EXCLUSIVE: In 2021, one councillor seeking to be chosen as her party’s candidate for elected Mayor ran a campaign with the slogan: ‘I can do more for the people I care about’. What might be her catchphrase be in 2025?
By STEVEN DOWNES
Newman and a Numpty: Manju Shahul-Hameed served in council cabinets under the discredited Tony Newman for almost three years
A Newman Numpty, former council cabinet member Manju Shahul-Hameed, could be among the hopefuls seeking selection to be Labour’s candidate for Croydon Mayor next May.
Six months late, the Labour Party has today announced to its members in Croydon that they can pick their mayoral candidate.
The process is likely to last at least four weeks, although even today’s announcement had suffered last-minute delays by the all-powerful National Executive Committee, which has been effectively overseeing the running of most of Croydon Labour’s activities for the past five years.
The delays in running its selection have automatically put any Labour candidate who is chosen at a disadvantage against Tory incumbent, Jason Perry, who has been drawing down the Mayor’s salary of £80,000-plus since 2022, and who was confirmed as the Conservative candidate in the Croydon Mayor elections in May 2026 almost six months ago.
Croydon Labour insiders say that they were told that their selection process was supposed to be conducted as soon as party conference season was over last autumn. But with Labour’s council group still under “special measures” with the national and regional Labour Party since they crashed and burned the Town Hall finances, local officials were not trusted to conduct the selection themselves.
Croydon’s LCF – the supposedly influential Local Campaign Forum committee of apparatchiks from across the borough’s Constituency Labour Parties who are supposed to oversee candidate selections and campaign strategies for all elections – has not had a formal meeting since the General Election last July.
“Democracy in action in Croydon Labour,” one disaffected party member said.
Croydon’s local elections, including votes for 70 councillors across 28 wards, are due to be held on Thursday, May 7, 2026, alongside the borough’s second mayoral election.
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
The larger political parties are expected to field a full slate of councillor candidates across the borough, though insiders are suggesting that just finding party members willing to go door-knocking for Labour in Croydon in the past year has proved increasingly difficult, “So finding 70 fully-vetted, reliable members who might actually make hard-working councillors is becoming a bit of an issue.”
Finding credible candidates for the top job also seems to be problematic, with the reputational issues surrounding all those who took special responsibility allowances during the discredited administration of Tony Newman unlikely to be acceptable to the Croydon electorate.
Which is why any attempt to be selected by Shahul-Hameed might appear futile. “But Manju’s a shameless self-promoter, so she wouldn’t be in any way concerned about her part in the council’s financial collapse,” another insider suggested.
Another Labour member, when told of Shahul-Hameed’s possible intention to run, just said, “Jesus wept.”
Shahul-Hameed has been a councillor for Broad Green ward since 2006. She’s done a turn in the brassy chains and dodgy ermine of civic mayor (with its extra allowances, natch) and from 2018 was Newman’s appointed cabinet member for economy and jobs, receiving an extra 30 grand or so per year as a result. No one Inside Croydon has spoken to can remember anything Shahul-Hameed might have achieved in her time on the Town Hall front bench.
A campaign slogan written by Alan Partridge: Shahul-Hameed is ‘a shameless self-promoter’
Since 2020, when Newman and his finance expert, Simon Hall, were forced to resign their cabinet positions, and ultimately stand down from the council, Labour’s London Region has taken a dim view of any member of their team from seeking official positions because of the reputational damage they caused in Croydon.
That did not extend to an outright ban on blatant box-ticking exercises, though, when Shahul-Hameed toured the country in the apparent quest for selection to stand for Parliament.
Dr Shahul-Hameed is a former software engineer who was studying for a PhD in health and social care at the same time that she was drawing down £40,000-plus per year as a council cabinet member under Newman.
The south London councillor failed to make the shortlist.
She also sought her party’s endorsement through putting herself forward in Bolton West and Crewe and Nantwich. After withdrawing from the latter, Shahul-Hameed polled “in single figures” at the Bolton selection meeting, where more than 200 votes were up for grabs.
In 2021, she was also unsuccessful in her attempt to be Labour’s candidate for Croydon Mayor. Shahul-Hameed’s chosen selection slogan was described as something that could have been written for Alan Partridge: “I can do more for the people I care about.” Seriously.
One Labour councillor known to be seeking selection to run for Mayor is Rowenna Davis, who announced as much last September when she resigned her position as chair of Croydon Council’s scrutiny and overview committee.
Davis has the advantage of being unsullied by association with the Newman era. She was first elected to the council in 2022, for Waddon ward, where she lives. As she gestured across the Town Hall Chamber last month – to one of her Conservative counterparts – unlike Croydon’s Tories, Davis never voted for any Newman council Budget.
Davis has been running her own, bespoke mayoral campaign via social media for six months, freed of the bureaucracy of a formal Labour campaign, as well as standing up to shouty Tory bullies during the Budget debate.
Labour is the last of the three largest parties to name their 2026 mayoral candidate, after Perry for the Conservatives and Richard Howard for the Liberal Democrats.
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
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Read more: You can depend on Croydon Labour: they always let you down
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