ONE DAY TO GO: An unusually subdued local campaign enters the final day with a last-minute visit from the Leader of the Opposition to try to salvage the Tory Mayor’s hopes of re-election. WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, sifts through the last opinion poll results to make his final prediction. Plot spoiler: it’s close
Labour looks set to recapture executive power at Croydon Town Hall.
The result will be close, possibly as close as 2022 when fewer than 600 votes determined that Conservative Jason Perry would be Mayor for four years. So for the leading parties, getting the vote out will require a huge effort on polling day tomorrow.
Croydon’s 2026 local elections have been mostly about national and international issues.
Town Hall view: by Friday, Labour’s Rowenna Davis will know whether she is to be Croydon Mayor
Four years ago, Croydon’s local elections were primarily about how to chuck out a desperately failing Labour council. It was a genuinely local election.
This time around, it has been as much about Trump’s war on Iran, or Peter Mandelson, or antisemitism, as it has about bin collections, getting pot holes repaired or how Council Tax has risen by 33% in three years.
Warmongering US President Donald Trump has hurt Reform Ltd’s prospects in Croydon, Mandelson has hurt Labour and comments by some candidates across the country which have been portrayed as antisemitic, have hurt the Greens.
Thus the old Red-Blue Croydon duopoly is left to battle out the mayoralty. Between them, they look set to get just over half the vote. As we have reported previously, it seems very possible that whoever is declared the mayoral winner at the declaration at the Fairfield Halls on Friday will manage to win with little more than 1-in-4 of all votes cast.
The disarray among Reform and their changes of choice of mayoral candidate, from a dead Yorkshirewoman to a Surrey Street stall-holder to a Sutton grammar school teacher, did not help their prospects. In the end, though, ex-Tory Ben Flook has had less impact on Croydon than Sharon Carby, and she’s been dead since 2024.
Unreformed: Farage’s party has had little impact on Croydon, as its campaigning has been overseen to some extent by the Coulsdon nonce, Peter Morgan, making a rare appearance here (third from left, back to camera). For more on Morgan, click here
Likewise, the LibDem challenge of Richard Howard never materialised, and Zionist Steve Reed’s baiting of Zack Polanski over antisemitism in the Green Party – the same smear Reed and Labour Together used to undermine Jeremy Corbyn when he was their own party’s leader – has undoubtedly slowed the momentum that might have got Peter Underwood closer to power.
“Job done,” Reed might well think to himself come the weekend, although the picture could be much different in the Streatham and Croydon North MP’s backyard in Lambeth.
Slowed momentum: the smear campaign against Green leader Zack Polanski (right) has dented Peter Underwood’s election chances
Based on all available national and regional polling, plus more anecdotal observations of what has been an unusually subdued campaign locally as candidates shift on to social media, it seems Tory Jason Perry is going to run Labour’s Rowenna Davis close.
But part-time Perry lost this mayoral election when he failed to do as he promised and “fix the finances”. He is as much to blame as the arrogant parliamentary Conservative government that refused to resolve Croydon’s debt conundrum while they had the chance.
Kemi Badenoch showing up in Croydon today was probably too little, far too late, to save Perry’s political career. But at least she might have measured him up for the scarlet and ermine robes worn in the House of Lords, a status which the plastic guttering salesman craves, to follow in the footsteps of Croydon Tory peers Weatherill, Bowness and Barwell.
Polishing a turd: which political genius thought having Tory party leader Kemi Badenoch turning up in Croydon could help Jason Perry’s election chances? Oh, Chris Philp, the bloke who sunk the economy when in the Treasury under Liz Truss
Daily Heil: even the Tories’ staunchest supporters have painted an unflattering picture of Croydon on the eve of the elections
Even the Daily Mail, a bastion of unapologetic right-wing biased journalism, was reporting today how Croydon residents have become tired of paying more and getting less, the unwanted mantra of four wasted years under Perry.
A fatal error in the Tories’ Croydon campaign has been poor message discipline. Local park Green Flags do not win elections (especially when you have just four of them across more than 120 parks and green spaces). But Perry has achieved so little in his four years in charge, while hiking Council Tax to record levels, he has been left to fight the 2022 election all over again, so poor is his record.
There is a fundamental reason why all three London-wide MRP opinion polls have awarded Croydon to Labour.
Croydon’s social make-up, what used to be described euphemistically as “demographic change”, means that Croydon in 2026 is a left-leaning borough. That change over time to being a Labour-voting borough was obscured at the 2022 elections by the Newman-Butler-Scott disaster, as well as the spoiler candidacy of independent Andrew Pelling.
And while Perry has tried to polish a turd as far as his record in office is concerned, so Davis’s campaign has tried to play down any connection with Labour’s national government (even if PM Keir Starmer’s niece is a council candidate in Bensham Manor). There’s barely a mention of the Labour Party on the bright red “Vote Rowenna” board outside her home in Waddon.
It is, in any case, difficult to make the Croydon election about local issues when the power at the Town Hall remains with the government’s Commissioners.
With so much going on nationally and internationally to influence the vote, it has made some of the crass and juvenile local social media video campaigning irrelevant. Thankfully.
False flag: Jason Perry has tried to get his fellow Crystal Palace fans on his side for the election
For some reason, Perry thought it a good idea to stress in his campaign his local roots, “a Croydon lad” (oh, puhleeze…) and his lifelong support for Crystal Palace Football Club.
Yet tomorrow evening, that might actually become a factor in the election outcome.
Labour and Conservative campaign managers will hope that their supporters among Palace supporters will have made sure that they have visited their polling stations before the 8pm kick-off, because there will be little opportunity to do so after the game, especially if it goes to extra time.
How will Selhurst Park season ticket-holder Perry be spending his evening? Will he be attending to the apparent lost cause of getting other people out to cast their votes in the final four hours before the polls close? Or will he accept the inevitable and take the opportunity to witness history, and seeing his team win (hopefully)?
It could be the toughest decision of Perry’s mayoralty, but like so many others, he’ll probably get it wrong…
But getting the vote out in the north of the borough could be a real challenge for Labour, which is why their winning margin is likely to be smaller than some London MRP polls suggest.
Like the Palace match, the Croydon election will be played out by the various teams until the final whistle.
iC’s prediction for Friday’s mayoral election result (changes compared to party councillor vote shares under the first past the post voting system in 2022) is:
Rowenna Davis, Labour 27% (down 7.5%)
Jason Perry, Cons 26% (down 12.5%)
Peter Underwood, Grn 19% (up 6.1%)
Ben Flook, Reform Ltd 15% (up 15%)
Richard Howard, LibDem 11% (down 0.7%)
Others 2% (down 0.4%)
- For the full list of candidates standing for Croydon Mayor, as published on the council website, click here
- For the full list of election candidates in the borough’s 28 wards, click here for the official listings on the council website
Read more: These are the questions that Mayor Perry is too afraid to face
Read more: Keir Starmer’s niece is council election candidate in safe ward
Read more: Perry couldn’t fix the finances because he can’t even add up
Read more: Labour dumps their hard-working Thornton Heath councillor
Jason Perry, Croydon’s failed Mayor, 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 our interview with the LibDems’ Richard Howard by clicking here
- Our Andrew Fisher Interview with Peter Underwood is now available by clicking here and paying a subscription to Inside Croydon’s Patreon site
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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- Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
Why would we want the Labour candidate in front after what they have done to Croydon FFS
Great article. Both Peter and Ben probably missed their chances by fault of their own. Rowenna should win by default. These elections were probably won on social media targeting the 18 -40 demographic.