Labour’s Forhad Hussain has been elected as the next mayor of Newham, but with a drastically reduced share of the vote. He won 30.1% of the votes cast, beating Mehmood Mirza (23.9%) and Areeq Chowdhury (22.4%). Clive Furness of Reform narrowly pipped the Conservatives’ Terri Blore for fourth place.
Turnout was 34.9%
|
Candidate |
Party |
Votes |
% |
|
Terri Bloore |
Conservative |
6360 |
7.50% |
|
Areeq Chowdhury |
Green |
18999 |
22.42% |
|
Clive Furness |
Reform UK |
7313 |
8.63% |
|
Forhad Hussain |
Labour & Co-operative |
25538 |
30.13% |
|
Kamran Malik |
Communities United |
324 |
0.38% |
|
Mehmood Mirza |
Newham Independents |
20234 |
23.87% |
|
Bharath Swamy |
Christian Peoples Alliance |
1550 |
1.83% |
|
Laura Willoughby |
Liberal Democrats |
3766 |
4.44% |
|
|
Rejected |
669 |
0.79% |
|
|
Total |
84753 |
|
While a win is a win and Hussain gets all the powers of mayoralty regardless, it is worth noting that 70% of voters preferred another candidate (first past the post is an awful way to elect someone to so powerful a position, especially in a multi-party contest). Also, worthy of attention is the fact that Hussain’s predecessor, Rokhsana Fiaz, achieved a vote share of 56.2% in 2022. So his winning campaign managed to lose almost half of the support Labour previously enjoyed. This is comfortably the worst performance of any Labour candidate in a Newham mayoral election.
forestgatedotnet 
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