Newham Independents win Plaistow South by-election

The Newham Independents have swept to victory in the Plaistow South by-election in a dramatic upset for Labour.

Md Nazrul Islam took the seat with 44.3 per cent of the vote in the 18 September poll, against 21.2 per cent for Labour’s candidate Asheem Singh.

This is a huge drop from the 56.0 per cent majority won in 2022 by Labour party councillor Neil Wilson, whose death led the election to be called.

Reform UK candidate Lazar Monu placed a strong third this Thursday with 16.0 per cent, while Green candidate Nic Motte’s 7.4 per cent gained him the fourth slot.

Conservative Rois Miah followed with 6.0 per cent and Liberal Democrat Sheree Miller won 4.4 per cent of the votes.

At 23.1 per cent, turnout was not far below the 2022 level of 28 per cent, when the entire council was up for election.

8,926 people were eligible to vote in the Plaistow South by-election. There were 2,059 verified ballot papers, and 16 rejected ballots.

This result echoes Labour’s loss of Plaistow North in 2023 to Newham Independent Sophia Naqvi by a similar margin.

Her victory followed hot on the heels of a by-election win in Plashet ward several months previously by Mehmood Mirza, who joined Naqvi to form the Newham Independents alongside fellow Plashet councillor Zuber Gulamussen, elected in 2022 under the Labour banner. 

In contrast to the left-wing origins of the party’s first three councillors, newly-elected Md Nazrul Islam stood as a Conservative party candidate in Boleyn ward in 2022.

Now that they hold four out of 66 seats on the council, the Newham Independents are the largest opposition party.

Leader Cllr Mehmood Mirza told the Citizen: “People are fed up with tax rises, filthy streets, crime. People have not seen any changes.”

In his view, “the Labour party is no longer representing the working class,” and he said that the aim of his group was to “provide [people] with an alternative in Newham” with policy objectives such as freezing council tax, introducing free school meals for secondary students and lowering the salary of the Town Hall’s chief executive.

The diverse origins of the Independents reflect recent disquiet across the political spectrum over the quality of council services, crime and other issues.

Yet their party was not the only beneficiary of discontent: concerns about local services also motivated a substantial number of people to opt for Reform UK, whose vote rose from 3.5 per cent in last year’s General Election in East Ham to nearly one in six votes this time round.

Speaking with the Citizen, the party’s candidate Lazar Monu mentioned “uncontrolled immigration” as an issue, but he also recounted hearing on the doorstep about “fly-tipping, rubbish is not being collected on time, the crime rate going through the roof.”

The Newham Council leadership can take comfort in that fact that the Plaistow South poll was run in an unusually accessible manner.

For the first time in London, a device called McGonagle Reader allowed blind and partially sighted people to vote in secret like everyone else.

Newham Council's interim chief executive Paul Martin, who is the official returning officer for the election, said: “It is over 150 years since the notion of a secret ballot was enshrined in British democracy, but for many people with visual impairment the need to require assistance to make their choice, and mark their ballot paper, has denied them this right to anonymity. 

"We hope by introducing the McGonagle Reader system at our polling stations, we can restore that right and dignity to voters.” 

Cllr Islam will remain in office until the seat is again up for grabs next May at the time of the local elections.