Remember, remember, the fifth of November… There might be an election going on elsewhere today, but in Croydon the selection results are already in, and local Conservatives are standing full-square behind part-time Perry in his bid to remain as Mayor. As WALTER CRONXITE, our political editor reports, the way things are going, he might just win
With 18 months to go until the next Town Hall elections, and Croydon Conservatives have gone out and declared that Jason Perry, the piss-poor and part-time Mayor of Croydon, is to be their candidate for the £82,000 per year job again in 2026.
Not that they had much of a choice. There was no other candidate for selection.
Conservative Party rules are such that, if an incumbent wants to stand again, no one should be so impolite as to require any kind of democratic process to challenge that. So the Tories are stuck with Perry, despite his record of failure since being elected in 2022.
And the way that the polls, and by-elections, have been going, it could just be that the people of Croydon might end up stuck with Perry, too.
After 14 years of Tory misrule, the new Labour Government, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, have seen their popularity ratings nosedive since the General Election in July.
Scrapping Winter Fuel Payments for pensioners, failing to scrap the two-child benefit cap, going soft on the water companies polluting our rivers and lakes and, only yesterday, hiking student tuition fees, have all contributed to the widespread disillusionment among the voting public.
That’s all without mentioning Rachel Reeves’ Budget last week, containing £40billion-worth of tax rises and not a penny to deal with the debts of England’s cash-strapped councils.
‘The Croydon Effect’: Tony Newman, who has remained suspended by the Labour Party for almost four years
Then there is the “Croydon Effect”, where four years on, residents are still feeling the full-on impact of Tony Newman’s Labour crashing the council finances.
It has been piss-poor Perry who has closed four public libraries and threaten to shut two state nursery schools, while reducing a range of other council services. But the narrative remains that all of these cuts have been a consequence of Labour mismanagement.
Labour’s local MPs are not doing much to revive their party’s popularity locally, either.
Muslim voters left Labour in droves in the General Election in Croydon West and Streatham and Croydon North, bitterly disappointed with the party’s support for Israel’s genocide on Gaza and the West Bank. Given the Starmer government’s underlining of their pro-Zionist position since taking power, those voters won’t be returning to Labour any time soon.
On a more local basis, Perry’s declaration as the Conservative candidate for the 2026 mayoral election puts him months ahead of all his political rivals. Although Labour in Croydon seemingly has only one credible candidate – Rowenna Davis – they won’t be conducting their selection until next year.
The LibDems have called for applications, but have not yet left the starting stalls.
Croydon’s progressive vote is split, with the Greens making some electoral progress in recent parliamentary elections and the Liberal Democrats advancing in Labour-held Croydon West and Croydon East. But their small party remains a long way off the pace in most of the borough.
‘Father Jack’: Tory Neil Garratt won in a Croydon-wide vote in May
It is worth stressing that we have had two very detailed surveys of public opinion in Croydon already in 2024: the General Election in July and the London Elections in May. In the latter, the Tories, with Assembly candidate Neil “Father Jack” Garratt and their abysmally poor mayoral candidate, Susan Hall, won the Croydon-wide ballot.
Perry only has to repeat those kind of results, and he can look forward to another £328,000 of public dosh over the course of a four-year term to boost his small businessman’s pension pot, all for doing pretty much nothing. Perry has not had any real power in Croydon since early 2023, shortly after he issued the borough’s third Section 114 notice and Michael Gove increased the powers of Croydon’s mis-named “Improvement Board”.
Perry and his fellow Croydon Tories, including shadow home secretary (try not to laugh) Chris Philp have benefited recently because Racist UK, the commercial business masquerading as a political party led by Nigel Farridge, has been barely organised in Croydon. A meeting in a South Norwood pub last week, attended by fewer than 30, is the best that they have managed thus far.
Even if Croydon Labour had a blemish-free record, though, they would have significant cause for despair, as the party’s ratings nationally have tumbled off a cliff edge under Starmer. So much so that the latest polling figures, before last weekend, showed the leader-less Tories with a 1% lead over Labour.
Taking a dive: things have only gone south for Starmer’s Labour since July. The Tories overtook Labour by 1% lastb week
Starmer’s Labour may well have won a landslide in terms of parliamentary seats, but the July 4 General Election victory was achieved with a relatively low number of votes (fewer than achieved in 2017 when Jeremy Corbyn was leader). And that’s now looking like the high tide mark of Starmerism.
Outside London and the south-east, Labour has been losing council seats to Racist UK. Today Labour lost control of an entire city council, Newcastle, as six of their councillors resigned their party whip, dismayed and, in some cases, angry at the direction that their party has taken under Starmer and his henchman… sorry, chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.
In just four months since the General Election – and before today’s developments emerged on Tyneside – Labour had lost 20 council seats, the Conservatives had gained 15, with Green and SNP both winning three council by-elections.
South London council by-elections provide a clue to what might be in store for Labour here.
In Eltham Town and Avery Hill ward in Greenwich last month, a council by-election saw the Tories win a seat from Labour, winning 48.8% to Labour’s 31.5% (down by 9.1%), with Racist UK out-performing LibDems and Greens (albeit on a typically low council by-election turn-out).
That kind of result, though, if repeated across Croydon on Thursday, May 7, 2026, would see the Conservatives gain 11 council seats, to 44, and Labour losing nine council seats (down to 25), with the LibDems clinging on to their single, consolation council seat.
Slippage and sliding: Labour’s council losses have been mounting up
And Jason Perry would be Mayor once again.
Now while local conditions, and candidates, dictate that such an outcome in Greenwich will not necessarily be repeated exactly in Croydon, it does give a flavour of the uphill task Labour is facing here as their Westminster colleagues impose Austerity 2.0 on the nation.
And all the while, piss-poor Perry does not have to do a thing, beyond raising Council Tax to hitherto unknown levels in Croydon.
How Stuart King and his Labour council colleagues must now be regretting their decision, twice, to abstain on Council Tax votes. The public won’t forget the 15% hike in 2023, but they won’t forget how they were badly let down by Labour, too.
Read more: Perry’s Council Tax increases to reach 27% by April 2025
Read more: Residents’ groups reject Purley ‘pool’ plan backed by Perry
Read more: Mayor Perry busts his unbalanced budget with £42m overspend
Read more: Perry backs down from legal threats against homeless charity
Read more: Labour MPs’ ‘tears’ won’t keep the elderly warm this winter
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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
Lets hope Binface decides to stand after all, can’t do another 5 years of piss poor platitude Perry, whose plan has only ever been to hope the government writes off the debt, the only other thing rattling around that cranium is AI, but that’s only because he doesn’t have any of his own
Surely there is scope for an “Anyone but Perry” campaign, to organise support for a single candidate to unseat Piss-Poor Perry (to avoid splitting the opposition votes and giving the Perry toerag another four years to plunder Croydon) ?
Binface is the only candidate that can take out the rubbish that Croydon Council has become. He has even been to the Harvester in Addington Village. So has as strong a local connection that is required these days in our post rational politics.