Labour scrambles for candidates to avoid local elections bloodbath

[IwantToRetire]

... an email sent to Labour members stated: “The deadline for candidate nominations is next week and we still have a number of places left for members to stand for us in those wards where the aim is mainly to fly the flag for Labour and to give Labour members and Labour voters the chance to vote Labour on the ballot paper.”

The message, in bold, underlined, red text, continues: “To complete that task we need your help NOW as members by some more of you volunteering to stand for us.

“Don’t assume others are applying, so do please contact us now.”
To highlight the ease with which people can apply to stand, the email emphasises that there is “no complicated interview process” and decisions are “made locally”.

Several hours later, a second email was circulated stating: “Please reply to this email if you are willing to be a paper candidate in any of these seats.”

The party has significant concerns about losing some of its safest seats in London, where Labour is set to face serious challenges from the Greens, who are projected to do well in urban centres and areas with a high student population.

Meanwhile, an insider in Tower Hamlets told The Telegraph that the Labour Party had been struggling to find enough female candidates to stand in the ward to meet its policy of positive discrimination.

The party can use all-women shortlists to increase female representation in local government, often targeting “winnable” seats, with the aim of eventually achieving a 50-50 gender balance in elected positions.

But this has inevitably made recruiting harder. ...

Extracts from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/04/04/labour-candidates-local-elections-bloodbath/

Also available to read at https://archive.is/cJkpH

I wonder why recruiting women is harder?!

Apart from anything else, i just can't imagine voting for a party that insults women daily, pretending they don't know what a woman is apart from just some frilly idea in a man's head, yet is too dim to realise that quite a lot of sane women are furious about this,so are politically homeless. Duh

None of this is rocket science, really, it's just that political practitioners like to pretend it's a mysterious art, and political journalists are hyper-focused on Parliament and don't usually know much about how parties work at the grassroots.

Decades ago the Communist Party used to produce handy guides for its working class members on subjects like "how to build a branch" or "how to chair a meeting" or "how to get elected in your union". An updated version of that kind of thing would be really useful.

The main thing on my mind at the moment is - I know the FPTP system has its critics, and they make some good points, but a useful thing is that it takes a long time to get a party going. By my reckoning it takes 20 years minimum of tough unsexy slogging at grassroots level for a party to go from a small group of hobbyists to a serious national force. That was true for Labour in the early 20th century, it was true for the SNP and Plaid, the Greens have been around since the 70s and Reform might be "new" in terms of the current legal entity, but it makes more sense to see them as the continuation of the old UKIP founded in 1993.

There have been multiple attempts in recent years to hothouse parties into relevance, with different models - defecting MPs + media buzz (Change UK), celebrities + media buzz (WEP), blacklisted actor + millionaire donor (Laurence Fox's Reclaim), elderly socialist MP + socially conservative Pakistani men + Violet Bott (Your Party), and now obscure MP + neonazi memelords (Restore Britain). None of these are very inspiring examples. I'm not saying it's impossible to build something new, but it takes a long-term investment in hard slog, and an orientation to normie voters.

Many Labour candidates are GC. I’m not a candidate this year - I am up in 28 - if people ask me I will happily tell them my views. The guy with the trans kid who harangues me via email to come out and support his trans kid ‘lol’ he can go fuck himself. My views have no bearing on national party policy.

And during the last local elections where I live, I got a similar begging email from the local Green Party... and I hadn't been a member for nearly 3 years when I got said email.

Tories struggled too and had less paper candidates than usual.

Every party is guilty of this 🙄

I think there is some misunderstanding about paper candidates.

Cant be bothered to find the exact number, if anyone is interested I am sure it is easy to find, but if you want your Party to be considered a National party, then you need to exceed this number.

I also cant be bothered to look it up, but there are some sort of perks once you become a nationl party.

And as said up thread, parachuting someone in is because which party it is, the HQ thinks the local party cant be trusted to select the right person.

Cant be bothered to find the exact number, if anyone is interested I am sure it is easy to find, but if you want your Party to be considered a National party, then you need to exceed this number.

I also cant be bothered to look it up, but there are some sort of perks once you become a nationl party.

There is no such status as "National Party". Therefore there are neither any criteria for being a "National Party" nor any perks for being a "National Party".

