'It's Green all the way, darling': The coming political earthquake in East London

'It's Green all the way, darling': The coming political earthquake in East London Imran Mulla on Wed, 04/29/2026 - 10:59 Green councillors and campaigners plan to take over Labour strongholds in east London at local elections next week Green Party leader Zack Polanski campaigns with Green candidates in the east London borough of Newham (Screengrab/X) Off Until recently, Newham in east London was seen as a Labour Party stronghold. The borough was created in 1965 and Newham Council has been under Labour control ever since. Now all that could change with the local elections on 7 May. It's the same story in several places across east London: Labour is facing a formidable challenge from the left. Partially this comes from local independent parties, such as the Redbridge Independents. But expectations are growing of a Green wave. Zack Polanski’s left-wing party hopes to make significant gains across the country, and in east London the Greens could strip Labour of its majority in several places. Polling suggests the Greens will win majorities in Hackney and Lewisham. But Newham has been overlooked in much national coverage. A YouGov poll last week put the Greens five points behind Labour, with the Newham Independents four points behind the Greens. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); But a study commissioned by the London School of Economics and published on Monday put the Greens at 34 percent, one point ahead of Labour. Areeq Chowdhury, aged 33, is the Green candidate for mayor of Newham. Dressed in a slick black suit with a blue tie and Green rosetta, Chowdhury told Middle East Eye in the local Plaistow Park on Monday that he was confident he could win. Areeq Chowdhury is the Green candidate for the mayor of Newham. (Mohammed Adnan/MEE) “There’s a huge amount of discontent with the Labour Party locally,” he explained. “We’re at the highest level of homelessness. One in 18 people are homeless. We’ve got the title of litter capital of England.” But as well as local issues, Chowdhury said, people are also “disillusioned” with Keir Starmer’s Labour government. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); “They didn't stand up strongly enough against the genocide in Gaza. But they've also U-turned on many of their policies. They've cut welfare benefits for disabled people. People are ready for change.” Chowdhury himself had been a Labour member since his student days and was even elected as a local Labour councillor in 2022. “A big part of why I joined Labour was things like human rights and standing up for workers.” It was the party’s “refusal to stand up for Palestinians” and call for a ceasefire in Gaza in 2023, Chowdhury said, that motivated his defection to the Greens, who had supported a ceasefire early on. “The more I got to know about the Green Party, the more I understood that actually they were focused on the correct issues facing society, around the environment and human rights.” (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); He believes that for many voters in Newham, Labour’s perceived weakness on Gaza was a “trigger for people to look elsewhere”. Local and national issues In Stratford, a major district in Newham, some locals out shopping and dining said they hadn’t decided who they would vote for. Several had no idea there was an election coming up. One young British Asian man, asked who he was planning to vote for, said, “nah, nah, I’m not involved, I’m not involved”, before furtively hurrying away. A woman in a stylish pink fur coat said she would vote Reform, because “I agree with all their, what do you call it...” Greens, Your Party and Labour backbenchers build anti-war alliance in parliament Read More » Policies. She said she agreed with their anti-immigration stance. Elsewhere, a middle-aged woman told MEE she was voting Green “because my grandchildren are not here yet, and I want them to enjoy the planet”. She said: “You know, because there are people out there destroying, and looking for things that are not necessary. If we're not taking care of what we’ve got, why are you looking for other things? “It's green all the way, darling. We need the oxygen. We need the plants, which are part of our biodiversity for the planet.” Eva Tabassam, 35, is standing to be a Green councillor for the ward of Cann Hall in Waltham Forest, another borough in east London. She joined the party last summer. On the doorstep, she said, people tend to bring up national as well as local issues. “They go hand in hand.” She said: “We get a mixture of big things, like the illegal war on Iran. We also get told about what's happened in Palestine and the government's complicity in that.” It was often non-Muslims who brought up Gaza, Tabassam said. And people also speak about “all the U-turns that Starmer has done, about the two-child benefit cap”, the cost of living increase and high rent, “because that shows up on the local level”. 'My daughters are voting Green' YouGov polling last week put both the Greens and Labour on 30 percent in Waltham Forest, so it will be a tight contest. Peter Ibrahim Kanyike, 26, is hoping to be voted in as a Green councillor in the William Morris ward in the borough. He said he is campaigning on local issues like “how clean the streets are, working with businesses on things like safer parking and accessibility. “But I think there's a load of concern with the direction that society is going in and how the current government, Labour specifically, have directed society in that way.” Eva Tabassam and Peter Ibrahim Kanyike, candidates for the Green Party in Waltham Forest (Imran Mulla/MEE) The Greens “want to create a council and a borough that works with our neighbours,” he added. “That feeds into policy, and I think that's one of the overarching concerns - society-building, working with each other.” An elderly Moroccan man told MEE he will vote for Labour and that he has voted for Labour for years. His wife said she was planning to vote Labour, but might change her mind by election day. “My daughters are voting Green, and they tell me to vote Green. Which one is good on Gaza? The Greens. I might vote for them.” 'Muslims can care about green issues too' Chowdhury, the Newham mayoral candidate, described accusations by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK that the Greens have engaged in “sectarian politics” in campaigning on Gaza as “completely racist”. “The Green Party is at the same time an Islamist party and a super LGBT party? Right. The reality is that we're a coalition of progressive voices [that] wants to build a better society. “So we have a lot of diversity in our party, and we have a lot of Muslims joining the party. We do have a lot of LGBT people join the party, people from every different community.” He said he has been subjected to racism “every single day” of the campaign, including calls for his deportation. The Green Party has been accused of sectarianism. This is why that's wrong Read More » “Muslims can care about green issues too,” Tabassam said. “There seems to be this weird perception that these two things are so artificially distinct. “As Muslims ourselves, we've always been taught to protect the world and nature and environment and living things around us. So I don't know why there seems to be this artificial separation of the two.” Kanyike added: “I think [critics] are just afraid because Muslims are finding a party that actually wants to support them. We actually don't focus on division rather than unity. “Just because we're welcoming different groups doesn't mean that we're being sectarian. Our focus is to be open for all groups and, if the Muslim community feels that the Green Party is for them, then we will be more than happy to welcome them as well." Many people, clearly, still support Labour and are against both the Greens and Reform. Phil, a man in a blazer shopping at Westfield Stratford, told MEE he resolutely supports Labour. “I believe they’re the only party that represent the sensible things within politics, basically. They’re less extreme, they look after the individual people. “They basically are concerned about some of the major issues. And yes they've made mistakes in the past two years but I still think they’re the people for me.” The Greens he considered benign but incapable of governing. Reform, by contrast, “are a complete load of loonies. It’s sensational stuff, and it’s actually nasty and evil in many ways.” Faaiz Hasan, a national elections coordinator for the Green Party, told MEE that the local elections “come at a critical time”. He said that "this is the moment that we can actually start putting forward an alternative vision for the country that is not based on blaming migrants, is not based on blaming people of colour or others, but identifies that the real issue is not race, it's class, and the concentration of wealth and power in a very tiny group of people." Polling nationally suggests the Greens could win nine councils across the country, including Lewisham and Hackney in east London. Even if they fall short of that, these are likely to be the elections that establish the Greens as a major party with a strong presence, through councillors and campaigners across the country. Labour is sure to be worried. UK Politics News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0