Political Editor WALTER CRONXITE on how the largest party group at the council is beginning to be reshuffled
One Labour leader, at least, has seen off all challengers this week.
Re-elected: Stuart King has the backing of 80% of Labour’s councillorse
In a secret meeting held last night at Croydon Town Hall, Stuart King was re-elected as leader of Labour’s council group, with a 24-6 vote of the party’s councillors.
King, a councillor for West Thornton ward since 2014, has been leader of the embattled Labour group at the Town Hall since 2022.
It means that King, backed by the borough’s largest party group of councillors, will continue the thankless task of leading the opposition to tin-eared Jason Perry, Croydon’s failed Mayor.
As Inside Croydon revealed earlier this week, with mayoral candidate Rowenna Davis opting not to seek the leadership following her bruising local election defeat to Perry, King faced a challenge from Woodside councillor Amy Foster.
This was the first time that Croydon’s Labour group has been allowed to conduct its own internal elections without oversight from party officials from London region for almost six years, following the bankrupting of the borough in 2020.
Compared to the psychodrama going on in Downing Street, where Bensham Manor’s new councillor Ellie Sandover’s Uncle Keir clings to power at No10, the election of the party’s leader in Croydon was a reasonably calm and orderly affair.
Elected: Norbury councillor Leila Ben-Hassel is Croydon Labour’s new deputy leader
That was not so much the case in the choice of King’s deputy leader, where there were five candidates, of varying degrees of ability and experience, putting themselves forward for the seven grand extra of Council Tax-payers’ money that goes with the job.
These include Newman Numpty Manju Shahul-Hameed, who hasn’t seemed to twig yet that even her party colleagues don’t rate her, Humayun Kabir (ditto), Janet Campbell, who had held the deputy leader role for four years, Leila Ben-Hassel, until last month the chair of the council’s scrutiny committee, and the excessively ambitious Ben Taylor, who hasn’t yet even attended his first council meeting.
Coulsdon resident Taylor, elected last week in the relatively safe Labour ward of Thornton Heath, called for advice from party officials over whether, with a man already elected as leader, Labour rules would require there to be a woman selected as deputy.
At the end of what sources describe as “a very long discussion”, it was determined that gender balance could be achieved in King’s choice of cabinet members, and a vote went ahead. Not that it did the Taylor much good, as widely respected Ben-Hassel, who works in local government at the City of London, won the vote to become deputy leader.
Labour was declared as the winners of 30 of the borough’s 70 council seats at Saturday’s ward count at the Fairfield Halls, losing four from their 2022 tally.
Only three of King’s nine-strong shadow cabinet survived as councillors going into the new term.
Perry and the Tories retain control of Croydon Council, by virtue of his slim 1,113-vote majority over Labour in the mayoral election declared last Friday (the number of councillors each party has at the Town Hall has been rendered a near-irrelevance since the borough moved to the directly-elected mayoral system in 2021). After the 2026 elections, any Labour-Green-LibDem bloc vote at the Town Hall would still lack the two-thirds majority required to overthrow a Perry council budget.
Elected: Catherine Wilson remains as the Labour group’s chief whip
King, a former parliamentary candidate and a cabinet member in Tony Newman’s administration, is the director of a firm of lobbyists for property developers, where his colleagues include Peter John, the former Labour leader of Southwark Council.
Of Labour’s 30 councillors, nearly half, 13, were newly elected last Thursday. And 13 Labour councillors are women.
These include Selhurst councillor Catherine Wilson, who was re-elected unopposed to continue as the group’s chief whip, the only other position that was decided last night. That party role comes with a tax-funded “special responsibility allowance” of £12,823 on top of the councillor allowances of £12,367.
King is expected to select his shadow cabinet members ahead of the council’s annual meeting, which is due to be held on Wednesday, May 27.
- Inside Croydon’s unmatched live election coverage last Friday and Saturday was read by more than 100,000 people – three times as many as voted for Jason Perry, in an overwhelming endorsement of the journalism that this news website continues to provide, despite the perverse management of the council and its Mayor.
We thank all our readers, and our loyal paying subscribers, for their continuing support, and we will continue to work to ensure that your voices are not ignored by Croydon’s failed Mayor.
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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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I find this amazing, I questioned Rowenna as to why Leila was not answering emails/following up on casework, I was told that this councillor had been so ill for a long time that she could not leave her house or work. Rowenna offered to take over the casework. It now seems that she is miraculously cured, having been re-elected, and capable of taking on the Deputy Leadership! I am happy to be told that I have got it all wrong, any takers?
Councillor Ben-Hassel is much better, thank you for asking, Peter