DARREN LEWIS: ‘There’s an absence of Black candidates going into the elections on Thursday’
With the local elections this week, there are still Black candidates willing to represent Labour as they fight to hold their position. Why doesn’t the party seem to want them.
The Green party’s Dylan Law(Image: Getty Images)
Dylan Law sums up the reason why Sir Keir Starmer is adopting the brace position ahead of this Thursday’s elections. Dylan is the Green Party’s candidate for Deputy Mayor in Hackney Downs where I grew up in East London. Just 20 years old, he is a rising star of politics. Ambitious, driven and, alongside Zoe Garbett who is standing for Hackney Mayor, able to relate to the people living there.
Speaking to friends and relatives of mine who still live in the area, there is trust in Dylan’s ability to address the poor housing conditions, given he grew up on a council estate with a single mother. There is faith in his ability to make local government more accessible to local people, rather than hiding behind bureaucracy and patronising the public. (“Oh, that’s him! I’ve seen him on TikTok, he’s really good,” said my teenager, reading this over my shoulder as I write.)
Young people are excited by a visionary who looks like them and understands the many issues all too few people in politics even know about, let alone are able to represent. These should all be characteristics we are attributing to Labour’s candidates. Yet, Dylan would probably never have made it on to their shortlists in what stands as a microcosm of the trouble with the party millions of Black and Asian voters remained loyal to for decades.
Why would it appear not to want any new Black candidates to fight its battles? Even allowing for the disillusionment over immigration and the Middle East, there are still potential candidates out there being overlooked. Take Eunice O’Dame and Enid Molyneux, both Black women. They are reported to have been blocked by Labour from standing as candidates in Bensham Manor, the second safest Labour seat in Croydon.
Even more fascinating, the seat will be contested instead by Keir Starmer’s niece, Ellie Sandover. She is the daughter of Starmer’s sister Kate Swabey. There would appear to be little doubt about Ellie’s competence and, to be fair to her, she shouldn’t be slated in the bigger picture.
But what is it with Labour and Black candidates? And how is it that the Tories are able to enjoy their warped version of diversity instead?
Three years ago, I wrote on these pages about this issue. Also, about the prominent Black male Labour supporters who wrote to its national governing body, “perplexed and disheartened” to have been snubbed for selection to fight the 2017 snap election.
Little has changed since then. Dylan is in pole position to create one of a number of problems across the country for Labour who, under the PM and his coterie of advisers, have lost the ability to field candidates reflecting the working class they claim to represent.
They wrestled back power two years ago by promising to become the antidote to the Tories’ lies, racism, ruthlessness and, in some cases, corruption. Yet heartbroken voters feel betrayed over the two-child benefit cap, immigration (it is still so hard to forget Starmer’s “Island of strangers” speech), the winter fuel allowance, leave to remain, cuts to the welfare benefits of the disabled and so much else.
The widely held view is that the government played hostage politics with voters, so convinced that they would remain loyal as they wouldn’t countenance switching their allegiance to the Tories or Reform. The emergence from the clouds of the Greens under Zack Polanski, however, has caught Labour floundering.
For all that, there are still Black candidates willing to represent them as they fight to hold their position. Labour has to ask itself why it doesn’t want them.
