Wes Streeting’s Labour Party knows an election shock is on the way, at the hands of Redbridge Independents. Local election candidates for the group told us more.

Streeting and Labour face growing challenge in Redbridge

In the 2024 election, independents became the main opposition to Labour in both Ilford South and Streeting’s constituency of Ilford North (where he very nearly lost). A by-election loss to independent Noor Jahan Begum in 2025 showed the momentum against Labour had only continued.

Labour’s despicable support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza played a role in Redbridge’s discontent. But Labour’s failures and lack of transparency locally have also had a big impact. So Redbridge Independents are running candidates across the London borough.

We spoke to Redbridge Independents leader Vaseem Ahmed, who is standing in the Barkingside ward. And we spoke to Marwan Elfallah, a candidate in Valentines ward.

Ahmed told us Streeting seems so worried about the challenge in Redbridge that he’s “fully fronting” the local Labour campaign. That’s hardly surprising considering that, as Elfallah explained, the council today works effectively “like a circus” that fawns over Streeting. But as Elfallah said:

The doors that I knock, the majority want Labour out.

He added:

We are local people that will work our absolute socks off if we do take over.

Ahmed backed this up, saying:

We just want to offer people a real alternative. This is about hope versus austerity. And it’s about how can we create a scenario where people in the east end of London have hope again, not just for themselves, but their kids and their kids

Redbridge Independents have the endorsement of Your Party. And you can see the full Redbridge Independents manifesto here, including its commitments on transparency, alleviating poverty, and dealing with the cost of living crisis locally.

Vaseem Ahmed speaks to the Canary

We asked Ahmed: why do you think you’ve been gaining support locally?

I think it’s because we’re a grassroots organisation which has been in and around the community for the last couple of years.

So we launched the party around March 2024, prior to which there was a community organisation called RCAG which launched off the back of the genocide in Gaza. And that organisation selected Leanne Mohamad for that general election in July 2024, and also supported Noor Jahan [Begum] in the general election in 2024 as well in Ilford South.

So between them, they got 25,000 votes. And actually, I think that gave people a lot of belief and confidence that there is an alternative to the traditional mainstream parties. And then that came to the fore last March, when we won that by-election [in Mayfield ward] by a big distance, where we got 42% versus Labour’s 26.

And I think that sent shockwaves through Redbridge, and definitely to Labour as well, that we’re a real threat to them.

Is Wes Streeting worried, considering that Leanne Mohamad almost unseated him?

Yeah, I think he is worried on two fronts. One is that, obviously, that was really close, and I was at the count, and you could see – I think somebody overheard him saying, ‘wow, just got through by the skin of my teeth’.

Then subsequently, with all these WhatsApp leaks with him and [Peter] Mandelson, I think he said in that as well, ‘that was one of our safest seats in Redbridge-Mayfield in the by-election year, which we lost, and now me and [Ilford South MP] Jas Athwal will be toast at the next general election’, which was kind of foreboding and perhaps a prediction.

Our job is to make that prediction come true

And then, obviously, he is really concerned because, if you look at what’s happening right now in Redbridge, he’s fully fronting their campaign. He keeps coming out and sending letters to residents, and on social media, making videos and TikToks and all sorts, really directly aimed at us, the independents. Which is a badge of honor for us, really.

To be honest, it’s given us free publicity, which we’re happy with. And also, it’s re-emphasising the fact that we’re their main competition in Redbridge for these elections. So he understands the threat…

I think it’s time for him to be a bit humble. So if people in Redbridge are looking at alternatives, then it’s time to maybe self-reflect and say, ‘well, hold on, why are people looking at alternatives? What have Labour done to help people in their day-to-day lives in Redbridge, and what haven’t they done?’

They’ve failed on adult social care, they’ve failed on SEND [Special Educational Needs and Disabilities], they’ve overspent the budget by a long distance. Then there’s what’s happening internationally with Gaza, then Iran. So many people see that and think ‘this government doesn’t represent me anymore.

Then locally, there are lots of controversies as well. Lack of honesty, integrity, accountability – Jas Athwal with the BBC investigation into his lack of licences, having himself introduced a scheme which says we’re coming after you rogue landlords and then not having licensed his own properties…

He didn’t receive any punishment, as far as we’re concerned, as far as we know. He continues to refuse to say that he did anything wrong, he just fired his agent, blamed the whole thing on his agent. So those sort of things are things that people are fed up with – one rule for the elite and one rule for us ordinary people who are struggling to get by every day…

So yeah, that kind of sense of entitlement and that sense of superiority, that ‘this is our patch, who are you to come and threaten us in our patch’. If residents think that you’re not representing us, then we’re going to look for an alternative. Many of us in the past, I’m sure, have had links with the Labour Party. But we just don’t feel they represent ordinary people anymore.

