In two weeks’ time, voters across London will go to the polls to elect every single councillor in the capital.

National opinion polls can give an indication as to what might happen in local elections. But they are nothing more than a rough guide. Turnout in local elections is considerably lower than general elections, and local factors often play an oversized role.

Local election polling is pretty rare. But this year, YouGov has conducted its first ever MRP poll looking at the elections in London. And the results are stark.

YouGov has described the results of its poll as projecting a ‘seismic shift for local government in the capital’.

The poll suggests that Labour’s stronghold in the city may be crumbling.

In the 2022 London local elections, Labour won the highest vote share in 21 of the 32 boroughs.

The median projection of YouGov’s poll has Labour receiving the most votes in just 15 – less than half.

Who are the big beneficiaries? The Greens and Reform.

According to the poll, the Greens are on track to receive the most votes across in Lambeth, Hackney, Lewisham and Waltham Forest. The poll has the Greens in second place in a further 14 boroughs.

Reform, meanwhile would top the poll in the outer London boroughs of Barking & Dagenham, Bromley and Havering.

The poll suggests that Labour are still on track to win the most votes across London, but down considerably on their 2022 result. According to the poll, Labour are estimated to receive 26 per cent of the vote across the city, down 16 points on 2022.

The Greens are projected to come second with 22 per cent, the Tories third with 17 per cent, the Lib Dems fourth with 15 per cent and Reform in fifth with 14 per cent.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Simon Dawson / Number 10 – Creative Commons

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Protestors repeatedly heckled Nigel Farage as he addressed a rally in Croydon, South London yesterday.

Campaigners from youth movement Green New Deal Rising (GNDR) chanted “Reform is not welcome here” and “you are funded by billionaires and your party serves them not working people”. 

Another man stood up and said: “I’m a son of a bricklayer and the son of a teacher and you’ve done f*** all for the working class.”

Both activists were able to make their statements before being removed from the event by security. 

Farage responded to the protestors by shouting “Boring! Boring! Boring!” and saying “We’ve got a screamer”. As he said this, the word “BORING” flashed on a screen behind him.

The Reform leader was speaking at Fairfield Halls in Croydon yesterday to launch Reform’s London local election campaign. 

Reform has set its sights on running Croydon Council, which is currently a Conservative council.

Farage also said his party is “competitive” in Bromley, Bexley, Havering, “and maybe two or three others”.

In a video on X, the GNDR activists explained that they had disrupted the rally “because we will not allow Nigel Farage’s hate to exist unopposed in London”. 

The other activist said that “Reform is doing nothing for working class people like me and you. All that they’re doing is stamping on us and making us poorer and poorer while they’re funded by billionaires”. 

Protesters from Stand Up To Racism also gathered outside the event, where they chanted slogans including: “Shame on you” and “Off our streets”.

Michael Holland from Croydon Stand Up To Racism told the BBC that Farage was “not welcome in Croydon” because “he ferments division and we are not having it.”

“We are a multicultural town, the vast majority of people in Croydon are anti-racist and we get on brilliantly together,” he added.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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If there are two things guaranteed to provoke outrage on the British right, they are Sadiq Khan and any attempt to regulate motorists. Bringing the two together is guaranteed to generate performative fury among our right-wing brethren.

This week’s reaction to proposed AI-powered traffic enforcement is a textbook example.

A headline in the Telegraph thundered: “Sadiq Khan plots new AI cameras in latest driver crackdown,” accompanied by warnings of “intrusive” technology and a looming “citywide rollout.”

The framing is breathless, but the underlying policy is rather more mundane: trialling camera systems, led by Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police, to enforce existing laws against dangerous driving.

The initiative forms part of London’s “Vision Zero” strategy, one of 43 proposals aimed at eliminating road deaths. The penalties cited are not new or extraordinary: £200 and six penalty points for using a mobile phone while driving, and fines of up to £500 for failing to wear a seatbelt. These are longstanding rules designed to prevent avoidable harm.

Evidence from elsewhere suggests enforcement works. After similar cameras were introduced in Devon and Cornwall, detections of drivers using phones or neglecting seatbelts rose sharply. Critics present this as evidence of overreach, while a more straightforward interpretation is that the technology is identifying behaviour that was already illegal, and dangerous.

Khan also noted how cities such as New York City and Paris have implemented comparable measures in efforts to reduce traffic fatalities, meaning London is playing catchup rather than taking an authoritarian leap.

But much of the backlash hinges on civil liberties concerns. The Telegraph cites warnings by campaign group Big Brother Watch that such systems risk turning London into a surveillance state, with a spokesperson arguing the technology treats “every driver as a potential suspect.”

While the expansion of surveillance does deserve scrutiny, particularly where biometric data may be involved, the politics behind the outrage are difficult to ignore. Big Brother Watch was founded by Mark Littlewood, former director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and remains closely aligned with a libertarian, anti-regulatory worldview.

Littlewood himself has been associated with the deregulatory agenda that underpinned Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership, which, as we know, culminated in market turmoil and Truss to resign after 49 days in the job. Littlewood is now involved in efforts to push the Conservative Party further toward a “small state” agenda with his PopCon (Popular Conservatism) group.

Seen in that light, opposition to traffic enforcement technology is less surprising. It reflects a broader ideological resistance to state intervention, whether in markets, public health, or road safety.

Critics from City Hall Conservatives have accused Khan of being “anti-motorist.” His response is simple: he is not “anti-motorist,” but “anti-death.”

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The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said that Labour should campaign to take the UK back into the EU at the next general election. 

Khan told Italian newspaper La Repubblica last night that the UK’s return to the EU is “inevitable” and questioned “why delay the inevitable?”. 

Khan said that Labour should “go into the next elections with a promise to rejoin the EU”, without going through a second referendum.

The London Mayor’s stance goes much further than the Labour government’s current position, which is currently to keep to Brexit’s “red lines” while seeking closer ties with the bloc. 

Khan said that the UK should rejoin the customs union and single market by the end of this Parliament. He said that any trade deal with the EU is “less good” than being in the customs union. 

He argued his position, saying: “I see on a daily basis the damage Brexit has done — not just to London, but to Londoners”. 

He said that the damage is “humongous” economically, socially and culturally, and that incremental steps to strengthen ties with the EU are not enough.

The Mayor of London cited new research by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, and Goldman Sachs, which found that the UK economy would have grown by an additional 10% if it weren’t for Brexit. 

He added that in an “incredibly unstable world” and with Donald Trump in power, “Europe is our only security”. 

Khan said: “I think it’s inevitable, the direction of travel, at some stage we’re going to rejoin the European Union. Why have additional pain in the meantime? Why delay the inevitable?”.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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