In a city where renters can pay half their salary to secure modest accommodation, its newest district mayor made her name with a call to take on landlords with rent controls.
The first Green Party mayor was elected in the London borough of Hackney on Friday, cementing the left-wing challenge to Labour that has been growing since the last general election. Zoe Garbett won 35,720 votes, way ahead of her Labour rival Caroline Woodley, on 26,865.
But Ms Garbett’s large margin of victory over Labour suggests the Greens can also expect to do well in local council elections, the results of which were being announced on Friday. It is just one of the signs in these local elections that the UK's traditional two parties, Labour and Conservative, are being shoved aside.
"Two-party politics is no longer dying – it is dead. This is a historic victory for the Green Party," said the Green leader, Zack Polanski.
Labour has held the mayoralty in Hackney since the position was introduced in 2002. It has also controlled Hackney Council for all but seven years since the London Borough of Hackney was formed in 1965.
A former public health worker and commissioner for the National Health Service, Ms Garbett was first elected as a councillor in Hackney in 2022 - one of two Green Party members to have held the role in the council.
She is known locally for “simultaneously tending overgrown elderflower bushes, organising community lunches or being a one-woman local copwatch,” according to Novara Media.
There has been growing frustration with Labour in Hackney over the cost of living and a housing crisis, as well as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s initial support for Israel in Gaza.
Ms Garbett led a grassroots London Rent Commission initiative to challenge London's Labour mayor Sadiq Khan to embrace an official curb on rents city-wide in 2024. "There were rent controls until 1988, and we could say we’ve had a failed experiment of not having rent controls," she said at the launch. "We now need to get back to having them.”
The hard-left Green Party, which has its origins in environmentalism but has recently appealed to broader issues of social justice and the Palestinian issue, has been quickly filling in the vacuum. An energy crisis triggered by the US-Iran was and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has created a tangible link between rising household costs and growing anti-war sentiment in the UK.
Ms Garbett said on Friday she would use her victory to investigate Labour’s track record in the council, to "get spaces back” to the public.
“Today, we start the fightback. In this election, over and over, people kept telling me that they felt let down. People kept saying, ‘it’s hard for me and it’s hard for us," she said in her victory speech. "Council services are failing those who need them most and people are struggling to make ends meet.
“Across London and the country, people have made it clear that they are desperate for an alternative to this failing Labour government. It is not old parties versus new parties, this is about a system of fear versus a movement of hope.
“That’s why one of my first acts will be to do a full investigation into who owns Hackney, its buildings, its land, to begin getting these spaces back to the communities who desperately need them."
The Greens have so far more than doubled their seats in local councils - but their gains so far (90) are modest compared to those of Reform (512) and the Liberal Democrats (320), who have overtaken Labour and the Conservatives.
But Ms Garbett’s win in Hackney poses the question of whether she could upstage Labour at the London mayoral elections when they come up in two years. Ms Garbett came fourth in the race for London mayor in 2024.
Ms Garbett’s pledge in Hackney is to build more social housing and end austerity and child poverty. “Our plan is about getting the basics right and making the day-to-day easier, getting repairs done quickly, making food and energy cheaper, and rooting out racism in our schools,” she said.
“I’ll fight the system that views housing as a way of making money, rather than a universal right for every single person. I’ll get more council houses from development. The people need somewhere affordable to stay,” she said.
“And I won’t be silent about the government decisions that are harming Hackney residents, like continued austerity. It is both heart-wrenching and outrageous that something like one in two children in Hackney live in poverty. Every day I will work to fix this. Poverty isn’t a fact, it’s a political choice, and Hackney says no.”
