Labour held Ealing Council in the local elections but lost ten seats and a cabinet member while the Green Party claimed its first ever representatives in the borough.
Labour returned 46 councillors out of 70, down from 56. The Liberal Democrats took 13, the Greens and Conservatives finished on five each, and one independent was elected.
Reform UK, which contested every Ealing ward for the first time and stood 61 candidates, failed to win a single seat.
Polly Knewstub, who had been the council’s cabinet member for healthy equal lives, was unseated in Hanwell Broadway as Green trio Clare Welsby, Natalia Kubica and Andrew Walkley took the ward shortly before 4am.
Knewstub, who had held her seat since 2022, oversaw adult social care, public health and equalities in Peter Mason’s Labour administration. She was the most senior Labour figure to lose her seat overnight.
The Greens picked up two more seats, in North Acton and South Acton, finishing on five councillors having gone into the election with none.
Mason was re-elected in Southall Green alongside Jasbir Anand and Kamaljit Dhindsa, holding what Labour had seen as one of its more vulnerable wards.
In Southall Broadway, Angela Fonso of Ealing Community Independents fell short of unseating Labour but said she was not going anywhere.
“Disappointing I wasn’t elected, but I’m going up by the number of votes I received,” she said at the count. “It’s chipping away gradually at Labour’s dominance.
“We will carry on supporting residents, filling the vacuum left by Labour, because they don’t hold meetings, they don’t engage residents, they don’t answer emails. It’s like the shutter comes down. In four years, we’ll be in a much stronger position. It won’t be a given that they will be first and second.”
Labour has controlled Ealing Council since 2010.
The party’s biggest losses came to the Liberal Democrats, who took all three Walpole seats from Labour and gained one in Ealing Common. The Lib Dems also took the third Hanger Hill seat from the Conservatives and held all three in Southfield.
The Conservatives lost a seat to the Liberal Democrats in Ealing Broadway. In Norwood Green, John Martin, who left Labour to become an independent in April, was returned alongside two Labour councillors.
Reform’s London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham campaigned in Northolt Mandeville on 2 May, but Labour took all three seats there.
Lee Marriott, who stood for Reform in Northolt West End, said the campaign had been dominated by a single set of complaints.
He said: “On the doorstep going around Northolt, there’s been a lot of talk about low-level crime, fly-tipping, the mess that’s created, and the general anti-social behaviour. Outside Northolt library there was a skip that sat there for months and months. The Labour council hasn’t really been very active in attending to the needs of people in the borough.”
Steve Chilcott, chair of Reform’s Ealing branch, said trust in politics was at a historic low. “What people care about is the cost of their basket of food in the supermarket every week, how safe they feel walking down Uxbridge Road,” he said. “They don’t hear the legacy parties talking about that.”
Dan Cortese, who stood for Ealing Community Independents in Southall West, pointed to the gap between the borough’s wealthy and deprived areas.
He said: “In ten years I’d hope Ealing looks like a much more even suburb. At the moment you’ve got very, very affluent areas like Ealing itself, and then very deprived areas like Southall and Northolt. Money is spent where certain people want it spent, not where it’s needed.”
Featured Image Credit: Rashmi Varma
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