EXCLUSIVE: Labour councillor for Waddon ward stands down from council committee role, with 2026 local elections as a target.
By STEVEN DOWNES
‘On a journey’: Rowenna Davis has begun her campaign to be Labour’s mayoral candidate in 2026
The starting gun on the campaign for election as Croydon Mayor in 2026 was fired this afternoon, as Labour councillor Rowenna Davis resigned her position as chair of Croydon Council’s scrutiny and overview committee.
By standing down from this important civic position halfway through the term of the council, Davis has freed herself to pursue selection as the Labour Party candidate for Croydon Mayor at elections due to be held in 2026, when Conservative Jason “I’m listening” Perry is expected to seek re-election for the £82,000 per year role.
There is, as yet, no selection process laid out by the Labour Party, whose regional officials have a well-deserved reputation for being glacially slow in laying out the ground rules on a range of selections.
With Croydon Labour still effectively in “special measures” with the party nationally because of their crashing of the council’s finances, the usual democratic autonomy that might be expected over local selection issues does not apply. Party insiders have expressed hopes that their mayoral candidate selection might begin once the party conference in Liverpool is finished in a fortnight’s time.
“Every passing week when we don’t have a candidate in place is handing an advantage to Perry, who will use the council’s press office to enhance his claims,” a Labour source said.
Labour were reluctant participants in Croydon’s first mayoral election in 2022, having spent most of 2021 (and about £10,000 of party funds) running an ill-conceived campaign headed up by Tony Newman ally Steve Reed MP that opposed the very notion of changing to a mayoral system.
This all served to delay party members getting round to selecting Val Shawcross as their candidate, and gave the Tories a head start.
Close call: Jason Perry making his acceptance speech after being elected as Croydon Mayor by fewer than 600 votes in 2022. Labour’s Val Shawcross is on the right of the stage
From the start, Shawcross’s campaign was badly handicapped, starting much later than Perry and the Tories, burdened with Labour’s dog-in-the-manger grumpiness over the whole mayoral system, and with the huge disadvantage of the financial chaos left behind at the Town Hall by former leader Tony Newman and his Numpties.
In the end, in May 2022, Perry won the borough-wide, transferrable vote election by just 589 votes from Shawcross.
Davis’s intention to seek selection for Labour in 2026 has been a poorly-kept secret for almost a year.
Elected as a Croydon councillor for the first time in 2022 – for Waddon ward, where she lives with her young family – Davis has less of the Croydon Labour “baggage” that weighs down most of her party colleagues at the Town Hall. Indeed, it is generally acknowledged that London Labour still has a ban on any Labour councillors from the 2014-2020 Newman era even being put forward on selection short-lists for higher office.
That, for instance, rules out Stuart King, the current leader of the Labour group at Croydon Town Hall. And as one Labour source told Inside Croydon this afternoon, “There’s a real dearth of talent among Labour’s councillors.
“It’s not so much that Rowenna is the obvious choice to be Labour’s candidate. She’s pretty much the only choice.”
‘On manoeuvres’: Rowenna Davis’s social media has recently become much more borough-wide in its coverage, and more directly challenging of Perry
Davis, 39, has been involved in politics since she was at school, and has in turn been a local councillor in Peckham and a Labour parliamentary candidate in 2015 in Southampton (unsuccessfully). As the author of Tangled Up in Blue, an examination of the rise of the Blue Labour movement, her politics won’t scare the Starmerites who control the party with an iron-grip.
Educated at Balliol, Oxford (PPE, natch), Davis has worked as a journalist, writing political columns for the likes of The New Statesman, The Guardian (which she mentions on her social media profile) and The S*n (which she doesn’t).
From 2015, she worked as a teacher, including at Harris Invictus Academy. Her efforts in local politics to be selected for council or Assembly roles in Croydon tended to be blocked by Newman and his Numpties.
It was during the 2020 covid pandemic and lockdown that Davis’s brand of Obama-esque community activism really drew a lot of attention, when at a tough time for so many people, she organised food collections and community self-help groups to widespread acclaim.
Since being elected to Croydon Council just over two years ago, she has grasped the opportunity as scrutiny chair to great effect, holding not only the Mayor, but also senior council officials to account.