There are "Minor Parties" though - that is a thing - but it is not to do with fielding fewer than a specific number of candidates. It is based on whether the Party decides for itself to Register as a Political Party or a Minor Party depending on whether or not it only wants to contest elections at parish councils and/or community councils:

Minor parties

You can choose to register either a political party or a minor party.

A political party can field candidates in all elections in the area they are registered - some or all parts of Great Britain, or in all of Northern Ireland.

A minor party can only contest parish council elections in England and/or community council elections in Wales.

Minor parties cannot contest elections in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Minor parties are not subject to the same financial reporting obligations that political parties are.

Minor parties

Minor parties can only register in Great Britain and must also specify if they intend to field candidates at English parish council elections, Welsh community elections or both.

Making changes

If your party is registered and later wishes to change where it intends to field candidates, you can make an application to amend these details.

An application to change your registration from a minor party to a political party requires a £150 application fee.

www.electoralcommission.org.uk/full-guidance/how-register-your-political-party

Reform are still seeking candidates. I went through part of their process and it was OK to have Scotland Yard's phone number, an email address for the former Monaco football manager known to his friends as Adi, and my photo being that of the neighbours' cat.

My South London council is Labour-run and I have never had so much junkmail through the door, including a large flyer from the local Labour MP literally begging us not to vote on national issues. Also a "letter" purporting to be from someone in Bristol regaling the woes of a Green-run Council which I thought was pretty shoddy. It's all increasingly desperate.

Just had a Green candidate (with a rosette- green means 4th place in Equestrian....) knocking. I asked if he knew of a centre-left party that was strong on environmental issues and women's sex-based rights that I could vote for. His face fell and he started muttering about how it was all very complicated and nuanced. I informed him that it wasn't complicated at all; I worked on a stud farm as a teenager. I gave the specific example of the women only swimming session at the council-run pool, with the mosque just down the road, and asked how that would be possible under a Green-run council. He claimed it would still work. I asked how, if Zack Polanski thinks women can have penises? He was backing swiftly away, muttering something at this point, which was a shame as I was starting to enjoy myself.

Do I really have to spoil my ballot paper again?

Probably!

I've been reading bits of Jody McIntyre blog on the travails of Labour. Depressing stuff , the party has been hollowed out and seems to be a vehicle for vulture capitalists like Palantir et al.

Now that Trump's war is destroying the global economy they can mourn the two wasted years at leisure. After the Brexit result Theresa May made an interesting speech about helping the less well off. Presumably because they can't blame Europe any more? But nothing came of it. Will some ' broad conservative coalition ' build a million houses like Harold McMillan did? Stranger things have happened. Not much stranger though

I noticed the Labour candidate for my ward was also listed for at least one other ward

How is it going in your target ward this time POW?

How is it that the moment people get into a position of power they behave like this. Were they always like this, or is this in fact what many people think is normal behaviour once you are in a position of power.

... Ellie Sandover is a Labour candidate in Bensham Manor, the second safest Labour ward in the borough.

Sandover was selected in August last year, among the first to be announced of Labour’s full slate of 70 council candidates standing in the local elections next Thursday.

Two of Bensham Manor’s sitting councillors, Eunice O’Dame and Enid Mollyneux, both black women, were blocked by Labour from standing as candidates in 2026. For most of the past four years, Mollyneux has been Labour’s shadow cabinet member for community safety. ...

https://insidecroydon.com/2026/04/30/keir-starmers-niece-is-council-election-candidate-in-safe-ward/

And shame of Ellie Sandover.

Hi WarriorN - very friendly reception from residents when we have been out pushing my leaflets through letterboxes ❤️

One couple we met near a block of flats stopped to talk to us, were right on board and offered to take my leaflets into their block and put them through letterboxes 💜

Very little animosity and almost all of that has been when our pink rosettes 🌸 were mistaken for Labour red rosettes🌹, so it quickly dissipated when we explained we were from Party of Women.

This is in a Ward that has always been solid Labour.

Canvassing by other parties has been interesting - this is just my Ward and the pattern is not the same right across Newcastle:

• Labour: Limited canvassing (I have only seen one A3 glossy trifold “magazine” type leaflet)

• Reform: Almost zero canvassing (I have only seen one A5 Leaflet covering all three Candidates plus they haven’t even filled in their blurbs or put their photos on “Who Can I Vote For”)

• Greens: Massive push for votes (at least two visits by members of Heaton Greens knocking on doors + at least four glossy leaflets and magazines promoting Candidates + glossy leaflet promoting the national Green Party, featuring Zack Polanski).

