Incumbent Mayor of Newham Rokhsana Fiaz OBE of the Labour and Co-operative Party has been re-elected for a second term following the Newham mayoral elections.
She won with 56.2% of the vote, with Conservative candidate Attic Rahman second at 11.6%, while Green Party candidate Rob Callender won 11.0%.
While Fiaz won a majority, that 56.2% is down from the 73.4% of the vote she won in 2018.
She said in her victory statement: “I give you this promise.
“Every second of every hour, of every day of every week, of every month of each of these coming four years I will be your champion.”
The win comes after historic victories for Labour in regular Conservative boroughs Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet.
Fiaz referenced those wins, saying: “Voters are turning to Labour because they want a fairer city, and a fairer country.
“They have rejected the complacent, uncaring and taking people for granted Tories: in Westminster, in Wandsworth and in Barnet.”
However, Conservative candidate Rahman’s 11.6% is comparable to the 11.9% vote won by 2018 Conservative mayoral candidate for Newham Rahima Khan.
Comparing the Conservative vote to the 17.2% vote drop experienced by Fiaz, it appears as though more dissented from voting Labour to other candidates in the Newham mayoral race.
In particular, third-placed Callender of the Green Party, a party that did not have a candidate for Newham mayor in 2018.
When chased on that point, Fiaz said: “There is a potency and a message that the Green Party have been conveying locally which has basically been “vote for us because they (the council) are all Labour’.
“I understand [that] sentiment in the context of a borough that has always been Labour.”
“[But] there is not one single thing that I would argue that the Greens could critique on what we’ve been advancing on the green agenda here in Newham.”
Fiaz mentioned that Newham Labour declared a climate emergency in 2019.
She added that Newham Labour have put out two annual climate reports, plus a third on the way this summer, summarising their response to the climate emergency.
Finally, she reiterated the council’s goal of getting to carbon neutral by 2030 and carbon zero by 2045.
See more local elections reaction at NELondoner.co.uk.
Image credit: Andrew Baker
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