A different opposition: Jeremy Corbyn appeared before 30,000 music fans at Brockwell Park in south London last Friday
As Britain’s long-established political duopoly fractures, ANDREW FISHER looks at what that could mean for Croydon at its next local elections in 2026
For the past 100 years two parties have dominated British politics: the Conservatives and Labour.
55 quid for Wes Streeting?: Croydon Labour has gone all black tie to raise funds
Since the inception of the London Borough of Croydon in 1965, our council has also been dominated by the Tories and Labour. In those 60 years, the Conservatives dominated the Town Hall Chamber for the first 30, while Labour started to gain the upper hand in the last 30 years.
Currently, Labour has the most councillors in Croydon (34 out of 70), but crucially the Conservatives narrowly won the inaugural mayoral contest in 2022, giving them control of the council.
Those elections three years ago showed the first cracks emerging in the Croydon duopoly, with the Greens winning two council seats and the Liberal Democrats one – both at Labour’s expense.
But national politics has fractured even more since then, with Reform and the Liberal Democrats making serious inroads into the Conservative vote, while the Greens have made some gains, too. At the 2024 General Election last July, Labour’s vote actually declined, but the Conservative implosion masked the party’s own weakness.
According to national opinion polls, and the English local elections at the start of May, since last year’s General Election, Labour’s support has fallen further. The party is now polling around 10% lower in the polls. In the local elections, Labour lost nearly two-thirds of the council seats it was defending.
Over the past couple of years, the country has become more pluralistic in its politics, with a raft of independents elected at national and local level. The most prominent of those successful in the General Election last May was former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now an independent MP for Islington North.
Last Friday Corbyn was in south London, receiving a warm welcome from 30,000 revellers at the Wide Awake Festival in Brockwell Park, as he highlighted the importance of live music, condemned Israel’s war crimes and (in a not-too-subtle dig at his successor as Labour leader, Keir Starmer) attacked those whipping up division with talk of “an island of strangers”.
There have been intensifying rumours that Corbyn may be about to launch a new political party, or be its figurehead. But we have heard such speculation before.
Either way, Labour is losing the votes of its urban-based progressive voters – with the Greens and LibDems, as well as credible independents, the beneficiaries.
Two-party system breaking down: the wide split of votes at the West of England polls earlier this month allowede Labour to hold on to a mayoralty with a very modest vote share
How much this growing political pluralism will affect Croydon when it holds its local elections in May 2026 will be key to deciding who becomes our borough’s next Mayor. Between the Conservatives and Labour, It’s a case of whose vote splinters least.
Across the country, Conservatives are losing support to Reform. Until now, Nigel Farage’s party has lacked strong organisation in our borough – but elsewhere in the country, it has still made advances without a prominent ground operation.
And could the LibDems or Greens make further headway in 2026?
This suggests the possibility of Labour getting back into power at the Town Hall, as it did to retain control of the mayoralty in the West of England despite winning just 25% of the vote on a 30% turnout.
Back in 2022, the Conservatives were the opposition in Croydon, but with an increasingly unpopular government in Westminster – as Boris Johnson became rapidly tarnished (he resigned less than two months later). Next year, the roles will be reversed, with Labour in opposition locally, but with an increasingly disliked man in Downing Street.
In Croydon in 2022, Jason Perry, the Conservative candidate for Mayor, promised to “Fix the finances”. He hasn’t, despite hiking Council Tax and slashing services. The Labour candidate who was narrowly beaten that year, Val Shawcross, was generally remembered as having led a positive administration in Croydon in the early 2000s, and she had serious credentials as a former deputy Mayor of London.
Not looking good: less than a year since a landslide General Election victory, polling suggests Keir Starmer has never been so unpopular
Labour has again selected a credible candidate in Rowenna Davis, the councillor for Waddon ward who proved to be effective in the council chamber as chair of scrutiny. Like Shawcross, Davis benefits from not having served in the last Labour administration in Croydon.
However, one downside for Davis will the hollowing out of Labour Party membership, and the party’s finances. Since Starmer became leader, national membership of Labour has fallen by 200,000, from 532,000 in the 2019 annual report to the 329,000 reported to the January meeting of Labour’s National Executive Committee. Since then, the NEC has been informed that they will no longer be told the latest membership figures “due to leaks” (or the embarrassment).
Under-funded: Labour’s financial difficulties have come at the worst time for their Croydon mayoral candidate Rowenna Davis
Locally, that also means less funding, as the central party allocated money to local parties based on membership figures. In the old constituency of Croydon Central (now mostly Croydon East), between 2017 and 2022, membership halved. Given the national picture, that is likely to have fallen even further since – which means fewer people to knock on doors and deliver leaflets, as well as less money to meet the campaign costs.
The private and corporate donors that buoyed the Labour Party when they were in opposition have receded in the past year. So much so that the party is now reportedly unable to balance the books this year – which does not bode well ahead of a huge set of local and (for Wales and Scotland) national elections in 2026.
