WALTER CRONXITE, political editor, on the early start to the 2026 local election campaign

Campaign video: Rowenna Davis spent the day with Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham

Croydon’s 2026 mayoral election campaign is well and truly underway – and the Labour Party has not even started its candidate selection process yet.

In a bold, some might say brave, others might suggest foolhardy, move, Rowenna Davis, the first-term Labour councillor for Waddon ward, spent yesterday in Manchester alongside that city’s mayor, Andy Burnham. The messaging was clear: strong, capable mayors, and Labour mayors such as Burnham, do work. Davis was placing herself in that same category.

Jason Perry, Croydon’s piss-poor Tory Mayor, has been re-selected by the Conservatives, and he is already utilising the council’s media streams to promote himself – all completely bent, to use public resources for one party, of course, but arrogant Perry knows he can get away with it unchallenged.

Davis stood down as the council’s chair of its scrutiny committee – where she proved an effective check on the stubborn and often grumpy Perry – specifically to be able to seek selection to be Labour’s mayoral candidate in 2026. But her party has yet to fire the starting gun on its candidate selection, for mayor or for the 70 council seats that will be up for grabs in 18 months’ time.

Davis’s video trip to Manchester therefore was aimed at three different constituencies. Probably least important, at this stage at least, are the ordinary Croydon voters. Local elections are an exercise in apathy, with low turnouts, and 18 months out a Town Hall election is not on many people’s agenda.

Influence: in 2021, ‘Lambeth South’ MP Steve Reed ran a campaign opposing the very notion of having an elected mayor in Croydon

Davis’s second “constituency” will be Croydon’s Labour Party members, the people who will, eventually, be choosing their mayoral candidate. Being seen alongside one of the party’s most reccognisable and respected national figures will appeal to many of the people who she will be relying on to go out door-knocking and leaflet-delivering in the campaign proper.

The third group Davis’ video tour of the north-west must appeal to are party officials, from the notoriously Stalinistic national and London region offices. Croydon Labour remains on the naughty step for crashing the council’s finances in 2020, and the local party is still not allowed to operate its own affairs – such as candidate selection.

So in this respect, this is where Davis’s trip to Manchester is a bit of a risk.

If someone at Labour HQ notices and takes a dislike to the stunt, or thinks it is too presumptuous, they could derail Davis’s selection even before the process has begun. And with Croydon-connected figures such as the notoriously thin-skinned Steve Reed and Morgan McSweeney at the top of the party, that is quite a high possibility.

In other respects, though, Davis has wisely moved as far away from Croydon as possible. That avoids her mayoral campaign actually confronting the issues in Croydon.

Labour are yet to apologise for bankrupting the borough. Two figures at the centre of the financial collapse four years ago, Tony Newman and Simon Hall, remain on “administrative suspension” by the Labour Party. But no disciplinary action has been taken against them.

Will Davis apologise for her party bankrupting the council?

Will Davis show that Labour have substantive ideas on how they would fix Croydon’s finances? Mayor Perry and the council’s CEO, Katherine Kerswell, have shown that they are incapable of doing so, at least not without significant government intervention – which was something Perry failed to deliver when the Tories were in control at Westminster.

Davis really needs, with her colleagues Stuart King, the Labour leader (for now) at the Town Hall, and Councillor Callton Young, to be working on a detailed alternative budget for February’s budget-setting meeting. That’s something Labour has failed to do previously, instead meekly letting Perry’s unbalanced budget through by abstaining. Twice.

The abstainers: Labour leader Stuart King and Callton Young have let Perry off the hook with his Council Tax hikes and unbalanced budgets

But what was, typically of most politicians, fundamentally dishonest about the whole excursion to Manchester by Davis was how little the work of a metro mayor can be applied to a London borough.

It’s no wonder that Burnham appeared a bit nonplussed when Davis asked what ideas Croydon can take from Greater Manchester.

“God, what can Croydon learn from Manchester?” Burnham says, as if he had never expected such a question to be asked.

Burnham, in the back of a vehicle with Davis, volunteers public sector-sponsored redevelopment and skills training, like his Manchester Baccalaureate which entails employment skills training from 14, rather than academic study. “A C Bac,” jokes Burnham.

In Manchester, Burnham has a development corporation and skills training powers. It’s comparable to the powers that London Mayor Sadiq Khan holds. London’s two development corporations are at the Olympic Park and Old Oak and Royal Park.

But development corporations are not in Croydon Council’s powers.

Nor is skills training.

Maybe Davis could get the Mayor of London to support a Croydon Development Corporation and persuade the government to find the money to fund it. That would certainly represent significant change: the Greater London Authority has invested little in Croydon since it was created in 2000.

And would it really be wise for Davis to even suggest such a course of action?

Public sector-led redevelopment was a disaster for Croydon when Labour were last in power at the Town Hall. Anyone forgotten the damage done with Brick by Brick? Or the £70million squandered on an ill-delivered refurbishment of Fairfield Halls? No, thought not…

The Davis mayoral campaign does need to come up with ideas. But they need to be Croydon relevant ideas.

This is especially the case with recent council by-elections in and around London pointing to Mayor Perry being the favourite to win in 2026, as voters turn away from Starmer, Reed and McSweeney’s Labour.

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: Labour MPs’ ‘tears’ won’t keep the elderly warm this winter

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