London were
Wimbledon +6.8%
Dulwich and West Norwood +6.7%
Sutton and Cheam +3.5%
Croydon West +2.5%
Carshalton and Wallington +2%
Croydon East +1.5%
Largest falls in Liberal Democrat vote in south London
Beckenham and Penge down 7.6%
Bermondsey and Old Southwark down 7%
Vauxhall and Camberwell Green down 6.9%
Bromley and Biggin Hill down 6.7%
Streatham and Croydon North down 6.3%
Tooting down 5.8%
The fall in the Labour vote in Croydon East seat will mean that the Tories, and other possible challengers, will more likely focus on that constituency at the next General Election, just as they used to in the old swing seat of Croydon Central. Croydon East is now seat No300 in the batting order for the Conservatives when the next General Election is called – win that, and whoever is the next Tory leader (or the one after that, perhaps?) might be able to form a minority government. Croydon East must be won by the Conservatives if they aspire to govern again.
For the LibDems, Croydon East has moved up its list of targets, from a lowly 533rd to No215.
The Greens moving upwards is significant for the Liberal Democrats in places such as Streatham and Croydon North, in the battle for council seats at Brixton and Croydon town halls in 2026.
Top Green increases in vote share in south London
Lewisham North +16.7%
Peckham +14.5%
Vauxhall and Camberwell Green +13%
Streatham and Croydon North +12.7%
Lewisham West and East Dulwich +12.1%
Bermondsey and Old Southwark +11.9%
The 30 south London seats are shared as follows:
Labour 20
Liberal Democrats 6
Conservatives 4
Greens 0
Reform 0
Under pressure: Jason Perry has a difficult task to get re-elected as Croydon Mayor in 2026
The Conservatives nationally turned a deaf ear to Mayor Perry’s plea to write off part of the council crippling debt.
But at least in 2026, Mayor Perry will not have to wait for four days for the result.
There really has been some improvement in Croydon since 2022.
By locating this year’s General Election counts at Fisher’s Folly, Electoral Services staff avoided spending scarce time and energy on setting up the count off-site. Croydon finished its three counts among the pack of declarations coming in from across the country. In 2019, Croydon was 644th to declare, out of 650.
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