What issues will independent councillors be prioritising after the election?

One of our key planks is the cost of living crisis. How do we handle that, when people have to make the choice of heating or eating? And how do we help our residents manage that scenario? And how do we support them as a local government with a budget?

And secondly, I think it’s also about openness and transparency in local government. So at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a voice of ordinary residents represented, whether that’s at council meetings or with a development.

In my own ward in Barkingside, there’s a development happening which backs onto people’s gardens. It’s like the oldest sports ground in Redbridge. And it would just be a nightmare in terms of traffic, and then having high-rise buildings within that as well, right bang in the middle of a residential area, backing onto people’s gardens. I think 3,000 local residents signed a petition, and yet it’s still got its way through. And now I think they’re taking legal action.

It’s cliquey too. The way [Labour leaders] choose their candidates seems to be top-down – people who toe the party line, who don’t really have an opinion on things and just follow whatever the leadership say. So it’s just about real representation.

When we selected our candidates, we did a proper, thorough, transparent process. We opened it up, let people apply in two stages. And it was just people rooted in the community, people who’ve got really good experience, whether they’ve run a food bank, or whether they’ve been helping out at a local place of worship, whether it’s people who’ve got experience in housing, education, finance, transformation.

So if we ever got the opportunity to play a role in running the local government, we could hit the ground running.

A big frustration that a lot of people have is that it’s a government that doesn’t really listen to residents, doesn’t really take their views into account. Big decisions are made to them, rather than with them. So our job would be to turn that around, and help them to feel that they have a local voice.

What do you think polls are missing in Redbridge?

We’re standing in around 15 wards out of the 22. 42 candidates. I’m a candidate in Barkingside, which is Ilford North – Wes’s area. I’ve been canvassing here since last August, and the feedback I’ve had from residents has been very positive.

A lot of them are struggling and they need help. And they’re not being heard. So wards in Ilford North are under threat. If you think about it, back to that July 2024 general election, all of that was Ilford North, where Leanne got a lot of her support.

We could potentially be a threat all over Ilford North and South.

When I went to sleep after that night in Mayfield [at the 2025 by-election], we had no clue that Noor Jahan had done so well, that we had done so well. And to have won by that margin was a genuinely amazing, amazing result and experience here.

If that would repeat itself across a lot of these wards, then there is a genuine chance of winning a significant number of seats. But we’re just working as hard as we possibly can on the ground.

Like I said, we’ve been canvassing a lot of us since last summer. I speak to thousands of residents, trying to understand the issues that they face day to day, and how we can help. Fingers crossed that on the 8th of May, all of that hard work comes to fruition.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

We were buoyed by the fact that five independent MPs got in last time [in the 2024 general election], Leanne came a close second, we won that by-election [in 2025]. So that gives confidence to the community that there is an alternative – it doesn’t have to be the mainstream parties.

And the beauty of us is we don’t have to answer to anyone in Westminster. We do our own thing, we focus on Redbridge, we do what we can for the best of the residents of Redbridge. And that’s a nice position to be in, and a nice freedom to have, and it means we can be flexible as well. It means we can be honest, obviously within the bounds of decency.

We just want to offer people a real alternative. This is about hope versus austerity. And it’s about how can we create a scenario where people in the east end of London have hope again, not just for themselves, but their kids and their kids – because everyone knows the cost of living, the affordability of buying a house.

If we can play a part in giving hope to people in Redbridge, then for me, that’s a massive win.

Marwan Elfallah speaks to the Canary

We asked: what made you put yourself forward as a candidate?

It all started a couple of years ago, when we were protesting outside Wes Streeting’s office. And that’s where the movement sort of began. It was just something so obvious as calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which he refused to do. And it was just the Labour Party at that point was no longer a party I felt I could support or trust, and I actually felt at that point it was time to work against it.

We started looking deeply into the Labour Party locally, and started realising it’s just not right. Everything that they’re doing seems to be wrong. Questions weren’t being answered properly, lots of cover-up over issues, and you could see that the Labour Party on a whole was just not being run properly, from the top to the bottom, and that included Redbridge Council.

At that point, we were a group of us, and it was just like, ‘yeah, we’ve got to really make a stand, whether it’s locally or nationally’, and we weren’t going to stop. And obviously, as time went on, the Labour government got worse. Wes Streeting, the Jas Athwal scandal as well.

So I couldn’t just stand and watch. That’s why I took part in this, and then put myself forward as a candidate.

Why should progressive voters back Redbridge Independents?

The Greens are not a dominant force in our area. They’re not knocking on doors. We really care about our area, and we’ve been working on this for a long period of time. I think their focus is on other areas.

