Sagal Abdi-Wali

It’s not just a new leader at No. 10, Camden has one too. Two months into the top job at the Town Hall, Sagal Abdi-Wali is asked what her priorities are by CNJ editor Richard Osley

So here we go again, a new leader – and not just at Number 10.

The Town Hall can not quite match Downing Street for its recent conveyer belt of prime ministers, but residents in Camden now have their third council leader in as many years.

Sagal Abdi-Wali was selected by Labour councillors to lead their group and Camden as a whole, after the vacancy became free again in May.

Richard Olszewski, her predecessor, had lost his place to the Greens at the council elections, departing having spent about as long as the council leader as Sir Keir Starmer had as PM. Maybe their two fates were interlinked.

“Any sitting government, their next local elections are hard,” said Cllr Abdi-Wali, who only held onto her own spot on the council in Camden Square by 60 votes.

“When you have a new government trying to implement long term change after many years of austerity, it’s going to be a difficult transition.

“It [the council elections] was ultimately a success because holding the council was the most important thing.”

While other local authorities fell – Hackney, Westminster and Southwark among them – Labour held on in Camden, albeit with several casualties like Mr Olszewski.

Cllr Abdi-Wali said she felt Mr Starmer deserved more time, but will there be a big reset locally, as has unfolded nationally.

“We are different people, we come from very different backgrounds, have different life stories, so it’s going to be different,” she said.

“But my ambition is something Richard had already started on and it’s making sure this growth, this success and the success of the companies around here benefit everyone across every part of this borough.”

‘Here’ is the regenerated King’s Cross railwaylands where the council tries to play the cool neighbour among the office blocks home to Google and co.

“The thing that sticks in my head is going to Torriano Primary School a couple of years ago – they have a garden playground on a roof area and they oversee this whole bit,” Cllr Abdi-Wali said.

“The headteacher said that they wanted the children to see that their futures could be over there. It’s the same for the kids who grew up in Somers Town.”

It’s reasonable to ask why big profit-gulping tech companies would care about Camden’s request to be a ‘good neighbour’ but Cllr Abdi-Wali said talks were regular and partnerships had been formed, with the council showing them its own apprenticeship schemes to encourage similar opportunities.

There will be similar aims for the HS2 overhaul of Euston and the controversial Film Quarter development in Kentish Town, which Cllr Abdi-Wali is enthused about in terms of possible opportunities.

“There will be thousands of jobs there,” she said.

“It will be a very specialised area but film and art are such massive areas for young people – one of the fields they want to go into.”

Sceptics will need more convincing that Camden really will see all the promised benefits of the overhaul of the Regis Road industrial estate and surrounding land.

There is after all a growing feeling about big developments that what is promised at the start of the planning process is not always what comes out at the other end – with changing claims over what’s viable during the length of a big building project.

“I don’t want to talk like that,” Cllr Abdi-Wali said. “We’re in a place now where it’s 50 per cent affordable housing – secured. We want to make sure they do that. Having conversations about ‘what if they do this or that’ isn’t helpful.”

Cllr Abdi-Wali said she had been inspired by Sir Keir Starmer

She said the council would fight reductions, and said the case of the Camden Goods Yard site – where the developer was able to do just that, cut the affordable housing on appeal – was a rare example.

So then the Film Quarter gets built, and so do many other potentially lofty buildings such as the West Kentish Town Estate, the Murphy’s Yard revamp and other large schemes?

An image created by the Heath and Hampstead Society of all these developments came with a suggestion that treasured sightlines across London would be ruined.

Cllr Abdi-Wali and her cabinet colleagues have turned that one into an either-or debate whenever it’s come up at the council.

“I’m lucky, where I live, we live on a bit of a hill in Gospel Oak,” she said. “Our view has always been of London, we’ve watched the New Year’s Eve fireworks from a bedroom window.

“It’s incredible, you wouldn’t want to lose that – but at the same time if it’s a choice between that and more people having the opportunity to have housing, any housing but particularly social housing, to have the opportunity to not be in overcrowded homes where there is no room for kids to study – then obviously it’s housing.”

She added: “I think everyone agrees, fundamentally, there is a housing crisis, particularly in Camden. We need more homes, it’s just a fact, and the only way to really build in somewhere like Camden is to build high, is to build up.

“I’ve heard people argue that people shouldn’t be in a tower, usually said by someone living in a non overcrowded home and who has a number of privileges.

“There are people who want a family home which isn’t overcrowded, regardless of what floor they are on, as long as it’s safe.

“I will say to the people who really value the views: views are really important, they are factored into planning decisions, and then there are other things that are also factored in – and for me, I’ve seen first hand the housing crisis people are living in.”

Not everybody is convinced, and the response from critics has been that if less space was handed over to private flats or film studios, then the construction would not have to alter the skyline so radically.

Cllr Abdi-Wali said a mixture of tenure is what makes Camden’s diversity – and “everybody being different” is the best thing about the borough.

She is aware that her life story is different from her predecessors in the leader’s office: the first black leader of the council, the first black woman, the first born in Somalia.

Her family arrived in London when she was seven, escaping the brutal civil war which ravaged the east African nation in the 1990s.

Cllr Abdi-Wali speaking at a pro-EU rally in Russell Square

After a brief time in Walthamstow, they found themselves in Gospel Oak, where her parents became heavily involved in community work.

Her mother set up the British Somali Centre to help new bewildered residents with the education and health system, and providing their children with after school activities.

“We came to this country as refugees from Somalia – when I was a kid,” she said. “It was only when I was old enough to look back and think about it in a philosophical way: my mum was always looking after us and made our lives nice, serene… whether we were in a refugee camp or temporary housing.

“I’m happy to share my story because my story is why I’m here now

“I know it means something being the first of something – but it’s more the number of people who have come up to me since – staff at the council, people in the community – and the emotional way they have responded to it.”

Some analysis of May’s council elections led to claims that Labour had lost long-standing support among the Muslim community, partly because of Gaza.

“You can’t be like all the Muslims – every Muslim – votes the same way. It’s just not true,” she said. “I know thousands of people who are Muslim and voted for Labour at the council elections. Whatever way people vote, everybody has their own reason.”

Cllr Abdi-Wali studied at Leeds University but said the student politics scene there had not attracted her.

She returned to London, joining more community projects in Camden.

In 2015, she signed up for the Labour Party, although not amid the rush of new members to get Jeremy Corbyn in as leader; she voted for Andy Burnham.

“We had an MP [Mr Starmer] here in 2016 who was really inspirational,” said Cllr Abdi-Wali, when asked about that time.

Later, she felt she had to focus on local politics because “one devastating thing after another was happening on an international level which I couldn’t do anything about.”

She cited Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency.

Every council leader talks about how much they love the impact they can make in local communities, and what a great job it is.

The question then is would Cllr Abdi-Wali trade this new role for being a parliamentary candidate and an MP – should Mr Starmer decide to withdraw from politics and stand down from the Holborn and St Pancras constituency.

It’s a question shut down as soon as it’s asked, although without a ‘no’.

“I’m not thinking about that – and I don’t want Keir to do that,” she said. “I have always said I take one year, one step at a time. I’m focussed on this.”