Candidates standing across 21 Haringey wards in May's local election confirmed

Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens are battling it out for control of the borough on Thursday, 7th May, reports Joe Ives, Local Democracy Reporter

Ballot box (credit Element5 Digital on Unsplash)

Candidates for upcoming local elections in Haringey have been announced ahead of polling day on Thursday, 7th May.

The local authority is currently run by Labour, who have been in charge since 1971. Haringey Council’s current leader Peray Ahmet will be looking to extend this run to nearly 60 years by defending her party’s large majority next month.

To do so, she’ll hope Haringey Labour can buck YouGov polls which, as of Tuesday (21st), showed only 16% of voters nationally would pick Labour if there was a general election.

At the 2022 local election in Haringey, Labour won 50 seats – but a series of defections, plus a by-election loss last year, a suspension and a recent resignation, have reduced its number of councillors down to 43.

When Stroud Green councillor Alexandra Worrell left Labour last November to become an independent, citing concerns with the direction of the party nationally, she became the fourth Haringey councillor to quit Labour since 2022, with three quitting within 18 months of the last election – having also cited concerns with the party’s direction nationally.

In November 2023, ex-Labour councillors Mary Mason, Lotte Collett and Mark Blake formed a new group on the council called the Independent Socialist Group, with this later morphing into the Green Socialist Alliance after they were joined by Green Party councillor Ruairidh Paton, who won the St Ann’s by-election in April 2025.

In January this year, former Labour deputy leader Mike Hakata resigned as a Hermitage and Gardens councillor for personal reasons, with no by-election being held because of the proximity to May’s local election.

Back in December 2022, Joy Wallace was also suspended from the Labour Party over a series of offensive social media messages.

In their bid to retain control of the council this year, Haringey Labour are promising in their 2026 manifesto to make the borough “fairer, safer and greener” with investment in public parks alongside promises to cut crime and build thousands of new council homes.

Labour are standing for all 57 seats, with the opposition Liberal Democrats, and the Conservatives who don’t currently have any local representation, also putting forward candidates for every available seat.

There are 37 candidates representing Nigel Farage’s Reform UK at the local election, who could undermine any chances of the Tories gaining a foothold at the council if they split the right-wing vote.

The leader of the opposition in Haringey is Lib Dem councillor Luke Cawley-Harrison, who is looking to retain his position representing Crouch End while adding to the seven seats currently held by his party.

In a hustings event held last Thursday (16th) Nicholas Orford-Williams, the Lib Dem nominee for Stroud Green ward, said the local authority needed “to do a far better job at listening to the people” and “fix” its finances by reducing its reliance on borrowing.

If elected, he said the Lib Dems would support residents through the cost-of-living crisis and deliver “better and more diverse housing”.

Also at last week’s hustings event was Cllr Paton of the Greens. It is understood that his party has held back from listing candidates in some areas in a bid to prevent splitting the left-wing vote. As a result, the Greens have put forward 51 candidates, including Cllr Paton himself.

In their manifesto, Haringey Greens say they are campaigning “to make hope normal again”.

For them, this involves increasing transparency in council spending, giving residents greater power to influence local authority decisions and improving the quality and quantity of council housing, while freezing service charges for council tenants. They also promise to divest council pensions from “companies complicit in Israel’s genocide”.

Alison Davy is one of six candidates across the borough representing the Haringey Socialist Alliance (HSA).

Davy, who is standing in Northumberland Park, has differentiated herself from “career politicians”, saying: “We have seen the neglect and poverty in our communities and we know that political change is needed.”

She is working alongside Amelie Cooper, a candidate for Bruce Castle ward. Cooper, Davy, and other HSA nominees were joined on the campaign trail by former Labour leader and Your Party MP Jeremy Corbyn earlier this week.

Also standing at the elections are three candidates for the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, three for the Christian People’s Alliance and two independents.

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