Councillor Martin Abrams has accused those running Keir Starmer’s party of ‘pursuing their factional obsession against the interests of both the community and the Labour Party’
Martin Abrams, a councillor for Streatham St Leonard’s ward in Lambeth, has been deselected by the Labour Party and barred from standing for them in the 2026 local elections, ostensibly because he called for an end of the killing in Gaza.
Banned: Martin Abrams has been frozen out of Lambeth Council by the Labour Party
The move comes a few weeks since Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester and a former Labour leadership contender, called for an end of factional in-fighting in the Labour Party which has seen an exodus of tens of thousands of members since Keir Starmer, backed by former Lambeth Council gofer Morgan McSweeney, took over in 2020.
Streatham St Leonard’s ward is in the Streatham and Croydon North parliamentary constituency of right-whinger Steve Reed OBE, who when he was leader of Lambeth Council worked closely with McSweeney.
In 2022, Abrams won his council seat from the Greens, with the most votes of the Labour candidates standing in his ward. Yet after three years, the Labour leadership on the council has barred him from ever making his maiden speech at Brixton Town Hall.
Abrams had the party whip withdrawn in 2024 after he supported a Green Party motion calling for “an immediate ceasefire and the end to human rights atrocities in the Israel/Palestine conflict”. That motion pre-dated official Labour policy by a month, yet Abrams was handed a three-month suspension from the group – a sanction which, almost 18 months later, has never been lifted.
Councillor Abrams, who is Jewish, described Labour’s disciplinary hearing as “a show trial”.
When the Gaza motion was tabled at a Lambeth Council meeting in January 2024, 20 of Labour’s 58 councillors did a bunk, to avoid facing disciplinary action from their party (for voting with the Greens) over this important moral issue.
“Abrams was one of the few Labour members who attended and voted for it,” Brixton Buzz reports.
Dishonest: Lambeth Labour still try to pass off Martin Abrams as one of their councillors, as he appeared on their website today even though they suspended him almost 18 months ago
“Former Labour cabinet member, Cllr Sonia Winfred, was also suspended. She quit her role as a councillor in Knight’s Hill and has now joined the Green Party.”
By deselecting Abrams, Labour might yet hand a council seat to the Greens in May 2026. In 2018, the Greens won all three seats in St Leonard’s ward, and four years later Green candidates Scott Ainslie and Nicole Griffiths comfortably topped the poll in the ward, with Abrams third.
“The narrow margins suggest the Greens could take all three seats in 2026 – especially without an incumbent Labour councillor on the ballot,” Brixton Buzz says today.
Lambeth, under council leader Claire Hollands, has lurched from calamity to crisis, and is, like neighbouring borough Croydon, under special financial measures after needing a £40million government bail-out for its housing service and its failed housing company, Homes for Lambeth, a legacy policy that can be traced back to Reed’s time at Brixton Town Hall and his “Cooperative Council” project.
Abrams has been a long-standing and prominent member of Momentum, the Labour membership group established to support former leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn was himself was banned from standing again for Labour, but last July he won his Islington North parliamentary seat at the General Election, standing as an independent. Corbyn has been MP for Islington North since 1983.
Right-whinger: St Leonard’s is in the parliamentary constituency of Steve Reed (seen here with disgraced former Croydon leader, Tony Newman, who has not been ousted from the Labour Party)
Approached by Inside Croydon last night about what his own election plans might be, Abrams said simply: “I’m sleeping on it.”
Abrams’ deselection seems to go against the advice offered to the Labour Party last month by Andy Burnham, when he said that factionalism “has bedevilled us on all sides of the party and across the left”.
Last night, Abrams issued a statement on social media.
He said: “I have recently been notified by the Labour Party that I am being blocked from re-standing as councillor candidate in the 2026 local elections in Lambeth.
“The reason given was because I remain suspended from Lambeth Labour Group for breaking the whip in January 2024 and voting for a motion that called for a full and immediate ceasefire in Gaza, only a month before this belatedly became official Labour policy.
“I do not regret using my small platform to stand up and speak out against the genocide taking place in Gaza, carried out by the Israeli regime with the support of the UK government.
“As a local councillor I have worked tirelessly to be a strong voice for a fairer, more equal and greener community in Streatham St Leonard’s ward and it was one of the proudest days of my life being elected as Lambeth councillor in 2022. Since being trusted with this opportunity by the local community, I have worked hard to be as accessible and responsive as possible, to listen and be empathetic to the needs of our community during a time when people are facing one of the most severe cost of living crisis and housing emergencies in living memory.
