Rowenna Davis has emerged as the front-runner in the race for selection to be Labour’s candidate for next year’s Croydon mayoral elections.
Front-runner: Rowenna Davis was quick to release a campaign video after being notified she had made Labour’s shortlist for selection as mayoral candidate
A councillor for Waddon since 2022, Davis announced over the weekend that she has been shortlisted in her party’s selection contest, using a subtly non-party mini-video on social media that states that what Croydon needs is “a Mayor who puts people first”.
Davis is on the shortest of shortlists, with another councillor, Manju Shahul-Hameed, the only other name being put before Croydon’s Labour members. The long-delayed selection process is expected to be completed by Easter – having given Croydon’s Tories, and Jason Perry, a six-month head start in his re-election campaign.
Five years since they crashed the council’s finances, Croydon’s Labour officials are still not trusted, even by their own party, to manage this selection process within the borough.
But the decision of the panel of National Executive Committee and London Region Labour officials who decided on the shortlist to include Shahul-Hameed displays a serious lack of awareness of the damage caused to Croydon by their party and of the simmering public resentment against Labour that still exists in Croydon.
Either that, or there’s no real remorse from Labour nationally for the manner in which Tony Newman and his Numpties – including Shahul-Hameed – mismanaged the council and squandered hundreds of millions of pounds on failed housing company Brick by Brick and the Fairfield Halls refurbishment fiasco.
Slow mover: Manju Shahul-Hameed’s own confirmation that she had been shortlisted took her two days to post a policy-free video
Shahul-Hameed, a councillor for Broad Green ward since 2006, was supposedly the £40,000 per year cabinet member for business under Newman for the key period when the council’s finances collapsed. Although she may have been too busy to notice, as she was studying for a PhD at the time.
Inside Croydon has no record of Shahul-Hameed ever apologising for her role in the council’s financial difficulties under Newman.
Newman has been suspended by the Labour Party for more than four years for his part in the scandal, which makes Shahul-Hameed’s inclusion on the mayoral selection shortlist all the more inconsistent.
Labour Party sources suggest that there were no other applicants for consideration.
Davis has the advantage of personally not carrying any of that Newman era baggage into her campaign. Indeed, Newman himself intervened to block Davis’s first attempt to be selected as a Labour candidate for the council.
Although she has only been a councillor in Croydon for three years, Davis is an experienced political operator, having been a councillor in Southwark – Peter John, that council’s former leader, was one of the first to endorse Davis’s campaign when the shortlist was confirmed – and 10 years ago, she was a (losing) parliamentary candidate in Southampton. She is the author of Tangled Up In Blue, not to be confused with the Dylan song, but which has been described as “an examination of the rise of the Blue Labour movement”.
Not the Dylan song: Davis’s 2011 book
While waiting for Labour to get its act together over selection, Davis has been waging her own, one-woman campaign, unencumbered by party protocols and niceties, after she stepped down as the influential chair of the council’s scrutiny committee last September.
She continues to irk Perry’s Tory High Command, an intervention at last month’s Town Hall Budget meeting seeing Jason Cummings, Perry’s finance chief, explode in a shouty loss of temper.
Davis does have an unblemished voting record with her Labour whips, having always toed the party line. The noteworthy exception being in 2023 when Labour voted in favour of Jason Perry’s first, 15% Council Tax hike: Davis did not vote, as she was absent on maternity leave.
Davis lists sorting out investment in the town centre – that is, the Westfield development blight – among her top priorities if she is elected Mayor.
Davis describes the town centre as being “gutted”.
“Right now there is a hole where our heart should be,” she says in her video, which was in the can ready for release the moment she was confirmed in the selection race.
“Ultimately we aren’t going to turn Croydon around by taxing our residents to death and cutting all our services,” she says. “We will turn it around by getting growth back, and that means starting with our town centre.”
Davis also highlights that Croydon is the flytipping capital of Britain. “Criminals know they can get away with dumping rubbish again and again,” Davis says. There have been only four prosecutions for flytipping in the three years that Jason Perry has been Mayor.
