Even in the bizarre context of British politics today, it is unusual for a political party’s national leader to endorse the candidate of a rival party without even informing, let alone consulting, his own local members on the spot. But members of Your Party’s local proto-branch in Stratford and Bow have learned from the press that Jeremy Corbyn is demonstratively supporting the mayoral candidate of a different party – Mehmood Mirza of the newly constituted party, Newham Independents.
Some years ago, Mehmood Mirza stood for Labour’s national executive committee for its allocated ethnic minority seat. Shortly before the ballot, together with the purge and wholesale closure of both West Ham and East Ham constituency Labour parties, along with others he found himself expelled. For a while he associated with the group founded in their place by local socialist activists, but soon parted company with them to found a separate party of his own – Newham Independents – recruiting almost exclusively among the local Pakistani Muslim population. Newham socialists made persistent attempts to join forces with the new party on a common programme and even made a bloc with it in the last round of council elections, but their subsequent approaches to them have since been brusquely rebuffed.
Due to widespread disaffection at the bungling and at times corrupt administration of the overwhelmingly Labour Newham council, the new party won a couple of local by-elections and were joined by a defecting Labour councillor. Now for the second time Mirza is standing for mayor of Newham and newly recruited allies are standing for every single council seat.
At first sight, the party’s manifesto is very attractive. It promises free school meals for all primary and secondary students, free resident parking permits plus two hours of free parking across the borough and “more social housing”. This is in a borough which only a year ago needed emergency financial support from the government and which has recently become the most indebted council in London, with over £2bn owed by the town hall.
In 2025, Newham’s council tax was hiked by 9%. But Mirza has ruled out any further increase in council tax in one of the most deprived boroughs in the country. He says he volunteers in a foodbank and sees first-hand how people are struggling. “It’s not the right time to increase council tax. Yes, the council needs money, but there are other ways to save money and to generate money,” he says.
So, what are these other ways? He has an easy answer. “To ask for money from the central government… In central government, they’ve got enough money… We will campaign for more funding from central government. We will tell them our needs, we will explain to them what our needs are,” says Mirza.
So that is Mirza’s policy? To ask the government for more money? This is naivety bordering on fantasy. There is no chance that the government will relent and simply pour money into Newham’s coffers, irrespective of the appalling poverty of its residents. If this Labour government is refusing any further concessions to a mayor and council controlled by the Labour Party, then it is hardly more likely to when it is led by an anti-Labour independent council.
For all his good intentions, if Mirza becomes mayor, then there will be chaos. He won’t know how to handle the budget and will follow the line of the chief executive. Bankruptcy could follow and the government would then send in commissioners to impose a draconic budget. This fiasco would discredit not just Mirza and Newham Independents, but also potentially Jeremy Corbyn, who has so very publicly endorsed his candidacy.
We have many times seen the same phenomenon – a candidate who makes grandiose promises, often in all sincerity, but without the vaguest idea how to pay for them, apart from “explaining to the government what our needs are”. What is needed is a strategic programme harnessing the energies of the local working-class population.
Newham is the site of spectacular housing and infrastructure projects, all feverishly springing up during the run-up to the London Olympics. These include countless towering luxury apartment blocks of empty flats, mostly owned by foreign billionaires who have never once even visited them, but cynically use them as convenient piggy bank investments in which to hide their ill-gotten black money. At the same time, it is also the home of record numbers of homeless street-dwellers, many of them sleeping in doorways right below these largely uninhabited tower blocks. A socialist council would organise and mobilise the homeless to occupy these empty flats and fight for an end to exploitation, cheap labour and profiteering landlords.
It is a crushing disappointment to those of us locally who flocked enthusiastically into Your Party when the first appeal was made to launch it, that despite repeated attempts to invite Jeremy Corbyn to visit us, engage with us and confer with us, he has ignored all such invitations. Newham has rich working-class traditions and local trade-union activists are appealing to Mehmood and Jeremy to meet with us to plan the genuine socialist fightback our borough so desperately needs.
