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There are various ways of counting the percentage of votes cast for each candidate. The easiest is the number of votes cast for a candidate divided by the total number of votes cast (bearing in mind that each voters can have 2 votes or 3 votes but doesn’t have to use them all). That is the method used on Lambeth Council website rounded up or down to the nearest whole number (which means that if it’s less than 0.5 percent the figure is recorded as 0 percent). Wikipedia does the same but rounds up or down to the nearest first decimal point. This gives, for instance, our candidate in Brixton North 0.8 percent.
To work out how many individuals voted for a particular candidate you would divide the number of votes for a candidate by the number of ballot papers. This is what they appear to have done here:
https://www.mylondon.news/news/south-london-news/lambeth-election-results-full-2026-33916540
This gives 2.4 percent in Brixton North, 2.0 percent in Stockwell West, and 0.5 in Clapham Common.
The figures for the 9 TUSC candidates (showing how badly they did from their own point of view) are: 2.1 (Stockwell West), 1.6 (Brixton North), 1.4, 1.4, 1,2, 0.9, 0.9, 0,9, and 0.7. Which are ridiculous for a party offering reforms — if you want reforms you might as well vote for a party that has a chance of getting elected and so in a position to implement some. Which is what those attracted by reforms did.
As to how many voted just for our candidate, I can’t say regarding Brixton North as I was at the table for Stockwell West. The way they counted the ballot papers of those who didn’t vote for all 3 candidates of one party enabled you to see how these had scattered their votes. My impression is that not many voted only for us (in fact not many used only one of their votes). Most of our voters also voted for one or more other candidates but not randomly, for instance for us and/or a Green or the ShakeItUp candidate or a Labourite or, quite often, the TUSC candidate. We might not like this but it at least showed that those who did vote for us did so deliberately, probably on the principle of voting the furthest “left” that you can.
The other thing to note — Professor Curtice continues — is that we do better in “Labour” wards and constituencies. Stockwell West was a clean sweep for Labour, Brixton North elected 2 Labour and 1 Green. (Clapham Common elected 2 LibDems).
Maybe next time we should field the full number of candidates. We did that in 2010. Here are the results (scroll down):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferndale_(Lambeth_ward)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larkhall_(Lambeth_ward)
The percentages are 1.0 and 0.8.
Any idea why ‘Shake It Up’ polled so well? . . . in relative terms, I mean.
Yes they did relatively well, averaging about 5 percent and sometimes outvoting the Tories and/or LibDems. Limited confirmation of Roger Hallam’s approach: find a well-known enthusiastic local community activist to be candidate, campaign continuously canvassing door to door, regular weekly meetings, posters everywhere. On a radical-democratic localist programme.
It remains to be seen if they will be a permanent feature of the political scene in Lambeth.
Did Michael Chessum get elected for the Greens?
Yes. So at least one self-declared “Marxist” councillor.
It looks as if the Greens will be running Lambeth Council from tomorrow, maybe with LibDem support if needed, as the result is:
Greens 29
Labour 26
LibDems 8Going to be interesting to see first hand how the Greens will manage capitalism at local level and whether our future slogan can be:
Labour, Green, Same Old Scene.
The result of the election at Stockwell West & Larkhall has just been announced:
Labour: 1438, 1301, 1244
Green: 1234, 1211, 1098
Conservative: 420, 358, 265
LibDems: 377, 348, 273
Reform: 374
Independent (Shake It Up): 351
TUSC: 72
Socialist: 68Four of us were at the all-day count at the Oval cricket ground yesterday. The results of two of the three wards we contested are:
Brixton North (3 councillors)
Labour: 1415, 1365, 1189
Green: 1388, 1304, 1169
Independent (Shake It Up): 372
Conservative: 261, 252, 167
LibDem: 215, 200, 186
Reform: 189
Socialist: 77
TUSC: 53This is the first time that TUSC have fallen below us.
Clapham Common & Abbeville (2 councillors)
LibDems: 1331, 1195
Labour: 1116, 789
Greens: 441, 423
Conservative: 347, 331
Reform: 194, 173
Socialist: 14This is the most prosperous ward in Lambeth (and the last one to have had a Tory councillor) and confirms that we do better in terms of votes in (now one-time) “Labour” areas.
There is a recount in the third ward — Stockwell West & Larkhall which is taking place this morning. We know how many votes we got but it is against the law to reveal it and, besides, it might be different after the recount.
To return to whether or not our candidates could sign the Vote Palestine pledge, we said we couldn’t because it implied some “right of nations to self-determination”.