When I’m on the doorstep, I’m not feeling that everybody’s wanting to go Green. There is some sympathy towards the Greens, because Zack Polanski’s done an excellent job on a national level. But I think on a local basis, Redbridge Independents is the only real party that can do anything to challenge Labour.

What are the key issues people have been raising on the doorstep?

Quite a lot of issues. Crime in the area, there’s a lot of issues regarding crime. As soon as you walk out of Ilford Station, there’s issues with drugs, there’s issues with antisocial behaviour. We’ve also had the town centre, which has shops closing down, businesses not being able to survive. People are upset.

School places is another one in my particular ward, where we’ve got an issue where we’ve almost got a few roads that are in no man’s land. They can’t get into two of the local schools, so they’ll be sent further away. So there’s an issue there with catchment areas, obviously not the easiest one to solve. But it’s obviously something that we would look into, long-term.

People have mixed views on the lido. The £4m project was meant to be in Valentine’s Park… And it now turns out the council don’t actually have enough money to go ahead with it. So a lot of people are upset that they’ve spent money to start it off, planning, etc, tidying up the park, doing everything, and now they’ve pulled back and said they can’t.

Cost of living, council tax going up, that’s obviously an issue that hurts a lot of people. And also, people want honesty. The whole Jas Athwal scandal. We don’t know if he’s been fined, if he’s been prosecuted for being a rogue landlord.

I personally have actually taken on the council on that. I’ve written, asking for Freedom of Information Act requests. The council have basically come back and said that he’s pretty much a private individual, and they don’t want to release the information. Another campaigner has gone further and gone to the Information Commissioner Officer, and they’ve told the council that they must release the details on what’s happened, and the council is now appealing that.

So for some obscure reason, the council does not want to say what’s happened to him. And a council that’s meant to be politically neutral, that’s not the way to run things, especially if the Information Commissioner Officer rules that they should release the information.

Are there still some people willing to say they’re supporting Labour?

Very, very few people support Labour. The doors that I knock, the majority want Labour out.

In a lot of cases, when we explain who we are, what we’ve been doing, that we are local people, we do care about the area – I personally have lived in Redbridge 20 years, 16 years in the Valentines ward, my kids go to schools here, I’m a football coach at Frenford, heavily involved in the community – they do start sympathising with us and say, ‘that’s what we would like’.

There are the occasional person that does want Labour, but it’s few and far between. Met the odd Reform supporter, and a lot of the time, it’s just dissatisfaction with Labour. I’ve met Reform supporters that said ‘I’m not really sure. Do I go with you, or do I go with Reform?’

So it’s not necessarily right-wing, left-wing, it’s just dissatisfaction. I’ve even met a Tory supporter who is just so upset with the council and with Labour in general, and she said she could lend us her vote as well.

If people are on the fence, what would you tell them?

Whether it’s a Labour supporter, a Conservative supporter, Reform supporter, one thing that we are going to do is we will work hard for the community. We’re not there serving a national party. We are looking after the community. We’re all invested in the community, whether it is that we’ve got kids here, whether we work here, whether we just want a nice place to live.

So I think that’s the thing that I say to the people, ‘we are invested in the community’. And if they trust us, they’ve really got nothing to lose, because the way Labour are running things isn’t well. And either we take over, which is the absolute dream for us, and we start implementing what we want to do and work hard, or at least we become the opposition, or a really strong voice.

Because just now, on the council 53 out of the 63 are Labour. There’s no democracy. You go to the council meetings. Opposition members are told, basically, to sit down and not really question. It’s almost like a circus when you go there.

Noor Jahan delivered a speech, questioning ‘is the Health Secretary really doing that well for local services?’ etc, because the council wanted to put a motion forward on how wonderful Wes Streeting is and how wonderful Labour are. She told them that that wasn’t the case, and we’ve got problems with corridor care, we have a lot of development going on but there’s no GP surgery places. It was almost like she was booed for basically speaking her mind.

And then Wes Streeting apparently appeared at the council meeting. It wasn’t announced, but then he’s sitting there, and it’s all like ‘let’s all praise Wes’. So, we’ve got that issue as well, where there is a serious lack of accountability.

No matter who you support, you cannot find that as being healthy for Redbridge. We need people that will actually scrutinise, people that will ask questions. Okay, so the $4m for the lido is a good example. Yeah, it might be a nice idea, but do we really have the money for it? Is it a priority?

We are local people that will work our absolute socks off if we do take over. And if we don’t take over, and we’re a credible opposition, we will scrutinise Labour or whoever it is in power, on absolutely everything. And if we’re forced into an alliance, we’ll work for the interests of Redbridge.

Featured image via Redbridge Independents

By Ed Sykes

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