Calling for an end to killing: Martin Abrams (second right) has been ostracised for taking a moral stand
“I have not always got things right and it has often been a struggle balancing the pressures of also having a young family and full-time job but I have always strived to be the best possible representative for our wonderful community in Streatham.
“As the incumbent councillor, I stand the best chance of winning the next election in St Leonard’s.
“The decision of the Labour Party to deselect me and block me from re-standing will be completely inexplicable to the local community and will undoubtedly harm Labour’s chance of holding this seat.
“The people responsible for this decision are pursuing their factional obsession against the interests of both the community and the Labour Party.
“My stance on Palestine and what is happening in Gaza has always been a matter of conscience for me and has been long before 7th October 2023. For me and a rapidly increasing number of Jewish people, ‘Never again’ means never again for everyone and we see it as our duty to speak out against this genocide and shout it loud and clear ‘Not in our name!’
“After more than 600 days of genocide, this stance has been unequivocally proven to be the only morally just and humane stance. You simply cannot ‘both-sides’ a genocide. We are truly watching one of the greatest crimes of our age live-streamed to us in real time as we watch in horror as tens of thousands of Palestinian children are slaughtered and maimed by Israeli bombs and bullets.
“As a parent of two young children myself, every single one of those children in Gaza is a whole universe to someone. The grief, pain and suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza is unfathomable and my heart breaks and bleeds for each and every mum and dad facing such loss.
As a non-Zionist Jewish Labour councillor who has always stood up for Palestinian liberation, there have been concerted attempts to silence me within the council. After more than 1,100 days since being elected in 2022, I have still not been allowed to make my maiden speech in the Council Chamber or even ask a question to the Council Cabinet, despite repeated attempts. I refuse to be silenced, however, and will continue as that Jewish voice against Israeli genocide and against the oppression of the Palestinian people. It is quite simply the very least I can do.
Political strategist: Morgan McSweeney is part of the Lambeth ‘chumocracy’ that runs Starmer’s Labour Party
“Right now we have a Labour council in Lambeth, A Labour Mayor of London and now a Labour government, and after 15 years of Tory destruction there is no longer any justification, locally or nationally, to inflict further cuts or austerity on people. There should be an overwhelming feeling of hope and belief that Labour will significantly and quickly improve people’s lives, but sadly that is not what I am hearing from local people when I speak to them. Labour needs an urgent change of direction.
“‘Starmerism’ is a failing project that has alienated core Labour Party voters potentially forever and risks gifting the keys to 10 Downing Street to Nigel Farage and Reform.
“I am very proud of the work I have done as a local councillor in our wonderful community of Streatham St. Leonard’s, but my work does not stop here. There is 11 months until the elections in May 2026 and I will continue what I was elected to do and stand up for the voiceless and for those facing injustice in Streatham, Lambeth and beyond.
“I have always seen my political purpose is to fundamentally shift wealth and power away from the rich, powerful and those few people where it is concentrated most and that will never change.
“Thank you to everyone that has supported and expressed solidarity.”
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Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
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Hard to see how the reason for undemocratic barring of a popular candidate, who incidentally opposes genocide in Gaza, squares with govt’s most recent statements abhorring the conduct of Israeli govt & ministers over Gaza
Not hard to see if you judge the government by its ACTIONS rather than its (belated) criticisms of Israel’s actions. It continues to arm Israel ignoring its complicity in the ongoing crimes against humanity. It’s called hypocrisy.
It’s a strange state of affairs when someone Jewish can essentially be deemed by a party leadership as antisemitic for questioning genocide.
Even Lambeth Labour wouldn’t go as far as describing Cllr Abrams as antisemitic. Or would they?
London Labour couldn’t pull that stunt with Marc Wadsworth (he’s black, and has been fighting racism all his adult life). So instead they used trumped up charges of “bringing the party into disrepute”. Corbyn was leader at the time.
Every day at the moment Palestinians in Gaza are being shot and killed by Israeli forces as they try to get food for their starving families. Yet the UK Labour Government is still backing Israel by supplying arms and commissioning RAF surveillance flights to assist Israeli bombing.
When principled Labour councillors like Martin Abrams speak out against the genocide they are ousted. That tells us all we need to know about Labour which has completely lost its moral compass. The Tories are of course just as bad.
That is because the UK is America’s lapdog, whichever political mob of charlatans is in charge, and the Yanks always support whatever Israel does, so they are both anti-anyone else in the Middle East (eg. Palestine, Gaza, Iran, etc.)
Abrams has largely been more aligned with the Greens, Labour long to oust Ainslie and Griffiths from St Leonards and probably only selected Abrams in the first place as they assumed he would be a tame leftist to tackle the Green problem. Labour could be struggling in London next year.