Despite most Green candidates having signed up to this pledge, they have just been disavowed by their Party Leader who has stated that “no country has a right to exist”.
The BrixtonBuzz has published today its “Meet the Candidates” piece on our candidates:
Meet the Candidates: Socialist Party of Great Britain – abolishing capitalism since 1904
It’s has also published its one on “TUSC”:
The contrast between our straight socialist stance and their common or garden reformism could not be starker.
Over the long weekend we finished distributing the last of our leaflets. Some 12,000 in all. We came across a rare RefUK leaflet.
All we will do now is wait for the count on Friday and to see what the Brixton Buzz makes of our answers to the questions it put to our candidates for its “Meet the Candidates” feature. They have already done the Greens, LibDems and Labour. The “minor party” candidates follow tomorrow or Wednesday. Our candidate commented as follows on the one on the Labourites:
“Today’s greens are tomorrows labour, the same promises will be broken by both parties as neither have control over their big boss, king capital, the economy will always dictate what policy is allowed
A Krycek SPGB candidate brixton north.”Five members were at Trafalgar Square for the May Day march to commemorate the beginning of the British General Strike on 4 May 1926. What a pathetic affair it was. We had more listening when we organised meetings in Trafalgar square in the 1970s and a better audience. The biggest UK political contingent was that of the “Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist Leninist)” marching behind banners with pictures of Lenin and Stalin (and, unfortunately and inappropriately, Marx and Engels”). Another leaflet, by “the Bolshevik Tendency” (but they are all that), was headlined “Military Victory to Iran!”
A disgrace but there you are. That’s what May Day is these days, though, to be fair, there were also quite a few trade union banners too. There was no sign of SWP or SPEW.
Link from SE5 Forum to their Instagram photos of the hustings last Wednesday:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DXwnC3Cl7bA/
When/if you get there tap the photo to see mistaken link to our website. Corrected in the comments.
Here’s what we said at the time:
Here is our candidate’s reply to Eduardo Salgado:
The stageist model, national liberation as a necessary prelude to socialist transformation, is not merely strategically mistaken but theoretically incompatible with the abolition of capitalism. The historical record of national liberation movements demonstrates a consistent pattern: the “stage” of national liberation does not clear the decks for proletarian revolution it institutionalizes a new form of capitalist state. The foreign colonizer is replaced by a national bourgeoisie that maintains wage labour, commodity production, and extraction. The nation is not a proto political reality waiting to be liberated, but a category produced by capital itself a way of organising populations into manageable units. To prioritise national liberation is to reinforce the very abstractions; nation, citizenship, the state that capital requires to function.
“The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.” The Communist Manifesto (1848)
The Socialist Party (GB) position is that the proletariat has no stake in which bourgeoisie administers its exploitation. Anti-imperialism that stops at the nation state leaves exploitation intact. The state form itself prevents the direct social relations that would constitute a break with capital. Socialism cannot proceed through stages it must begin immediately in the content of struggle, as the practical activity of breaking with wage labour, money, and the state. National liberation changes the flag and people in government, it does not interrupt the reproduction of capital. To make it a “necessary step” is to permanently defer the only act that could end exploitation: the immediate social transformation of society by and for the working class. We don’t seek the people’s commodity production we seek abolition of the proletariat.
Anya Brixton North SPGB candidateVote Palestine 2026 asked candidates if they would sign a pledge, the first point of which was to: “Uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”
The BrixtonBuzz has published a list of those who agreed to sign the whole pledge:
Lambeth Vote Palestine – which candidates to vote for in your ward
Our candidate added a published comment explaining why he couldn’t:
“I did request a better wording of the pledge at the campaign launch but those running the campaign didn’t take my advice so this, regrettably, must be my answer.
I can’t help but feel those who have a vested interest in passing off national liberation wars as somehow socialist had a hand in this.Reply from Anya Krycek
Dear Vote Palestine 2026,
Thank you for your email. I must respectfully decline to sign.
As an anti Zionist Jew and socialist standing in Brixton North, I share your horror at the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank. But I cannot endorse a pledge framed around national self determination.
The nation state, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is a prison house of nationalities. It tells workers to wave flags and forget they have no motherland to defend. Israeli and Palestinian workers alike are exploited by the same global system of wage labour and capital.
National liberation is a trap. A new state means new masters under a new flag, while wage labour, property rights, and class rule stay intact. Council divestment treats symptoms, not the disease.
