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UK Local Elections 2026
23AUG

Greens take Hackney and Lewisham boroughs

4 min read
19:09UTC

Zoë Garbett won the Hackney mayoralty and Liam Shrivastava won Lewisham from Labour on 7 May 2026, becoming the first Green elected mayors of any London borough; Hackney and Waltham Forest councils flipped Green outright on the same night.

← Back to Reform loses three wards, wins ClactonJump to analysis ↓
PoliticsDeveloping
Key takeaway

The Greens overshot their inner-London MRP projection while Reform undershot in the suburbs, both on the same fragmentation-blind model.

Zoë Garbett (Green) won the Hackney mayoralty on Thursday 7 May 2026, defeating Labour incumbent Caroline Woodley. Liam Shrivastava (Green) won Lewisham from Labour Co-op incumbent Brenda Dacres. They are the first Green elected mayors of any London borough. On the same night, Hackney council moved from Labour 44, Greens 6 to Greens 38, Labour 6, and Waltham Forest moved from Labour 45 and zero Greens to Greens 31, Labour 12, the first Green-controlled council in the capital.

The Green Party leader Zack Polanski launched the party's London campaign in Deptford on 10 April , naming Hackney, Lewisham, Lambeth and Islington as the Labour flagships most exposed to a housing-and-planning-led Green offer. Hackney and Lewisham fell. Lambeth and Islington held with reduced Labour majorities. The Cliftonville Kent by-election on 9 April, in which a Green candidate took a Reform-held seat on a 26.7-point swing , previewed the same single-ward saturation pattern: national leaders on the doorstep, a specific local issue, week-on-week canvass discipline.

Nationally The Greens added 370 net council seats to reach 543 total and gained outright control of 4 councils, against a YouGov MRP projection of 696 seats (event-00, . Where Reform undershot its FPTP projection by 894 seats in the same model family, The Greens overshot in inner London and undershot on the south coast and around Norwich. The same uniform-swing assumption that broke Reform's projection broke The Greens' projection in the opposite direction: dense local concentration produced wins the model classified as marginal, while the model's projected south-coast gains diffused across too many wards to flip any of them.

The Green national vote share of 18 percent sits ahead of the Conservatives on 17 percent, the first time The Greens have polled ahead of the Conservatives at a national election. With the Liberal Democrats on 16 percent and 842 council seats, the three governing parties of the post-war period (Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats) have collectively been beaten on vote share by Reform UK and The Greens. Garbett and Shrivastava now run two London boroughs containing approximately 600,000 residents combined. A Green administration's first 100 days in Hackney, on planning, on bus lanes, on Local Plan housing targets, sets the template the party will run on across more boroughs in 2030.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Hackney and Lewisham are London boroughs, areas of east and south-east London each governed by an elected council and, in some cases, an elected mayor. Both were solidly Labour-controlled for decades. On 7 May, the Green Party won control of both councils and both mayoralties for the first time. Zoë Garbett became Mayor of Hackney and Liam Shrivastava became Mayor of Lewisham. These are the first Green elected mayors of any London borough. The Green Party also took control of Waltham Forest council, switching from Labour control to Green control.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Two structural causes explain the Green London breakthrough. First, Labour's planning record in inner-London boroughs created a specific voting bloc of renters and homeowners opposed to high-rise development without infrastructure investment. Hackney's approval of the Woodberry Down Phase 4 development and Lewisham's stance on the Millwall site generated sustained activist opposition that the Greens organised over three years.

Second, the YouGov London MRP (n=4,548) in the days before the election projected Greens leading in four London boroughs, this projection itself mobilised Green tactical voters who switched from Labour in wards where they calculated Green was competitive. Projected wins attract the votes needed to convert projections into actual wins, a self-fulfilling dynamic specific to competitive urban elections.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    Hackney, Lewisham, and Waltham Forest councils will begin reviewing all major contracts and planning frameworks within the first 90 days; expected tensions with the GLA (Greater London Authority) over strategic planning designations.

    Short term · 0.75
  • Risk

    Green council control of Hackney and Lewisham places the party in a delivery position they have never occupied at this scale; failure on housing delivery or social care quality within two years would set back the national Green project significantly.

    Medium term · 0.65
  • Precedent

    First Green elected mayors in London provide a template for how the Green Party can convert inner-city opposition votes into council majorities, directly applicable to Lambeth, Islington, and Haringey in the 2030 cycle.

    Long term · 0.8
Sources:Wikipedia (citing BBC News and Sky News results pages)·Wikipedia (citing BBC News and Sky News results pages)·Wikipedia (citing BBC London results)
Mentions:Labour Party →Zack Polanski →Cliftonville →Reform UK →Electoral Reform Society →Deptford →Wales →Islington →Lambeth →YouGov →Liberal Democrats →England →Singapore →Hackney →Lewisham →Zoë Garbett →Liam Shrivastava →Brenda Dacres →Caroline Woodley →Green Party →
First Reported In

Update #7 · Reform's 14 councils, 894 seats short

Wikipedia (citing BBC News and Sky News results pages)· 9 May 2026
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Causes and effects
Caused by
Greens launch council assault on Labour turf
Polanski's 10 April Deptford launch targeted Hackney and Lewisham as Labour flagships for Green campaign concentration
Occurred 10 Apr 2026
Read story →
Greens flip Kent seat from Reform UK
Cliftonville Kent Green win on 26.7-point swing foreshadowed the targeted inner-London Green surge pattern
Occurred 9 Apr 2026
Read story →
Reform projected to 2,342 council seats
YouGov projected Greens to 696 seats nationally; actual 543 reflects same FPTP-fragmentation model failure as Reform undershoot
Occurred 5 May 2026
Read story →
Green air comes out as governing begins
Greens taking control of Hackney and Lewisham (ID:3152) replaced protest-vote status with governing responsibility, the structural shift the polling deflation tracks
Occurred 1 Jun 2026
Read story →
This Event
Greens take Hackney and Lewisham boroughs
The Polanski-Deptford targeting strategy launched on 10 April delivered exactly the inner-London Labour citadel breakthrough it was designed for. The Greens now hold four English councils outright and 543 council seats nationally, and gain a council governance record to take into the 2028 cycle.
Different Perspectives
Ian Davidson, Acting Returning Officer for Clacton
Ian Davidson, Acting Returning Officer for Clacton
Davidson's office printed a 90cm ballot paper for the record 34-candidate field, with nothing in electoral law capping candidate numbers or the £500 deposit each pays. He expects the paper's size to raise printing costs and slow the count into the early hours, a strain that follows from the major parties' boycott, not from turnout.
Scottish Labour members
Scottish Labour members
Members now choose between Michael Marra and Joe Fagan after Monica Lennon fell one MP nomination short of the three-MP, three-MSP threshold, a bar set by MPs and union officials rather than the wider membership. Whoever wins takes office having faced only one rival on the members' ballot.
Labour Party
Labour Party
Labour gained Penistone East from Reform on 20 August but lost Harraby South to Reform the same night, a wash that undercuts any claim of momentum. The party can point to beating Reform in a genuinely fought contest, but not to a pattern running only in its favour.
Liberal Democrats
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats took two of Reform's May wards, Almondbury on 13 August and St Neots Eynesbury on 20 August, the latter on a 29.8-point rise in their own vote share. Both results let the party claim it is the beneficiary when voters turn against Reform, not Labour or the Conservatives.
Reform UK
Reform UK
Reform UK can point to winning Clacton unopposed by the other major parties and to taking Harraby South from Labour, a ward it had never previously contested. That gives the party two results to cite even as three previously held wards changed hands elsewhere in August.
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
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