Which way should Newham Labour go?

As the Newham Labour campaign progressed, careful calibration gave way to screeching, localised u-turns. In the North and West of the borough, promises on free parking and community ballots on LTNs dissolved into begging letters sent out by Labour in the name of Lib-Dem candidates, talking about how great the projects Labour had previously offered to ballot on were and begging those who liked them to “lend” labour their vote. Accompanied by a tiny imprint and the large red letters “DON’T PUT FOREST GATE AT RISK”.

Chaotic would be a fair word for this campaign, but the electoral geography is now clear.

A solid blob of Green now occupies the North West of the map, reaching out to the south and slowly starting to circle its way around the borough along the docks. Whether it will make its way up the Roding is another question, where it is interrupted by a solic block of independent wards roughly in the centre of the borough, spreading over to the north-east. Labour, now a minority but still the largest single party, gets the remains. While contenders like Sofia Patel, Steve Brayshaw and Hanif Abdulmuhit are out, the new mayor is going to have to carve out a cabinet from the wards he continues to hold, having held a full slate in places like Plaistow West & Canning Town East, Beckton and Custom House, in all of which the greens are second place.

We at Newham Matters can’t say which way Mayor Hussain will go, but maybe he will find the options before him inside the party unappealing. In this case might he be tempted to look for allies in the Newham Independents Party. His relationship with the greens, following stormy rows and struggles to answer questions posed by reputable outlets like London Centric, seems likely to be poor. So who will be left to do deals with, and what will Independent leader Mehmood Mirza make of any proposals?

These questions are very much in the present, but here’s a little food for thought. If the strategy was to run a NIP facing campaign and put the core of the hopeful labour cabinet members in NIP facing wards, that has singularly and fundamentally failed. More green facing candidates in more green facing wards seemed to have a higher level of success, but also to be peripheral to the Hussain project. If Labour decides to forgo the winnable fight in favour of an unwinnable one, what’s the future of the Labour party in Newham at all? Maybe the parties on the ballot paper don’t matter, or exist, quite as much as everybody thinks.

MPs Kumaran, Asser and Timms should be worried, and in about that order, but will they be able to hold it together any better than the Labour Party in the borough?