In the second of a series of interviews with mayoral hopefuls, Areeq Chowdhury says the Greens could sneak a surprise win, reports Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter

Much commentary on Newham’s coming local elections focuses on the battle between the dominant Labour Party and the insurgent Newham Independents – but could the Greens sneek a suprise win?

Councillor Areeq Chowdhury claims that “people are really underestimating the likelihood of a Green victory in this election”.

Cllr Chowdhury – who defected from Labour in 2024 – is now standing as the Green Party’s candidate for mayor of the borough.

He thinks there’s a real chance he could take the top job.

“I think a lot of people at council level will be willing to vote Newham Independents,” Cllr Chowdhury told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

“But,” he adds, “I would expect the Greens to do better than the Newham Independents in the mayoral election.”

Newham Council is currently dominated by the Labour Party, but with elections for every council seat and the authority’s executive mayor both set to take place on Thursday, 7th May, the field now looks wide open.

“Labour I think are just going to be focused on stemming the loss,” says Cllr Chowdhury – citing local “failures” by the Labour-run council as well as national issues such as Israel’s war on Gaza.

“It’s things like the fly-tipping, where it’s a really obvious and visible sign of the council not doing its job, because it’s just rubbish everywhere across Newham.

“Nationally, I think there are issues like Palestine, which is a big one. Keir Starmer’s hesitation to call for a ceasefire, and the view of Labour’s complicity in what’s happening in Palestine, has cut through quite a lot on Newham.

“But also people don’t feel like they’ve seen enough difference from the national Labour Party because bills are going up and everything still feels like it’s not really working properly.”

The choices on offer to Newham voters have widened too. Cllr Chowdhury expects this to mean Labour’s vote will fracture.

“This election the Greens are actually campaigning across the borough, Newham Independents are campaigning across the borough. Reform are now a big option to vote for.

“That’s brand new in Newham politics, so you’re going to see Labour’s vote going in different directions. The question is, will it split so substantially that they’ll actually lose the election?”

The Newham Independents also criticise Labour for similar local “failures” and national issues such as Palestine.

But Cllr Chowdhury says there are important political differences between the two, and they represent “quite different parts of the electorate”.

He says: “If you are a left-wing socialist person, I don’t neccessarily think everyone in Newham Independents represents those values.

“I think they’re a populist party. They have very popular policies, and they’ve attached themselves to some left-wing issues.

“I don’t see them as having a coherent left-wing ideology in the same way that the Green Party increasingly does.”

One major local difference is parking and transport.

The Newham Independents promise to make households’ first parking permit free, and introduce two hours of free parking across the borough for every resident.

This, Cllr Chowdhury says, is “a bad policy”. “It’s going to get more cars on the road,” he says.

“There are already massive traffic jams at rush hour in Newham and it’s going to get worse under that policy.

“It’s going to get harder to park a car on your own street. If you live near a school or a mosque or a high street it would be impossible to park a car on your own road.”

Being a driver himself, Cllr Chowdhury says he is “definitely not against cars”. He says he doesn’t believe “that poorer people should bear the biggest burden for climate change. It should be the rich and powerful who bear that burden”.

One change he’d like to see is for parking charges in the borough to be based on the weight of a car rather than its emissions.

The current system is “effecitvely penalising poorer residents,” he says. “If you’re poorer you don’t have a driveway, so you have to park on the street, and you might have an older car, therefore it’s more emitting.”

Cllr Chowdhury’s other criticism of the free parking promise is that it’s “huge expenditure” that he feels could be better spent elsewhere, such as free school meals for all children.

This would also “be expensive,” he admits. “But you have to think about what you get back from that – you get healther meals for your children, roughly £500 or £600 back in the pockets of parents.

“But parking doesn’t really give you anything back. It gives people who own a car a little bit of convenience.”

He adds: “Most people in Newham don’t own a car.

“So what this policy effectively does is ask all taxpayers to pay for free parking for some people in the borough, either through higher taxes or cuts to local services.”

Cllr Chowdhury’s own priorities include “cleaner streets” with a maximum fine of £1,000 for fly-tipping, which could be reduced by attending littering courses.

This would be coupled with two free bulky waste collections per year for each household.

On housing, Cllr Chowdhury wants to “reform the housing department” and explore a “street-by-street” programme to fit houses with insulation.

He admits that much of what the party wants to do in Newham is “ambitious” and “will cost money”.

Cllr Chowdhury says: “How I intend to pay for a lot of our policies is reducing the reserves the council’s got”. These are the pots of money the council keeps as a buffer to cover unexpected spending.

But Cllr Chowdhury also wants to see if he can encourage major businesses in the borough such as West Ham United and the Westfield Shopping Centre to contribute money for services.

As an example he says in Birmingham, Cadbury has “invested in their communities – funded schools and roads”.

All of this depends on the outcome of a set of elections that could produce a complex picture.

There are seven other candidates standing to be Newham’s mayor.

They are Conservative Terri Bloore, Reform UK’s Clive Furness, Labour’s Forhad Hussain, Kamran Malik of the Communities United Party, Mehmood Mirza of Newham Independents, Bharath Swamy of the Christian People’s Alliance and Liberal Democrat Laura Willoughby.

The LDRS is aiming to interview as many as possible ahead of the election on Thursday, 7th May.

Cllr Chowdhury says the Newham Independents could do well among ward councillor elections, but that their “support is quite concentrated in certain areas”. Whereas, he believes the Greens have a “broader base of support”.

He still expects Labour to do well “as their base is still quite strong”. And he even thinks Reform “even without campaigning, are going to get a lot of votes”.

But, he says: “It’s going to be a very, very close election.”

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