Our 2026 local election campaign in London
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Next Friday nominations open for candidates for the 7 May elections. All the papers have been filled in for two of our candidates; a third requires just one more signature. These can be submitted next week for an informal check and will be.
Yesterday a further 500 leaflets were distributed through letter boxes in the Clapham Common & Abbeville ward. This is one the LibDems expect to win and they have also been distributing leaflets there. They reckon they can manage the austerity imposed by the central government better than the Labourites who currently control the council.
Activity continued last week with a stall outside Head Office in Clapham High Street and some leafletting in Stockwell West & Larkhall Ward on Sunday.
Also some fall-out from our presence at the anti-far right event the previous Saturday — an article in the Brixton Buzz on the elections and the Your Party with a photo of their candidate in which you can see our banner in the background.
Those who read her election address at the end of the article will immediately be able to work out that the banner can’t be hers. She is standing as a localist parish pump independent.
One of our candidates has commented on that article (which fails to mention that we are standing as well as Haljam’s group and the Your Party). Here it is in case it gets deleted:
“The Socialist Party does not seek to manage capitalism. We seek to abolish it.
Your Party promises to “fight cuts” and “stand up for the community.” Laudable. But their councillors will still balance Westminster’s books, collect business rates, and administer poverty. That is not socialism. That is reform. These are the same people who implemented cuts under Corbyn’s Labour. Now they call themselves “independent socialists.” They are not independent or socialist. They are a collection of rejected Labourites and Trotskyist entristsWe are standing three candidates in Lambeth not to win office, but to win socialists. We will use every platform to state this truth: socialism cannot be administered. It requires the revolutionary transformation of property relations not better management of the existing system
To those asking why we urge “FOR SOCIALISM” where we have no candidate: we reject false choices. A spoiled ballot is not invisible. It is a conscious refusal to legitimise competing managers of misery. It declares that no solution exists within this system
Your Party’s turmoil, exposed transphobia, resignations, factional warfare illustrates the reformist trap. Seek power within capitalism, and capitalism absorbs you. They learned nothing from their expulsion over antisemitism; now they repeat the pattern. We avoid these contradictions by stating plainly: councils cannot build socialism. Only a conscious, organised working class can
Vote for us if you understand this. Write “FOR SOCIALISM” if you reject the alternatives. But do not vote for better managers and expect revolution.
Anya Krycek candidate for the Socialist Party (GB)
For socialism, not reform!”On Saturday we held a stall outside our offices in Clapham High Street to hand out the last of the pre-election leaflets. These had to handed out before our prospective candidates officially become candidates when their nomination papers are handed in and accepted on Tuesday. From that point on all expenditure on leaflets, etc has to be recorded and declared as there limits on spending.
Despite this, 3 branch members and a comrade from South West Regional Branch distributed leaflets on the national march against the far right in central London the same day.
At its meeting on Sunday the branch decided not to proceed with contesting a ward in Islington and to concentrate on Lambeth. Some 800 leaflets saying we would be standing had been distributed, but this was still publicity for socialism.
The nomination papers for our 3 candidates were handed in today and were accepted. The election addresses are being delivered tomorrow. So the election campaign as such is starting, but won’t know the names of the other candidates till after nominations close on Thursday 9 April. But we know that Roger Hallam’s Shakeitup Independents have announced candidates for Brixton North and Stockwell West & Larkhall.
London branch has decided to meet every Saturday at 12 noon before the election on 7 May at head office in Clapham High Street to carry out election activity of one kind or another. The first will be this Saturday 4 April.
Following the events in Clapham High Street on Tuesday a dispersal zone is currently in force covering two wards: Town (where our head office is situated) and Clapham Common & Abbeville (where we are standing). It shouldn’t affect our activity.
The election leaflets arrived on Wednesday and London branch members were out yesterday, with a stall outside Head Office (while participating in the EC meeting via zoom) and distributing the leaflets through letter boxes, mainly in the Stockwell West & Larkhill ward.
This ward is just round the corner from Head Office and on our way there we met some people outside Stockwell tube station masquerading as the “Socialist Party”. They were of course SPEWers. They revealed that as Lambeth Your Party, which some of them had entered, was split and was putting up only one candidate in one ward, they had decided to stand 3 or 4 of their members under the guise of their front organisation TUSC. This won’t be in the ward where the Your Party is standing (St. Martins) as that would get them expelled. We don’t know where yet but will have to wait until the list of candidates is published on Friday.
It’s look that there is going to be quite a variety of runners in Lambeth. A part from the Labour, Tory, Liberal, Green, and Reform, there’ll be the YP (who are calling themselves “Yorpies”, presumably to distinguish themselves from Yuppies), TUSC, Roger Hallam’s Shakeitup, and us.
We were out again yesterday leafletting in Brixton and Stockwell. Also leafletted a protest called by Shakeitup against the eviction of small shopkeepers in Brixton Plaza to make way for redevelopment. The lone Your Party independent was there too.
Brixton Neighbourhood Forum have announced a hustings on Monday 27 April. Naturally, we shall be there as one of the wards we are contesting is Brixton North.
Nomination closed yesterday and the list of candidates has been published. So we now know who our opponents are. The only thing we didn’t know of before is that, in two of the three wards we are contesting, the SPEW Trotsky party front, TUSC, is standing.
Here are the official Statement of Persons Nominated for the three wards:
Leafleting continues this weekend in Brixton and Stockwell. In Stockwell Roger Hallam’s Shake It Up group had been there before. Their candidate’s leaflet states that
“An emerging alliance of progressive independent candidates is planning to take over the council and introduce community-based democracy”.
That was the original plan — to contest all 25 wards — but they are only standing one candidate in 6 wards. So, even these all get elected, they won’t be able to “take over the council”.
They had been expecting an agreement with the Greens but the Greens turned them down and are standing a full slate in all wards except one (where they have a deal with the Your Party).
So it looks like their plan is doomed to failure.
On the ballot paper their candidate will be described as an “Independent” and that’s how she will be seen, not entirely unfairly as her leaflets contain the usual complaint of “independents” (of all political colours) against decisions being made by disciplined parties.
On the Loughborough estate in Brixton we have made sure that our leaflet is received at the same time as theirs, so people there will be able compare what we propose (socialism) and what they propose (radical political democracy within capitalism).
We get mentioned here under one of the names under which we have been known historically:
https://www.mylondon.news/news/south-london-news/lambeth-local-election-candidates-2026-33761779
Meanwhile, following the decision last Sunday by the Your Party’s collective leadership to ban dual membership with Leninist groups, the election agent of the YP-endorsed candidate in St. Martins Ward has resigned from the YP as he is an SWPer. However, he remains her election agent.
We have been invited to two hustings the week after next. Both arising from us standing in Brixton North ward.
Monday 27 April at 7pm in St. Matthew’s Tenants Hall, St. Mathews Road, SW2 1NH. Organised by Brixton Neighbourhood Forum for parties standing candidates in wards in Brixton.
Wednesday 29 April at 7pm at United Reform Church, Love Walk, SE5 8AE. Organised by SE5 Forum for parties contesting wards which include the SE5 postcode — 6 in Southwark and 3 in Lambeth.
Naturally we have accepted and our candidate will be there.
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