ELECTION LIVE BLOG

6.55PM: If you’ve been wondering about Lloyd Bickham’s mission to bring you the best of Camden’s dogs at polling stations – here’s another quartet. It’s  Buddy next to his favourite paper, Bubbles weighing up the candidates, Teddy & Elsie (a Translylvanian rescue) and Daphne on her stroller.

6.40PM: We are not promoting gambling. In fact, the whole concept of betting money on the results of these elections is weird. But we mentioned in passing on our election eve Substack post that Labour had been priced by Labour at 6-1 to hold onto Westminster City Council. Now, with three and half hours or so of voting to go – the price is even bigger. 8-1.

Richard Osley

6.15PM: Councillors will feel devastated in the moment if they find they are being replaced at tomorrow’s count. Losing is hard, perhaps even more so at a local level. It doesn’t last forever, however, and the ex-councillors we meet in Camden are often cheery about having meetings free of Town Hall meetings and the new discovery of all the things you can fit into the week if you don’t have casework to complete. Gio Spinella didn’t lose his seat, but did say he was ‘tired’ when he stepped down from the council halfway through the term. I’ve just bumped into the former Conservative leader in South Hampstead. He is not part of the polling day operation for the Tories today, but he is intrigued by what the results may be. It won’t distract him from a new life as a stand-up comedian, though,

Gio Spinella out and about today

Mr Spinella blamed Boris Johnson when his group was cut back to just three councillors in 2022. “The analogy that I’ve used is that you can picture a World War I movie and the soldiers are in the trenches,” he said back then. “The officer blows the whistle, they go over the top and then they all get mowed down by machine guns leaving only one guy. He looks around and everybody is dead. And I’m that man. This is the single most challenging moment for the Camden Conservatives. We’ve never had a result this bad and it’s going to take a lot of hard work to rebuild. For us, every election now is an existential battle.”

Oof, no wonder he felt exhausted.

Tom Foot

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5.55PM: The local parties have worked hard to diversify the council chamber in recent years, encouraging more women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds to stand for election. How many live ‘beneath the popcorn ceiling of council homes’, however? Slam poet Maureen Onwunali has left her thoughts on a fly-posted verse attached to side of the closed bingo hall in Camden Town.

Richard Osley

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4.50PM: While we wait for more updates, a look back on the time Will Blair, a Conservative election candidate, went to cast a vote for himself at his doctor’s surgery in Kentish Town, which was being used as a polling station. It’s a long time ago now, but May 7 in some respects will always be Will Blair Day. A braver face we haven’t seen since.

May 7: Happy Will Blair Day to all the Camden politics spotters. @will_blair pic.twitter.com/opsoeHRaC1

— Richard Osley (@RichardOsley) May 7, 2018

Richard Osley

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4.00PM: Sir Sadiq has now tweeted photos of his excursion in Kentish Town – the talk of the town, however, has been who has the most sensible Dad trainers for a day when everybody will be getting their 10,000 steps in. What a selection here.

Richard Osley

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3.55PM: While we did not bump into Sir Sadiq Khan this afternoon (apparently he’s trying to reach every London borough today), we did bump into the leader of the council Richard Olszewski and Camden’s health chief Anna Wright while searching for him in York Rise. Power-walking at speed, I had to run to catch up with them to snap a pic with their leaflets in hand. They said the aim of the day was to talk to as many people as possible and “win”. It’s busy in Highgate because not one but two cabinet members are trying to stave off the threat of the Greens

Caitlin Maskell

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3.00PM: We don’t know what the precise election rules are for beaming ‘VOTE XXX’ on a prominent wall on the night before polling day. Presumably it’s ok, and the Greens seemed very pleased with themselves last night after getting their pre-election light show up on the mural which says ‘Welcome To Kentish Town’.

Richard Osley

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2.10PM: Nigel Rumble! We thought we might get through the whole set of council elections without mentioning this guy after he dropped off the Conservative candidate list.

And yet here he is again, the Rumble-in-chief, yellow glowing sunglasses propped on his head and with a handful of leaflets, helping the Tories in Primrose Hill, where the party has hopes of unseating Labour. Mr R has spent more than a decade unsuccessfully trying to get elected as a councillor in Camden, sometimes as an independent candidate, sometimes with a blue rosette. He can’t stay away.

To be honest, I’m still trying to fathom his filtered, sepia film of me interviewing Iain Duncan Smith in Belsize Park – with jazz accompaniment – many years ago.

Richard Osley

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1.30PM: Reports have come in that Sir Sadiq Khan has been seen helping the GOTV operation in Kentish Town this lunchtime. We’ll see if we can track him down for a word but his presence in this part of Camden is interesting in itself, as in the past NW5 would have been considered safe enough to allow resources to be devoted in more challenging contests around the borough.

