Leanne Mohamed in Ilford North, Shanell Johnson in Leyton and Wanstead, and Faiza Shaheen in Chingford and Woodford Green performed strongly in last week’s election, reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter
Independent candidates say their electoral success shows there is an “appetite” for alternative politics in the UK.
The general election on 4th July saw a record five independent MPs elected, while smaller parties such as the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK and the Greens surged.
Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister after Labour triumphed with a majority of 172 seats, but independents don’t believe the election reflects a sense of trust in the new administration.
Leanne Mohamad, who came 538 votes short of unseating new health secretary Wes Streeting in Ilford North, said voters across the country were “disillusioned” with both the Conservatives and Labour.
She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “We came within 540 votes of defeating a key member of the Labour cabinet. I think that is an achievement – I don’t see it as a loss at all.
“The best thing about it is that nobody expected it at all.”
She received 15,119 votes, coming second to Streeting, who won with 15,647. In third place were the Tories, on 9,618 votes.
Despite Labour’s sizable triumph, voter turnout across the UK was the lowest since 1928, the first year everyone older than 21 was able to vote. Just 52% of eligible voters went to the polls, compared to 67% in 2019.
The 23-year-old said her relative victory proved the “two-party system needed revision” and “didn’t work for voters”.
She added: “Both Labour and the Tories are two sides of the same rusty coin and, even now, the Labour government is barely any different. And it’s one of the most unpopular governments that we’ve ever had.”
Though Starmer’s party controls the House of Commons with 412 members, its ‘loveless landslide’ drew a smaller share of the vote than in 2019.
Its success was enabled in no small part by a collapse in support for the Conservatives, who dropped from 365 seats to a record low of 121.
Mohamad, a British-Palestinian, left the Labour Party in October after Starmer said Israel “had the right” to withhold water and electricity from Gaza.
Conflict between Israel and Hamas, the militant body controlling Gaza, resumed after the latter attacked its neighbour on 7th October last year.
Streeting controversially abstained from a ceasefire vote the following month, but expressed support for one in December.
Mohamed previously said she wanted to make politicians listen to concerns over the death toll in Gaza, and believed she had “done just that”.
On election night, the incoming health secretary dedicated much of his victory speech to the Middle Eastern conflict, expressing support for a two-state solution and calling on people to be both pro-Israel and pro-Gaza.
He said: “I know Labour has lost trust and support over Gaza.
“I am proud to be a politician who stands firmly in the ground where peace can be built in the Middle East.”
He also vowed to “save” the NHS, just as it had “saved my life” when he underwent cancer treatment.
Mohamad rejected the label of running a “single-issue campaign” about Gaza, saying that she would have also prioritised protecting youth services and strengthening the NHS.
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She described the situation in the Middle East, which has seen more than 30,000 Gazans and 1,000 Israelis killed, as the issue that “brought people together”.
In Chingford and Woodford Green, former Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen stood as an independent after being controversially deselected in late May.
She had previously ran against incumbent Iain Duncan Smith in 2019, and placed second with 22,219 votes – just 1,262 behind the former Tory leader.
This time she stood against Smith and her Labour replacement Shama Tatler, a councillor in Brent.
Both Shaheen and Tatler received some 12,000 votes each, while Smith ended up winning with 17,281.
Shaheen told the Echo she would have won had the Labour Party not deselected her shortly after the election was announced.
She said: “I’m so angry with [Labour] right now. That shouldn’t have happened. Their candidate now gets to go back to Brent, and now my community, the community that I live in, is going to struggle along.”
Looking forward, she said she needed to “regroup a little bit” and “think about what the community wants,” adding: “This isn’t driven by me, it’s driven by so many people who want something different.”
That sense of a community-led campaign was shared by Shanell Johnson, who stood as an independent candidate in Leyton and Wanstead.
She held a series of community assemblies in Leyton Orient FC’s stadium, on a platform that she would base her manifesto on feedback from residents.
The final event was on 2nd July, two days before the election, where around 20 residents spoke about concerns of knife crime, gentrification, and overflowing bins.
Attendees broke off into groups to discuss what they liked about, disliked about and wanted to see change in the constituency, before presenting their priorities to Cllr Johnson.
She said the assemblies presented an opportunity to “break down boundaries and barriers” and bridge gaps between residents.
They have been described as a way of getting more residents to care about politics, by social activism groups such as Assemble.
Cllr Johnson added that many people did not interact “by virtue of them never being in the same social circle, class circle, or religious circle” and that is where “the change needs to happen”.
Like Leanne Mohamad, Cllr Johnson left the Labour Party last year, partly over Gaza, and now sits as an independent member on Redbridge Council.
Mohamad said it was “too early to tell” if she’d stand again, but both candidates want to build on community support.
Cllr Johnson said her goal was to “carry on with what we’ve started”.
She said: “The election was just one way of galvanizing attention. Running the assemblies and making sure that people’s voices are heard is still as important as it was when we began.”
She ended up finishing fourth, with 4,173 votes. Labour’s Calvin Bailey was elected as the successor to longstanding Labour MP John Cryer with 20,755.
The night also saw major victories for the Lib Dems and Nigel Farage’s Reform party.
The Lib Dems won a record-high 72 seats, up by 61 from 2019. Reform, which claims to be the next official opposition in waiting, won five seats.
Meanwhile, after being expelled from Labour in May, its former leader Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected in Islington North as an independent.
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