As both main parties struggle for cash and footsoldiers, the race in Croydon has rarely felt more open. But the number of Croydon Labour members willing to don black tie and pay £55 a pop to have dinner with Wes Streeting cannot be a reliable funding stream.
The old adage is that a week is a long time in politics. With 49 weeks to go until May 7, 2026, there will be many more twists and turns before the polling stations are open. The best place to follow the turmoil is Inside Croydon. Stay tuned!
From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher, pictured right, was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn. - Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
- As well as his column, Andrew is also conducting podcast interviews, in-depth and informed with specialists and national figures, sharing their expertise with Croydon, and available on Inside Croydon’s Spotify channel
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- Starmer alienates support by adopting the language of Powell
- It’s bad for Starmer’s Labour and worse for Badenoch’s Tories
- What a load of old rubbish! And that’s just inside the Town Hall
- 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
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I left the party a few weeks ago following Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ speech. That said (and much as I like Peter Underwood), Rowenna is the only sensible choice for Mayor.
I don’t think Reform will do very well… and if they do it will be at the Tories’ expense. They might win in Kenley, maybe a seat in New Addington but I doubt they’ll impact the north of the borough.
I’m not going to be engaged – last time I was a paper candidate in Sanderstead which was as fun as it was pointless. There’s nowhere to publicly debate now Nextdoor has been taken over by the Tories. X is a sewer, and Bluesky is benign and too positive for a good political scrap!
InsideCroydon is always good value, but that’s about it now.
Chuckle.
Have discovered, to my immense pleasure, repeats of old AJP Taylor lectures from a life time ago being shown on BBC4.
And then the Prof pops up on a 1981 episode of Parkinson, too. Double delight!
Parky asked him why he left the Communist Party. “If they could expel Trotsky, then it wasn’t the party for me.”
That chimed. If the Labour Party can expel (or suspend, indefinitely) the likes of David White or Marc Wadsworth, then it’s not the place for anyone. Although they have welcomed Tony Newman back into their increasingly small, self-regarding fold, which sort of tells you all you need to know.
Rumour has it that the notorious Sarah Bowell has taken over the campaign, so that will be Mayor Sarah Bowell to you. Maybe she’ll create a deputy position and install her child in that position.
Among this site’s comment rules is that we won’t usually publish idle rumour and speculation. Because that is all they are: idle rumour and speculation, even if they are submitted with evident malicious intent by the son of Croydon’s useless Mayor.
But at least little Willie has proven that it is a straightforward process to submit a comment, something that proved to be beyond the Croydon Conservatives’ technically-challenged “professional” agent, and full-time online troll, Ian Parker.
Rumour has it that your old man is lining you up for a safe seat when a long-standing councillor retires in time for next May’s election
The rumour we heard, but would never publish because it is just idle speculation, is that the Mayor’s little Willie will take the place of the retiring IRA gun-runner, Maria Gatland, in South Croydon ward.
Then, if the unthinkable happens – and the Tories are thinking about this – and piss-poor Perry loses the mayoral election (27% Council Tax hike hurts after all) the idle speculation is that little Willie resigns as a councillor to cause a by-election (estimated cost to residents: £10,000) so his father can get back on to the allowances gravy train.
A case of getting your little Willie out for the Dad.
‘A referendum to re-join’? What’s that? A referendum will offer people a choice, won’t it?
Yeah I can imagine you all sat around the South Croydon Conservative Club laughing at someone with autism.
In government, Labour have been a force for bad.
Under Starmer, in the final three months of 2024 there were more UK arms sales licenses to the IDF death squads committing genocide in Gaza than in the years 2020-2023 combined.
When he went off to Albania, Starmer took only one broadcaster on his trip, the fascist-supporting racist GB News (for all the good it did him).
Instead of standing up to Farage, he is trying to appease him and his supporters. Same goes for Trump, for whom he is getting ready to roll out the red carpet.
An intelligent politician would recognise the damage that Brexit has done. A courageous one would do something about it, and hold a referendum to re-join. Starmer is kidding himself and us that he can make Brexit work.
Closer to home, we have the spectre of the disgraced Croydon Labour leadership hanging over Rowenna Davis like a bad smell. No disciplinary action for Newman and Hall, nor Butler and Scott, and no apologies either.
Instead of challenging Perry over unnecessary expenditure while cutting vital public services, she slated him for not cutting the grass fast enough, or to put it more accurately, committing ecocide.
Her criticism of the council for replacing out-of-date laptops is just yah-boo politics, and shows a worrying lack of awareness of the IT needed to run a modern business effectively.
£55 for a fundraiser to hear Wes Streeting talk is a joke. Labour’s Aneurin Bevan founded the NHS. Streeting wants to privatise it – so do most of his donors.
Vote Labour? You have got to be kidding
Notice of the event made me chuckle – a LABOUR do, but you need to dress with old style formality ( black tie etc) and leave in a carriage! I suppose if that is a horse drawn one, at least it’s green!
And a secret location.
Tired old insult. Never been there, never will
I’ve only ever been to one CLP gig and all the men were in filthy old suits
including you?
It’s possible Chris is confusing it with one of his visits to the local Conservative Club.