My goal is not another state but the abolition of the state itself: a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless world community where people cooperate freely. Real self determination means workers recognising their shared enemy across all borders.
I stand with working people everywhere. I cannot sign a pledge that reinforces the nationalism keeping them divided.
Yours sincerely,
Anya Krycek
Socialist Party Candidate for Brixton North, Lambeth”Another candidate, Eduardo Salgado, who is standing for Shake it Up in the same ward, also commented, expressing a “Marxist-Leninist” (Maoist) point of view:
“I think historically, things happen in stages. According to Marxism-Leninism (ML), national liberation often must precede, or be strategically aligned with, workers’ liberation because imperialism makes national independence a necessary first step to create the conditions for a successful socialist revolution. Lenin viewed the national struggle in colonized or oppressed countries as a key component of the overall world socialist revolution. The core reasoning is that national liberation acts as a necessary step to “clear the decks” for direct class struggle, as it removes the foreign oppressor and allows the working class to battle its local bourgeoisie. Lenin says on this issue:
* Support the national liberation struggle against imperialism unconditionally.
* Maintain independent working-class organization and leadership within that movement.
* Use the liberation struggle to raise demands for socialist transformation (land reform, workers’ rights).”There is also a Trotskyist candidate standing in Brixton North but he has not intervened yet.
A couple of curiosities.
1. Two of the wards we are contesting border on Wandsworth so it’s possible that some of other leaflets might have been delivered there. In any event, we found a Tory leaflet from there headed “If you want to vote anti-Labour in Wandsworth, frankly you have to vote Conservative”, explaining :
“Voters are trying to ‘send a message’ to the Labour government but also to ‘vote against Reform’ which in many cases is why the Greens are ‘so attractive’ as people can vote anti-Labour but also against Mr Farage. But in … Wandsworth … ‘that’s not true,‘explained Prof Travers.”
Not so long ago people were discussing tactical voting about how best to get the Tories out, now the discussion is how to get Labour out. But it can be doubted that anyone thinking of voting Green will vote Tory just to kick out Labour.
If the Greens win and begin to run capitalism at local level, the old saying “Labour, Tory, Same Old Story” can be replaced “Labour, Green, Same Old Scene”.
2. At a recent renters’ demonstration a group calling itself “Communist Vanguard” distributed a leaflet in which it declares that:
“Our main task is to forge the future Communist Party, the revolutionary vanguard of the working class capable of leading the fight to destroy capitalism. To guide this process, we aim to create communist cadres ….”
This is unusually frank from a Leninist organisation but it expresses the basic position of all Leninist groups like the SWP, SPEW, RCP, etc, etc. No wonder Corbyn kicked them out of His Party.
It’s why socialists are uncompromisingly opposed to all 57 varieties of Leninism. Workers need to be led by the cadres of a vanguard party just as much as they need a hole in the head.
Question: what is ‘absolute overproduction of capital’?
Yes, I wondered what he meant by that too. I think he means a state of affairs where so much surplus value has been produced that not all of it can be profitably reinvested. And that, in the former USSR,this arose because there were not enough workers or because of their low productivity.
Elsewhere, there are indications that he adheres to the Grossman/Mattick (and CWO) theory of crises (that they are caused by the rate of profit falling due to the rising organic composition of capital, ie by proportionally more capital being invested in plant and machinery than in hiring productive workers); where the concept of “overaccumulation” is important.
However, this wasn’t necessarily Marx’s view. His theory of crises seems to have been that they are caused by overproduction in one key industry spreading throughout the economy (as opposed to being linked to some slow, long-term tendency of the rate of profit to fall).
The economic reason for the collapse of USSR remains an open question, maybe linked to the refusal of workers there to work harder.
Another hustings yesterday evening. It was organised by the SE5 Forum which covers the London SE5 postcode. Most of this is in Southwark but a small part is in Lambeth. The meeting was in fact held in Southwark, in a United Reform church.
Quite a contrast from the one in Brixton on Monday. Only about 40 there and speakers only from Labour and the Greens, one from each borough (3 of them outgoing councillors), and us. Not much animation.
Labour and Greens were literally advocating the same things, though the Southwark Labourite did bring up the Greens’ policy of decriminalising drugs as a reason not to vote for them. Our candidate described them as being involved in “sibling rivalry”, as well as pointing out that what they could do was severely limited by having to operate within a context of government cuts and the wider, profit-dominated capitalist economy.
We handed out a few leaflets. A summary of what each candidate said will be sent to SE5 Forum members.