Such has been Davis’s effectiveness that the cross-party consensus of the scrutiny committee under her as chair has drawn praise from the government’s “improvement panel”, while Perry has been prompted to change his personnel on the committee, installing the less-compromising figure of Alasdair Stewart as the Conservative deputy chair.
Over the summer, Davis has been seen to be “on manoeuvres”, with social media posts displaying a keen interest in issues and other parts of the borough outside of Waddon, building her credentials as a viable candidate to become the borough’s mayor.
Davis is expected to stand down as scrutiny chair formally at its meeting next week, and today submitted letters to the various parties with her resignation from the role (which pays £32,634 in allowances).
In a video distributed on social media this afternoon, Davis said: “It’s been a real honour to be chair of scrutiny over the last two and a half years and now I am standing down.
“I’m so proud of what we’ve done. For too long, the council has made decisions in the dark, and everyone knows that if power makes decisions without being open to proper question or proper challenge, that thos decisions will very rarely serve the public interest.
“What we’ve done is bring scrutiny into the light. And I’m particularly proud of what we’ve done to bring the council to the community, listening to your ideas on everything from how we should make Croydon safer for women and girls to what we should do with our libraries, which is being discussed next week.
“So thank you to everyone who’s been a part of it and will continue to be a part of it, and I’ll keep you posted on what’s next for me.”
Given that Davis’s final session as scrutiny chair will include discussion of Mayor Perry’s seemingly unilateral decision to axe four public libraries, and the £42million overspending hole in his unbalanced budget, the council could go some way to driving down its debts by charging public admission tickets for the Town Hall chamber that night.
Read more: Mayor Perry busts his unbalanced budget with £42m overspend
Read more: It’s time for our elected councillors to stand up for Croydon
Read more: You can depend on Croydon Labour: they always let you down
Read more: Perry pleads poverty when he has more Council Tax than ever
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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
The Council Chamber in the Town Hall is quite small, and councillors may not want to be seen/heard by even a few of the (rightfully) disgruntled Croydon residents, so perhaps the council could drive down the debt mountain more by selling the tv rights to the scrutiny committee meeting, and it could be seen by far more of the great unwashed ?
It could be a Netflix mini-series
Can they be specific on what they have actually done? It seems that every party and every single person to be elected as mayor promises the same thing, being proud of some abstract stuff and they all have a “plan”, but nothing changes. Ever.
Rowenna has undoubtedly been active in her role as Chair of Scrutiny. But what has actually been achieved in that role in the past two and a bit years? Perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect much, seeing that the Council has so little room for manoeuvre in the current financial circumstances.
We need a campaign against Government cuts and in favour of fairer funding for Croydon. Such a campaign needs to involve the public and other local authorities. Will any candidates for Croydon Mayor genuinely do this? Given that Starmer’s Labour and the Tories nationally are both wedded to austerity politics I’m not confident that candidates from either of these parties will take this on in any real way.
This Government stated no extra funding for the NHS without reform. The local government model needs a lot of reform with more and more councils in heavy debt meaning ever spiralling council tax with worse and worse services. Maybe they’ll do another ten year plan for that, with no extra funding without reform. Come the next General Election they’ll claim what great progress they’ve made after inheriting such a mess and they need time to complete these long plans, it’s a new spin on austerity I suppose.
In the triumphalist run into the Labour government election the Croydon East MP dismissed the Labour Party’s bankrupting the council as “a load of nothing.”
Labour are not ready to take back control of the council.
Rowenna will make a great Mayor – if she does indeed stand and Croydon Labour are smart enough to pick her. That isn’t a foregone conclusion, of course. The Khmer Rouge style resentment of anyone with intellect and intelligence, evident while Newman and his inner clique of idiots misruled the borough, is a boil that still needs lancing.
The worry now is who will replace her as Chair of Scrutiny. Let’s hope it’s not that patronising pillock, Alasdair Stewart. He definitely won’t hold part-time Perry to account
The new chair of scrutiny will have to be an opposition councillor. The part-finished council constitution demands it. Much to Perry’s regret