Our 2026 local election campaign in London
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Three thousand copies of our manifesto have arrived. Here is what it says:
The Greens or Labour can’t reverse austerity!
The only hope is socialism
In May the Green Party promised to ‘reverse austerity’. It won them control of Lambeth council. It was an empty promise. No council has the power to do this, legally or economically. In office, the promise shrank to ‘campaigning to restore funding from central government’. Not the same. Austerity isn’t a political choice. It’s an economic necessity under capitalism. Councils and governments must limit spending to protect profits. The Greens’ campaign will fail.
Labour is no different. Labour ran Lambeth for years: protesting against cuts in opposition, making them in office. Labour’s answer tax the rich, spend more won’t work either. Corporate profits are the economy as far as capitalism is concerned. Tax them and investment and jobs dry up. Every Labour council ends up administering capitalism on capitalism’s terms. Whether Greens or Labour win the Myatts Field by election on 8 October, both will manage capitalism and capitalism means cuts.
The problem is the wages system itself. Workers are paid less than the value of what we produce; that difference is profit. Meanwhile food is destroyed while people go hungry, and houses stand empty while people sleep on the streets because production serves profit, not need. Unemployment, crisis, poverty and war are not accidents. They’re the inevitable product of a system where the means of living belong to a minority.
Socialism is something different: common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. No owners, no employers, no profit no wages, money or buying and selling. People contributing according to their ability, taking according to their needs, with production organised democratically to meet human needs in balance with the planet.
That can’t be handed down from above or voted in by one party. It needs a majority of workers understanding socialism and taking democratic control of production. That’s why the Socialist Party contests elections, not to manage capitalism, but to argue the socialist case.
Vote for the SOCIALIST PARTY candidate Anya Krycek on 8 October.
We now know who are opponents are: the usual suspects plus the Christian Peoples Alliance:
800 or so leaflets distributed so far. This might be considered early but both the Greens and the Labour Party have already been out. We met one Labourite canvasser.
The area has been upgraded since we last time we contested a local election here, in 2013. Then large parts of it were a building site. Now it is this:
https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/better-fairer-lambeth/projects/myatts-field-north
The medium-rise blocks all have outside letter boxes which makes leafletting easier.
Some more publicity for our campaign, in a local online news site:
Myatt’s Fields by-election: seven candidates confirmed for 8th October
London branch also have to cover another election, this time for Parliament. There’s a by-election in Holborn & St Pancras caused by Starmer deciding he has no future as an MP and resigning. The date is the same as for the local by-election in Lambeth: 8 October.
The main contenders are Labour and the Green leader Polanski. George Galloway of the Workers Party is also standing. Count Binface isn’t.
The constituency covers the area of Euston, Camden Town and Kentish Town and so is quite central. We are not contesting but branch members in north London will be distributing a limited number of leaflets urging a write-in vote for Socialism.
Our leaflet has brought a reaction from a member of the Lambeth & Southwark section of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, apparently a supporter of the Green Party (though we’ve heard the same argument from supporters of the Labour Party).
Anyway, here it is:
“Hi Guys
We appreciate your views, but on a practical level there is are many steps before perfection, and the Greens are leading us in the right direction. The country is in crisis and the most divided it has been for generations – let’s join together rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
A volunteer for L&S PSC”Another 800 or distributed yesterday mainly on the Cowley Estate. Met three Green canvassers, armed with clipboard and doors to knock on.
Meanwhile the LibDems who are taking this election seriously have put out a leaflet which mentions their proposal to end the cost of living crisis:
“Lib Dems will rejoin the single market to solve the cost of living crisis”.
As if there wasn’t one in the EU countries too.
A thousand or so leaflets suggesting a write-in vote for socialism rather than voting for any of the candidates were distributed through letterboxes in Holborn & St Pancras yesterday, in area between Kentish Town and Camden Town.
Labour posters evident in the poshest part we leafletted. We picked up 3 different Green Party leaflets. Their line is that, as there will still be a Labour government after the by-election, people who normally vote Labour can safely vote for Polanski to “pull Labour on the right direction”. It might work (pulling in the votes that is, not influencing the Labour government).
We also came across an office of the Camden People’s Alliance, the organisation which former ANC MP in South Africa, Andrew Fernstein, is associated with. He stood against Starmer in the general election and finished second. He has endorsed Polanski this time. Naturally, we put through their letterbox more information about socialism than just the leaflet.