I have had help leafleting from members of Let Women Speak North East from Northumberland down to Co Durham (and Molly Dog! 🐶) but if anyone else in the area wants to help, please PM me!

I have got roughly 1,500 leaflets left to deliver and five polling stations to visit on May 7th.

Seems that Labour in London is so concerned about the Greens overtaking them that they have started distributing what looks like a personal hand written letters to residents from a concerned Bristol resident with horror stories of the Greens in charge of a council!

At least I think that is what they are doing

The letter starts with the words “Dear friend” and is signed by Zak Syedomar but closer investigation shows that the letter is in fact campaign material from the Labour Party, promoted by a Labour councillor, David Oxley, “on behalf of all of the Lambeth Labour Party candidates”.
https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/letter-laying-out-chaos-bristol-under-greens-delivered-voters-london/

I've heard reports from Portsmouth of seemingly handwritten personal letters from a random Kent resident who was inspired to write to voters in Portsmouth telling them about the horrors of living under a Reform council.

Of course it's Labour again. This tactic seems to be getting rolled out to different areas.

They think voters are stupid.

I'm amused that Labour members and candidates know how negatively their brand is being viewed that they are almost "disowning" it in this local election. I've been seeing election posters for "Local Labour", a red poster, with a Union Jack on it. Presumably, they're trying to convince voters that they aren't like that nasty "National Labour Party"!

Were those Local Labour posters in Royston Vasey? 😂

Have noticed that in the last 24 hours since opinion polls showed that Polanski's comments had had a negative impact on his popularity, that Labour are paying for ads on Facebook in theory about the local election but all about Polanski.

Although for all I know other parties are circulating negative info about Starmer to get local Labour candidates lose votes.

Haven't seen one election leaflet from any party about how they would be able to change local services etc., as promising new ones when there is a limited amount for expenditure implies something must be cut for a new service. But this is never mentioned.

But then the media dont help in their reporting as they love the big shouty headlines about how national politics are influencing local elections.

Related and only posting as have never heard about it, but apparently this year some areas will have "voting hubs" in shopping centres etc.. So you dont have to plan when and where you vote, you can vote on impulse between stocking up on basics and wondering if you deserve a coffee and cake for having done it!

Not sure that a pivot to attacking Polanski is a magic bullet if only 27% of voters know who Polanski is (amusing polling here): https://nitter.net/jamesjohnson252/status/2051338426998206961#m

But I suppose Labour are desperate.

I've actually seen a lot of local stuff on the parties' leaflets, though the Greens take time out to mention Gaza, and the Independents have a wee dinky Palestine flag on their leaflet.

But mostly it's local transport.
Greens: we love LTNs, let's have more of them
Gaza Independents and Reform: scrap LTNs and punitive parking charges
Labour: blah blah reject division, blah blah competent management (this got some laughs), yada yada Paddington Bear values

In terms of party leaders and branding, Greens featuring Polanski heavily, Reform featuring Farage and Cunningham, Gaza Independents having a group photo with Corbyn (who really sticks out like a sore thumb), and Labour making no reference whatsoever to Keir Starmer or the national government.

This was more about social media, and why (although obvious on one level) the national Labour party is paying for ads which are a criticism of someone who isn't as far as I know delivering local services anywhere! But Labour (nationally) obviously quick to make use of a trend that polls are reflecting.

Locally both Greens and Independent Socialists are sort of back tracking from LTNs by saying they should only be implemented if "sensitive" to local communities.

Otherwise all Parties are promising better services but ignoring the real problem which is how the Town Hall is run and that no Councillor will be part of legitimately criticising Town Hall staff for bad, patchy services, even though it is an area with one of the worst record for local housing support.

I think over the years town hall staff just think if they let the Councillors have the odd moment at some sort of photo opportunity to virture signal they can just get on with, or even not get on with whatever suits them!

I saw an item on the BBC local news. They are running a pilot in Milton Keynes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0m2ndwr19xo

Thanks for the link with image.

I wonder why they went for a rather pink decor?!