Candidates for the London Assembly grappled with questions thrown at them by audience members at Herne Hill Baptist Church on Wednesday (April 24).
The Herne Hill Hustings turned out to be less adversarial than previous events – bringing a night peppered with laughs and good-natured debate despite the serious issues being discussed.
A lack of direct confrontation between the candidates sometimes made it difficult to determine their differences. While disagreements were obvious on issues like policing, nobody seemed to have a fresh, original solution to London’s housing crisis.
Here we take a look at the Lambeth and Southwark London Assembly candidates’ best and worst moments ahead of the vote on May 2.
Marina Ahmad – Labour
The Good
Marina Ahmad has been a London Assembly Member since 2021. Wearing a red Labour rosette, and armed with a surplus of facts, policies and local knowledge, she made her experience count.
Probed on transport, education and the environment, Ahmad could point to her “track record”.
On transport, the former Crown Prosecution barrister said she’d “led the campaign to stop the cuts to bus services” which would have meant 25 per cent of route losses falling on Southwark.
She said her work helped save routes including the 28 and 12 , adding that Labour would bring London’s buses under public ownership when contracts ended.
Probed on Labour’s commitment to public health interventions, she said the number of London schools suffering “illegal levels of air pollution” had fallen from 455 to 10 under Mayor Khan’s premiership.
The Bad
The Mayor hasn’t had a clear solution since the Met Police’s announcement it would scale down its response to mental health call-outs. That’s despite mental health organisations expressing “profound” concerns with how the ‘Right Care, Right Person’ model is being implemented.
Asked if there were alternatives to police for call-outs involving vulnerable people in crisis, Ahmad said: “The alternative is to try and make sure we don’t have crime in the first place.”
Reducing crime is the obvious goal, but that doesn’t answer the tricky question of whether police should be responding to call-outs relating to the most vulnerable.
Claire Sheppard – Green
The Good
While poking fun at her respectable second-place finish in 2021, “always the bridesmaid” Claire Sheppard put on a solid performance.
A local politician with a strong campaigning CV, and founder of community group Nunhead Knocks, her local knowledge, particularly of Southwark, shone through.
On housing, she called out what she described as the “managed decline” of historic housing stock and was brave to back calls for retrofitting the Aylesbury Estate.
Unlike other candidates, she said the Greens didn’t have a target number of police hires, explaining: “We’re not putting a number in our manifesto.”
“We think that until you improve the vetting of the officers that we do have, we don’t want to get a load more bad apples in the barrel,” she added.
She also highlighted the tragic case of Zodoq Obatolah, who died after being Tasered by police in Peckham, to explain that police were poorly-suited to some incidents.
With crime rising in the capital, her views won’t be for everyone. But she clearly separated herself from most of the other candidates here.
The Bad
Green Mayoral candidate Zoe Garbett has backed a ‘fair road charging system’ that would see drivers pay for distance travelled, among other factors.
Claire Sheppard declared this was “the future”. While the policy was popular with a portion of the audience, she did little to explain how the party would ease the burden on those likely to suffer most; the disabled, elderly and small business owners.
Christine Wallace – Conservative
The Good
Wallace, although new to local politics, has cut her teeth in the halls of Westminster as Chief of Staff to Tory MP Andrew Selous. She managed to keep pace with her more experienced opponents.
Asked how she would tackle congestion, Wallace advocated for more public transport and more cycling infrastructure.
She said: “The best thing we can do is increase our public transport… people will choose public transport if it’s easy, if it’s accessible and if it doesn’t cost an arm and leg.”
She added: “I do think we need cycling infrastructure. I think it’s not one or the other.”
Critics will argue central government’s reluctance to bail out TfL after Covid almost led to the biggest loss of bus routes in London’s history. Nonetheless, Wallace skilfully avoided falling into the culture war trap of motorists vs. cyclists.
On policing, she said the Conservatives would open two new police bases in every borough and recruit 1,500 new officers.
The Bad
Addressing Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, she said schoolchildren were “being mugged on their way home because they can’t get dropped off at school”.
She said this came from a “news article in the press” without proper citation, drawing groans from the audience. If this was a rabbit-out-of-the-hat, it fell flat.
Chris French – Liberal Democrat
The Good
Chris French was shortlisted as the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Mayor and came a close second to Labour in Waterloo and South Bank ward in 2022.
Police and Crime Commissioner for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, he drew on personal experience when advocating for ‘response nurses’ for mental health call-outs to plug the gap left by police.
French’s commitment to finding solutions to e-bikes and e-scooters left littered across the streets also drew a positive response from the audience.
Describing pavements as “hostile” to pedestrians, he said “the e-bikes that have been put in place to help with active transport are left all over the place, they’re on their sides”.
“Let’s make them safer space to start with,” he said.
The Bad
Questioned on how the Liberal Democrats would address public health, he didn’t have any clear policies.
French spoke about “working with communities” and “using the public health model” without providing tangible solutions.
Adam Buick – The Socialist Party of Great Britain
The Good
Although his interjections were succinct, the respected left-wing theorist always forced the audience to sit up and listen with his unique takes.
His answer to every issue – policing, transport, housing – was that it couldn’t function “under the capitalist system”. In a hustings where candidates sometimes huddled for safety, his radical departures were a breath of fresh air.
He slammed Labour as “Tory party plan B” and, while the Green candidate shook her head, insisted he was the only true left-wing option.
The Bad
Perhaps unsurprising for a candidate with such lofty goals as “ending the capitalist system of minority ownership of the means of production”, small-scale, local solutions were thin on the ground.
Tony Sharp – Reform UK
Despite being invited, the Reform UK candidate did not attend.
Find out who your local candidates are by visiting https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/elections and clicking ‘London Assembly elections’.