The Greens are certainly putting in a lot of work. We met one Green canvasser wandering around lost. She had come from Brighton. We got lost too as we didn’t bring a proper map and got mixed up
with the tourists at Camden Market.Here is the wording of the leaflet being distributed in Holborn & St. Pancras:
Don’t be distracted by the noise
… around the Holborn St. Pancras by-electionLabour and the Greens are competing over who can best manage the cost-of-living crisis. But neither can solve its root cause: capitalism is organised around the interests of those who own and control the means of production wealth, rather than the needs of everyone.
Socialism means common ownership and democratic control. When production is to meet human needs rather than for profit, the dependence on the insecurity and problems of having to work for a wage will disappear.
If you agree, cut through the politicians’ spin. Write SOCIALISM across the ballot paper and make your voice heard.
Want to help build a world based on common ownership and production for use? Get in touch.
More of our leaflets distributed in Holborn and St Pancras today. This time we came across one from the Restore party candidate, a certain Tyler Johnson who says he “attends church in the City”.
His leaflet is really aimed at Farage’s RefUK. I’d heard that they are a particularly nasty lot but I hadn’t realised how much. Here’s what they say:
“Illegal and taxpayer-dependent foreign nationals should be deported. Millions must go.”
“Demographic change and mass immigration must be reversed before Britain is changed for ever.”
Mass immigration must be reversed. Millions must go. But where? And how? The idea is preposterous even from a capitalist point of view.
This campaign is financed by a single maverick multi-millionaire. The rest of the capitalist class can’t be too happy about millions of those who produce surplus value for them being deported.
Local publicity for our campaign in the Myatt’s ward by-election on 8 October:
The Green Party have brought out a leaflet in which their candidate is endorsed by Tara Amfo who stood in the ward in May for Roger Hallam’s “Shake It Up” group of independents. She got 198 votes (3%) ahead of both Reform and the Tories. If her voters follow her advice that should get the Greens over the winning line.
We ran out of leaflets and run off a few hundred more for distribution mainly in the Myatt’s Field South Estate. Here is the wording:
TO THE ELECTORS OF MYATT’S FIELDS
Fellow Workers!
On Thursday you will be asked to choose someone to represent Myatt’s Fields on Lambeth Council, The Greenies, Labore, LimpDems, Torys & Deform will all tell you they can make capitalism work better for you. I am writing to say something different.
I am not standing to manage Lambeth Council, and I am not offering you a programme of reforms. Councils, whichever party runs them, can only administer a system based on profit and the market. That system is why rents and mortgages keep rising while estates like ours wait years for repairs. It is why everything you need, housing, heating, food, care, is produced only when it makes someone a profit.
No councillor can fix this, because the problem is not bad management. The problem is capitalism itself.
The Socialist Party stands for one thing: a world society based on common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s resources, where production is for need, not profit, a world without buying and selling, wages, bosses or borders. Some will say that’s unrealistic. But what is truly unrealistic is expecting a system designed around profit to ever put people first.
The vote is one of the few weapons workers have. It won’t change society on its own, but every vote for socialism is a signal that more and more of us have stopped believing the promises of the parties that have presided over decades of failure, and who, in Lambeth, now preside over a council where not even the administration can agree on how it should be run.
So I am not asking for your vote as a favour. I am asking you to vote only if you actually want socialism. If you do, vote Socialist on Thursday, 8th Oct, between 7am and 10pm, and remember to bring photo ID, as you now need it to vote.
This is not a vote for a person, and it is not a vote for a better run Lambeth. It is a vote for a different kind of world, one worth voting for.
Yours for Socialism
Anya Krycek
Socialist Party (GB) candidate Myatt’s FieldsFour of us were at the count. The result, announced just after midnight, was:
Lambeth Council
Myatt’s Fields By-ElectionLAB: 1,936 (46.7%)
GRN: 815 (37.1%)
LIBDEM: 189 (8.6%)
CON: 74 (3.4%)
REFUK: 58 (2.6%)
CHRISTIAN: 26 (1.2%)
SOCIALIST: 9 (0.4%)
Invalid votes: 7
Turnout: 26.3% (down from 37.1%)Labour won unexpectedly. 0.4% is 1 in every 250 voters.
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