London local elections 2026: Who will win in Lambeth?
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Walking south from the banks of the Thames into Kennington, Vauxhall and Brixton takes voters through a key battleground for Zack Polanski’s Greens and into some of Labour’s London heartlands.
The residents of Lambeth know something the rest of the country doesn’t. The borough, which stretches southwards from the bank of the Thames, will be at the heart of the so-called Green surge in London – if it materialises. The final result is expected to come at around 6pm on Friday 8th May.
The borough drags downwards from the South Bank, taking in Kennington, Vauxhall, Clapham and Brixton.
The voters of Lambeth know better than anyone whether Zack Polanski’s dreams – and Keir Starmer’s worst nightmare – will come true.
Lambeth a main target for Greens
The south-London borough is one of the Green Party’s main targets as it takes on Labour’s fragile supremacy on the capital’s councils, lining up alongside Hackney, Islington and Southwark among the capital’s key battlegrounds.
The Greens gained only two councillors in Lambeth, to Labour’s 58 in 2022.
But Polanski’s party has since doubled its presence in the borough, adding one councillor through a by-election and claiming another when Martin Abrams resigned from the Labour party over alleged bullying. He was later suspended by the local party for voting for a ceasefire in Gaza in a council motion.
Lambeth Greens say polling puts their party just ahead of Labour, on 30 seats to the incumbents’ 27.
The campaign so far has been dominated by a fiery row over social housing, which is a key issue in Lambeth. The local Labour party allegedly handed out leaflets claiming the borough’s Green councillors have blocked 857 new affordable homes since 2022.
The Greens’ leader on the council has fiercely denied these claims, accusing the incumbents of “desperately trying to avert attention from the fact that they’ve built no council housing whatsoever”.
Lib Dems could make gains
The Greens have also accused Labour of stalling a potentially unpopular decision to close three nurseries in the borough until after the election, to avoid taking an electoral hit.
The Liberal Democrats, who hold three seats on Lambeth council, are also threatening to make gains, particularly in Oval, in the north of the borough.
Labour dominates the borough’s presence in parliament, with each of its three MPs belonging to the governing party: Florence Eshalomi in Vauxhall and Camberwell, Bell Ribeiro-Addy in Clapham and Brixton Hill and Helen Hayes in Dulwich and West Northwood.
Ribeiro-Addy and Eshalomi are among Labour’s most outspoken MPs, with the former declaring herself a “life-long socialist” and the latter having lost the whip in 2020 for abstaining from a vote over a post-Brexit trade agreement.
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