Her video appears to address ordinary voters right across the borough, although for now it is only Labour Party members in Croydon who get to have a say on Davis’s suitability. The borough’s problems, according to Davis, “are not the fault of one party or developer, but they do have one cause: powerful interests that put people last. What we need is a Mayor who puts people first.
“We might not have all the money we would like, but there is so much we can do, and I’ll make sure every penny we have is spent on putting people first, rather than this Mayor who puts them last by wasting millions on consultants and laptops for his staff.”
Shahul-Hameed has experience of losing the selection campaign to be Labour’s mayoral candidate from 2022, when she put herself forward with the campaign slogan: “I can do more for the people I care about.”
This time around, after having had four years to think about it, Shahul-Hameed has managed to come up with “Croydon United — a future for all”. Yes. That’s it.
Croydon’s local elections, including the borough’s second mayoral election, alongside voting for 70 councillors across 28 wards, are due to be held on Thursday, May 7, 2026.
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
Read more: Newman Numpty could seek Labour pick as Mayor candidate
Read more: You can depend on Croydon Labour: they always let you down
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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
‘I won’t be putting your council tax up by 26%…’ So that will be 25% then.
In fact, in two years, Perry has increased Council Tax by 26.9%. But your criticism of Davis’s script is a valid one
I would like to mention that rowenna davis putting herself forward as labours next mayoral candidate in next years mayoral elections in croydon 2026 might find herself fighting a tough battle to win in croydon so far nationally across the country Nigel farage and the reform party are neck and neck with the labour party in all of the opinion polls could the reform party take control of croydon and people say a big no to labour and conservative labour are not going down very well with the people what with the cuts to welfare reform following the conservatives on policies and the cuts in disability payments and the rise in national insurance for businesses among other costs
In Croydon it is the Green Party who are benefiting from the collapse in Labour and Conservative votes. I think the voters of Croydon are too smart to fall for the millionaire con men who run Reform. https://insidecroydon.com/2024/07/06/how-some-of-croydons-election-results-just-dont-add-up/
I think we need to be careful about overstating Reform’s popularity, particularly in a borough like Croydon, where the far-right has, thankfully, never made much of a dent in the polls, and where, thankfully, there appears to be little clamour among the local electorate for such pernicious representation.
We also need to make a clear distinction between the national political picture and an election/campaign that will be focused exclusively on local issues and personalities, and where the Tories are the present incumbents.
Finally, for those voters desperate to get rid of Mayor Perry and, thus, a Tory administration, at Croydon Town Hall, I hope they will all fully engage in the specific pitch and manifesto being offered by each Mayoral candidate, and that we avoid a scenario in which Croydon’s very staunch and very broad opposition to the Tories fails by the smallest of margins (as was the case in 2022), because the progressive vote has been split between three or four candidates.
And who needs Reform UK when you already have the likes of Chris Philp, Mark Johnson, Tony Pearson and Jason Perry?
and Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves
Thank you for helping me to appreciate the value of punctuation.
I think we are beginning to start the period of post peak Reform as reality unravels the intellectual bankruptcy of Trumpism that all this mob represent. With the dire performance in power of Starmer’s Labour on social issues and it’s attempt to fight mainly on ground occupied by the Tory/Reform battle it does seem Labour is already taking it’s voters way too much for granted again. Lets be blunt there will be little difference in Croydon between there being a Labour/Tory Mayor. Whoever wins the Labour Party contest will not represent the change candidate however much they wish to brand themselves as if they are.
Let’s get real. They all talk shit….and there is very little we can do.
The slogans of both potential candidates are incredibly valid aren’t they? They might as well campaign on “I’m in favour of motherhood and apple pie”.
David, in view of your criticism, what I will say about Rowenna’s “A Mayor who puts people first” pitch is that Rowenna has long demonstrated, as a candidate, a councillor and an activist, that she genuinely values listening to and responding to constituents, ahead of imposing any sort of rigid ideology.
Yes, I know her values to be staunchly progressive and socially democratic, as are mine, but what drives her most is being receptive to all reasonable ideas and suggestions, and finding solutions for people’s legitimate grievances that work for everyone, rather than imposing a purely top-down approach.
