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
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
