Bookmakers are taking bets on the outcome of the 2026 Croydon mayoral election, and they make Labour’s Rowenna Davis a short-priced 6-5 favourite to win at the local elections on May 7.
Reform UK don’t yet even have a candidate – unless you include the dead Yorkshirewoman, Sharon Carby, whose Nigel Farage’s party of grifters imposed on their Croydon branch last year.
But according to Ladbrokes, Reform are 7-4 second favourites, with the Tories’ failed Mayor, Jason Perry, offered as a 4-1 shot to retain his job.
Since 2022, Croydon has been governed under a mayoral system, which means that whoever gets elected to the top job determines Town Hall policy, pretty much regardless of the party political make-up of the 70 councillors who are to be elected on the same day.
This year’s election is being run under the old-fashioned first-past-the-post system, after the Conservatives decided to abandon the preferential vote system under which Perry was elected in 2022.
Davis has been a Labour councillor for Waddon ward since 2022.
Ladbrokes offer odds of 6-5 that from May 8 she will be Croydon Mayor (meaning that for every £5 staked, the punter will win £6 if Davis wins the election).
“The market suggests a far more competitive contest than in some other London boroughs,” according to one bookies’ nark today.
By comparison, Grangeclare West, the favourite for the Grand National, the biggest betting horse race in the world, due to be run at Aintree on April 11, is 10-1 – or £10 winnings for every £1 staked if it wins.
They can’t all win: with seven weeks to go to election day, and the bookies’ market for Croydon Mayor looks like this
For Croydon’s big race on May 7, the bookmakers have the Green Party’s Peter Underwood at 7-1 and Richard Howard, the Liberal Democrat candidate, as the outsider at 50-1.
They clearly haven’t bothered to read the insightful form guide from our resident psephologist, Walter Cronxite. Or the opinion polls across London. Or the Penn Report about Labour’s previous stint in charge of the finances at Croydon Town Hall.
The bookmakers fail to state whether it’s “non-runner no bet” terms, just in case Reform manage to pick another candidate without a pulse.
Tax-avoider Farage and his limited company passing itself off as a political party are expected to name their Croydon mayoral candidate, after a series of false starts, at a rally being held at the Fairfield Halls a week on Saturday (tickets a mere £5 a time…).
Mayor Jason Perry has refused to give a pre-election interview to Inside Croydon, where he would face questions about his record in office- Paid-up subscribers to this website can listen to The Andrew Fisher Interview with Labour’s Rowenna Davis by clicking here
- And you can listen to last week’s Andrew Fisher Interview with Liberal Democrat Richard Howard by clicking here
- Andrew Fisher will be interviewing the Green Party’s Peter Underwood over the next few weeks
- We still have an empty Zoom slot available for Mayor Perry, should he pluck up the courage to face some proper public scrutiny
Read more: ‘Red v Blue’ at Town Hall elections could suffer a Green-wash
Read more: Labour’s Town Hall leader files complaint over Perry’s spending
Read more: Starmer shocker: could Gorton and Denton happen here?
Read more: Surrey Street market trader Joseph quits Labour in race row
Read more: High Court judge orders end to Croydon’s ‘unlawful’ LTNs
Read more: Perry agrees to pay £½m to reclaim flats at Red Clover Gardens
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
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