‘Putting people first,’ is also about ensuring that financial resources are invested in the community, and not wasted on consultants or unnecessary indulgences for colleagues.
In view of what we’ve seen from Mayor Perry, it’s entirely apt to use a positive ‘slogan’ that makes a distinction between a candidate who *does* put people first, and an incumbent local politician who clearly doesn’t.
Fair enough, Mathew.
But how do you explain the Labour Party’s utter contempt for the people of Croydon by including Newman Numpty Manju on the shortlist?
If I had to guess, they probably just wanted to have some kind of choice rather than effectively look like they’ve installed someone. I don’t know what happens behind the scenes, but maybe no one else put themselves forward, I’m just trying to give them the benefit of the doubt!
That’s what most people might guess. But Labour members in Croydon, even the Local Campaign Forum, have been told nothing.
As usual, Labour treats Croydon with contempt, even its own membership.
So, it would be helpful to know what official explanation these apparatchiks from the National Executive Committee (no longer under the heel of “Lord” David Evans) and staff from London Region have to offer for even considering an application to stand as a candidate from someone whose reputation in local government is utterly ruined by her association by the Newman regime and the ills they have visited upon this borough.
Sick to death of Croydon council why is the council still paying extortionate salaries to people who do nothing why can this council not follow the same model as Wandsworth council who pay the lowest council tax .Why does Croydon need a Mayor on a 80.000.00 pound salary .
It’s now £84,000, which for the shift that Perry puts in, works out at over £500 an hour for the short-sleeved shirker
We already have “a mayor who puts people first”, but only one person, himself !
Sorry to any Lib Dems, Greens or Reform supporters out there, but ultimately it’ll be a shootout between Perry and Rowenna. Like most people here I’m very sour about the past performance of Labour, the fact that ‘big Tone’ blocked Rowenna being a Councillor before, I would wear that like a badge of honour.
If she is able to publicise Croydon like how she’s publicising herself everywhere, then Croydon could be on to a winner. The team behind her are obviously quite slick and professional, unlike Perrys bloated, dead behind the eyes performances as he reads from a script. She obviously has a lot of energy and is hard working.
My hope is if she becomes Mayor, she comes across as nice, but that she has that grit to remove certain senior staff in the council of their duties that haven’t been performing and replace them with capable people, the planning department definitely needs reform, we need a new talented CEO. Ultimately, a proper Mayor needs to get a grip on the Council, which never seems to happen. Also, she needs to be able to stand up to Westfield and not buckle like everyone else seems to, if not to have alternative plans up her sleeve. She needs a proactive plan for the regeneration of Croydon Town Centre unlike this current joke of an administration. Tweedledum Perry is all about cuts and selling things and furthering deprivation, the only way to success will be healthy economic growth. She will also need approaches in place in regards to the communication required with central government in order to ease some of the burden that the toxic debt has on the budget, amongst other things. They must be ready to hit the ground running the second she takes office.
Does the Mayor have the power to choose the council CEO? That could be an interesting ‘outsider’ approach to brush away the past.
Knowing Kerswell she will string the election count out so the winner never gets declared!
That suggests that Kerswell is in some way competent at what she does, capable of “stringing out” an election count. Our money’s on her being incompetent, with such matters outside her control.
Yet another populist. Not even once they can answer the “how” question, it’s always the “what”. They’re like children who argue with each other, and that this point they have lost the plot of what needs to be done. It’s about “winning” over other party. Absolute bs if you ask me
We need a Croydon First mayor, independent of any national party and dedicated only to the town’s homeowners and businesspeople. Labour AND the Tories have proven they cannot run many local councils up and down the country.
croydon does need a mayor and i believe that rowenna davis the labour mayoral candidate for croydon would make a great mayor and i will be giving my support to rowenna davis and labour in the may 2026 mayoral and local elections in croydon i would like to mention any old age pensioners thinking about voting the reform party might think again the reform party is going to scrap the triple lock on the state pensions this was announced by richard tice if there is a reform government pensioners would be better staying with labour