Reflections on May: London’s new political landscape

Jonny Popper | 11th June 2026 | Politics

May’s local elections completely transformed London’s political landscape, argues CEO Jonny Popper.

Labour – usually so dominant – lost control of 12 local authorities and 460 of their 1,156 councillors. The Party now has an overall majority in just 9 boroughs, although they do remain the party with by far the most councillors in London. The Tories did very little – ending up with just three more councillors than they started with and gaining only Westminster City Council. The Lib Dems made next to no impact, failing to gain their target borough of Merton. Nine boroughs came back as No Overall Control (NOC) where no single party won a majority. With so much change, there were three key stories of these elections.

The rise of the Greens

As expected, the Greens performed extremely well across inner London, winning three boroughs, with 279 councillors in total, up from just 18 in 2022.

They pulled off a stunning victory in Hackney, their number one target, where Zoë Garbett was elected as Mayor with 47% of the vote, while they increased their councillors from two to 40. Similarly, Liam Shrivastava was elected Mayor of Lewisham, where the party also managed to win 40 councillors in a borough that had been a ‘one party state’, returning only Labour councillors in 2022. The Greens also won Waltham Forest from Labour with 31 out of 60 councillors from a standing start, while they now also run Haringey as a minority administration, having come up just one seat short of an overall …

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