The same could be said for Holborn and Covent Garden, which has always been a Labour fortress but when I cycled through earlier today I saw Green activists animated in their attempts to get people to the polling stations. In previous years, Labour has hardly needed a clipboard teller at the door. Camden’s most southerly ward has become an unexpected sub-story of the Camden elections, sparked by Labour council leader Richard Olszewski’s ward switch from Fortune Green in the north west of the borough.

Richard Osley

1.00PM: As voting continues, our pets at the polls photo collection is growing. Here are a few of our favourites from Camden and neighbouring Islington so far.

From top left we have Santi, Coco, Eddie, and Pudding and Gregg. Keep the cuties coming.

Daisy Clague

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12.10PM: Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was pictured heading to the polls in Westminster this morning, hand-in-hand with his wife, Victoria Starmer.

Back when he was “just” the Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, Sir Keir would have cast his ballot in Kentish Town. Now he is in Downing Street, the toolmaker’s son is a borough of Westminster constituent who cast his ballot at Westminster Chapel in Buckingham Gate.

Labour could do with the Starmers’ votes in Kentish Town this time around, but they’ll be welcome in Westminster too, where the party is at risk of losing the council altogether.

Daisy Clague

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11.10AM: Anyone needing a quick ride to the polling station today can Lime there for free — the e-bike giant is giving away two 15-minute journeys per user, so people have no excuse not to get out to vote. We can only guess who the hire bike company’s chiefs would like to be running London’s various councils, but presumably Lime’s offer is for the good of democracy, and not simply to score more sign ups to its app.

Either way, we need not guess how councillor Awale Olad — who has opted not to run for re-election this time — feels about the company. Our front page from January says it all.

Daisy Clague

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10.20AM: People never seem to get bored of the #dogsatpollingstations trend on election. How many years has this been going on now? Now, we are not here to suggest that its enduring longevity is because people like their dogs more than politicians, as they probably like them more than journalists too.

But we are wading in this year and we’ll be publishing the best photos from Camden on our Instagram feed (@camdennewjournal) and there will be a page of the pictures to lighten up the heavy stuff in our election print special next week. So if that’s your thing, get involved by snapping a pic of your pooch when you go to vote and send it to our socials. You can also email our man on a mission to collect as many as possible, Lloyd Bickham on lloyd@camdennewjournal.co.uk

Here’s a starter – Daisy’s little pal Rudy in Primrose Hil

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The make-up of Camden Council going into today’s polls. 

10.05AM: It might be worth beginning with the starting point for these elections, as there has been lots of speculation whether the ruling Labour party will lose seats in Camden.

Some have predicted a ‘hung council’ – with no party in overall control – will be the end result as it faces challenges from the Greens, Lib Dems and Tories, as well as the unknowns of Reform and the Camden People’s Alliance. But this split challenge means its hard for any of their opponents to reach the magic figure of 28 for a majority.

Labour, meanwhile, have the cushion of holding 45 of the 55 seats in the council chamber, meaning it would take a dramatic fall to fall below the water line. But at the last elections in 2022, they were pushing at open door amid unpopularity with Boris Johnson’s Conservative government and even managed to win a seat with a paper candidate in Hampstead. This time, the boot might be said to be on the other foot, as their rivals encourage voters to send a message to Sir Keir Starmer and his government, as it flags in the polls.

One danger for Labour is the occasional view you will hear from people who feel the party could lose a few councillors without too much harm and still retain control of the council and it’s on days like today when left-leaning voters have two or three boxes to X on the ballot papers that they can share around their support. There is also a long-running debate about how healthy for  discussion and policy-making it is for any party, whoever it is, to have a super majority on a local authority,

Richard Osley

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10.00AM: Welcome to our election live blog for the Camden Council elections taking place today (Thursday May 7, 2026).

This is an ‘all out election’ where residents in every ward get to choose who they want as their councillors. Postal voting has been going on for several days but it is at the polling stations where the bulk of the ballots will arrive. The last chance to vote will be just before 10pm tonight and then the ballot papers will be locked away overnight before counting tomorrow (Friday). The traditional operation of counting through the night for council elections was dropped last time around, although some other London councils will be working into the early hours to reach a result. On this blog, we’ll be following the action through polling day, right up to the final result. Check back for updates.

Richard Osley

If you think you have something that should be on the blog, email daisy@camdennewjournal.co.uk or tweet us on X at @newjournal.

Reporting team: Richard Osley, Tom Foot, Caitlin Maskell, Daisy Clague and Dan Carrier.