Learning Lessons: Ground-up

This is the thirteenth part of our ‘Learning Lessons’ series, which provides a space for candidates across England, Scotland and Wales to share what they heard on the doorstep and where they believe Labour should go next

“I loved your videos!” is perhaps the most common feedback we received on Croydon’s local election campaign.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a compliment – and it’s great that people learnt more about our great town online. But praising our social media game misses the point. It was not Insta or TikTok or Facebook that powered our campaign – it was our politics. This is how we built it.

Step 1: Know your place

To get your politics right, you have to understand your place. And by that, I mean your actual old-fashioned, physical space – not the internet.

Croydon town centre used to rival Oxford Street; now most of our neighbours describe it as a ‘ghost town’. Derelict sites and abandoned buildings mean there is a literal hole where our heart should be. I will never forget one woman telling me: “I haven’t just lost my shops, I’ve lost my childhood.”

‘Get Our Town Centre Back’ became our guiding mission. We filmed the decline from the top of double decker buses and organised flash-mob dances on derelict sites. Yes, social media was a powerful means to get this message across, but it was not the end. It was an instrument, not the song; the vehicle, not the fuel.

Step 2: Listen to learn

Our ‘listening exercises’ were not as publicly visible as our social media, but every bit as important. We held over a dozen of these meetings, inviting thousands of people of all parties and none to share their hopes and fears for our town.

They sat in small groups with biscuits and flip-charts, discussing what they loved about their neighbourhoods and what they would change. Again and again, the town centre, crime and fly-tipping emerged as problems they had run out of faith in politicians to fix.

Anger, frustration and grief burned in these rooms. But hope did, too. Reform voters, non-voters, Green voters and undecideds said they had felt powerless – but that these events gave them a voice. More importantly, our listening exercises proved they were not alone.

Step 3: Policy matters

Voters deserve to know what we want to do and how we plan to do it.

While I disagree with a lot of Tony Blair’s recent arguments , he’s right that big ideas and clear policies seem to have been missing from our politics for some time. In contrast, our campaign invested a huge amount of time and resources into building a manifesto. Our ‘New Plan for Croydon’ took people’s problems from the listening exercises and researched best practice on solving them, from Merton’s policies on fly-tipping to Malmo’s approach on cutting violent crime. I knew what I would be doing in my first 100 hours as mayor – let alone my first 100 days. 

Step 4: Know your enemies

Politics has to have adversaries because the public does.

Croydon residents have been let down by rogue developers who sat on land in the heart of our town centre and let it rot. We were not afraid to call these companies out, branding them ‘corporate squatters’ and distinguishing them from ‘real developers’ who would help us build the shops, jobs and homes we needed.

No one wants enemies for the sake of it. But when actors fundamentally erode the public interest, they need to be fought. In government, it is too easy for politicians to play it safe and see everyone as a ‘stakeholder’. That is not our job. The public interest must trump our discomfort at conflict.

Step 5: Great politics drives great social media – not the other way round

Once you have built real politics with a clear message and strong policies, communications take off. Our politics gave huge fuel not just to our social media campaign, but to our doorstep campaign, too. Council candidates and volunteers knew what our mission was and how we were going to deliver it. By the end of the campaign, we were reaching 1,000 voters a day and leading the nationwide canvassing numbers for Labour.

Our campaign prioritised ‘unfiltered communications’. By this I mean any means of reaching a voter that is not edited by a third party, including everything from social media channels to doorstep scripts for volunteers. In contrast, filtered communications are ultimately controlled by a third party – an interview with a TV station, for example. So while we welcomed interviews with the mainstream press, we were no longer dependent on them.

Finally: The electorate is bigger than you think

Get Our Town Centre Back. Clean and Safe Streets. Change that finally puts People First. This was the politics of hope we built in Croydon. Everyone on our team knew it, and our manifesto laid out how we were going to achieve it. Once we’d built this politics, we found it resonated with voters beyond the traditional target groups. It was school kids and Deliveroo drivers who wanted selfies.

We did not win the mayoralty in Croydon. We found the right politics locally to get as many Greens back as we could, and I was moved by how many first time and non-voters showed up for us. But the politics nationally was so bleak that we could not make it over the line.

If we want to win, we need to get our politics right nationally as well as locally. That takes more than social media: it takes the courage, heart and persistence to build a politics that changes our country for good.

*In May 2026 the Conservatives won the election. The Greens received almost 17% of the vote, up from just over 6% in the previous elections. Reform took 12%. Rowenna lost by 1%.