For a decade, London has been solidly Labour: electing Sir Sadiq Khan three times as mayor and handing the party control of a record number of councils.
The noisiest criticism has come from the right, which accuses Khan of being soft on crime and overly hard on car use.
But in May’s local elections, many London voters look set to swing away from Labour, not to the right, but to the rebranded leftwing alternative: the Greens.
On the streets of Lambeth, south London, several passers-by said they were willing to give the Greens a chance, saying the party felt much closer to the values they held on equality, taxation and looking after the poor.
Henry Midteng, a 53-year-old food wholesaler from Norway who has always voted Labour in the past, said he would vote for the Greens this time because they are “fresher and more liberal”. “I like their message on social equality. They’re the new Labour.”
Across London, the Greens are polling at about 24 per cent, just behind Labour, according to YouGov. The party, which won just 1 per cent of seats at the last set of council elections in London, has never won a London council.
This time it says it could win overall control of local authorities in Hackney, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark, Newham, Islington and Haringey in elections on May 7, as well as mayoralties in Hackney and Lewisham. It also expects to make strides in Camden, where Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is an MP.
“The whole of central London could flip,” said Michael Chessum, a former hard-left Labour activist who is now running as a Green candidate in Lambeth. “We’re aiming to win Lambeth, we’ve never even conceived of that before.”
Chessum pointed to the Scottish National Party’s 2015 routing of Labour in Scotland in 2015 as a model. “Rock-solid Labour heartlands just absolutely flipped, and the question is, are we in the midst of a moment like that in London?”
Voters’ warm feeling towards the Greens is not always connected to the party’s detailed policy position.
In its Lambeth manifesto, for example, the party pivoted somewhat bombastically from its environmentalist roots to position itself sharply to the left of Labour on economic and social issues.
The manifesto includes plans to “unionise every worker and tenant” in the borough; to refuse to co-operate or grant access to immigration enforcement for raids; to push central government to impose rent controls; to ban bailiffs collecting unpaid council tax; and to divest from all companies associated with the “genocide in Gaza”.
Experts warn that many of the Greens’ bold ambitions will be hard to achieve given the harsh financial position councils are in.
Tony Travers, professor of politics at the London School of Economics, cautioned that the fragmentation of votes across London would likely lead to a significant number of councils ending up with no overall control. That would make budgetary and planning decisions much more difficult — and could force fractious coalitions between parties.
In places where the Greens do take overall control, “the risk is they’ll be a very inexperienced group of councillors focused much more on national and international issues than the local things councils need to care about”, he said. “They’ll meet the reality on May 8 that there’s no money for their bold plans to provide higher wages and bring services back in house — just none.
“The desire to give Labour a kicking is a perfectly respectable one in a democracy, but it is worth pausing as a voter to think about the consequences of having your services, just outside your door, run by a new party.”
Under the populist leadership of Zack Polanski, the Greens have made a concerted effort to target Labour’s old coalition, including young, urban and Muslim voters. They have sought to pit working people against the ultra-wealthy and have aggressively opposed Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
In Lambeth, where Labour has won control at all but four council elections since 1964 and has run the authority for more than 20 years, the party has benefited from a surge in support among young, ethnic minority voters. Lambeth is the 13th-youngest council nationwide, with a median age of 33, while 63 per cent of residents self-describe as an ethnicity other than white British.
Tilda Ruck, a 32-year-old acupuncturist in Lambeth, does not follow politics particularly closely but feels disillusioned with the Labour Party and cares deeply about the environment. “I vote with my heart and it’s going to be Green this time,” she said.
The Greens are currently the most popular party nationwide among voters under the age of 65, according to YouGov polling. Support for the party drops to below 7 per cent among those over 65.
A surge in nationwide support has seen membership increase from 68,500 in September to nearly 230,000 this month. That has provided the Greens with unprecedented funds to pump into the local campaign. The party’s core annual budget for staff and infrastructure has doubled this year to £10mn.
Chris Williams, the party’s head of campaigns, said almost all of that money was being spent on leaflets and boosting the party’s ground campaign, with a small portion for social media ads.
He said the party was keen to send a powerful message to Downing Street that “people are crying out for traditional Labour values exactly where Labour used to dominate”, adding that if “Labour pivots to the left after these elections, that’s definitely a win for the Greens”.
In Hackney, the local Green Party is proposing ending the discriminatory policing of delivery riders, noting that many are migrants facing harassment. It will also ban meat and dairy adverts on council sites and prepare the way for a four-day week for council workers.
In Southwark, it promises to twin the borough with a town in the West Bank and support the campaign for slavery reparations.
Other party policies, such as a pledge to end large numbers of outsourced contracts and bring services in-house, would cost vast sums for authorities that have spent years fending off bankruptcy. The Greens say that if they win control of several councils, they will pressure the central government to provide more funding.
Not all voters in the Greens’ target seats share their ideological zeal. Spencer, an operations manager in his 60s who lives in Lambeth, said he was tempted to vote for the Greens “on a personal level”, but he was not convinced by Polanski’s leadership and would likely stick with Labour.
He added that the focus on Gaza and the Lambeth party policy to get every working resident unionised were “silly”. “If I want to join a union, I’ll do so, I don’t need to be told to,” he said.
Additional reporting by Elizabeth Bratton