Croydon (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Former Croydon cabinet member Manju Shahul-Hameed, Newman Numpty, seeks for Labour mayoral candidate nomination, setting for contentious election battle in May.
After a six-month delay, the Labour Party today informed its Croydon members that they may choose their own candidate for mayor.
Although the all-powerful National Executive Committee, which has been successfully managing the majority of Croydon Labour’s operations for the past five years, caused last-minute delays to today’s announcement, the procedure is expected to take at least four weeks.
Due to the lengthy selection process, any Labour candidate selected will automatically be at a disadvantage to Tory incumbent Jason Perry, who has been receiving the mayor’s salary of over £80,000 since 2022 and who was officially announced as the Conservative candidate in the May 2026 Croydon Mayor elections nearly six months ago.
According to Croydon Labour sources, they were informed that their selection procedure would begin as soon as the party conference season concluded last fall.
However, local authorities were not trusted to make the choice themselves because the Labour Party’s council group was still under “special measures” with the national and regional Labour Parties because they destroyed the Town Hall budget.
Since the General Election last July, Croydon’s LCF, the ostensibly powerful Local Campaign Forum committee of apparatchiks from the borough’s Constituency Labour Parties that are meant to supervise candidate selection and campaign tactics for all elections, has not held a formal meeting.
“Croydon Labour is demonstrating democracy,” remarked a disgruntled party member.
Together with the borough’s second mayoral election, Croydon’s local elections, which will include votes for 70 council members in 28 wards, are scheduled for Thursday, May 7, 2026.
Although insiders say it has become more difficult to find party members willing to knock on doors for Labour in Croydon over the past year, the larger political parties are still expected to field a full slate of candidates for councillors throughout the borough: “So finding 70 fully-vetted, reliable members who might actually make hard-working councillors is becoming a bit of an issue.”
With the reputational problems surrounding everyone who took special responsibility allowances during Tony Newman’s failed administration, finding competent applicants for the top job also appears to be difficult.
For this reason, it may seem pointless to try to get Shahul-Hameed to choose you. However, another insider claimed that Manju wouldn’t be at all worried about her role in the council’s financial collapse because she is a brazen self-promoter.
When informed of Shahul-Hameed’s potential candidacy, another Labour member simply said, “Jesus wept.”
Since 2006, Shahul-Hameed has served as a councilor representing the Broad Green ward. She took over the shady position of municipal mayor, complete with extra benefits, and in 2018 she was selected as a cabinet member for jobs and the economy, earning an additional $30,000 annually.
Nothing that Shahul-Hameed may have accomplished during her tenure on the front bench of Town Hall can be recalled by anyone Inside Croydon has spoken to.
Since 2020, when Newman and Simon Hall, his finance specialist, were forced to leave their cabinet posts and eventually leave the council, Labour’s London Region has discouraged any of their team members from applying for official positions due to the harm they did to Croydon’s reputation.
However, when Shahul-Hameed traveled the nation in what appeared to be an attempt to be chosen to run for Parliament, that did not include a complete prohibition on overt box-ticking exercises.
Former software engineer Dr. Shahul-Hameed was earning almost £40,000 year as a municipal cabinet member under Newman while pursuing a PhD in health and social care.
She made the 600-mile round-trip journey to Cumbria for an interview in 2023 in an attempt to become the next Labour MP for Barrow-in-Furness.
The councillor from South London did not make the shortlist.
She also ran for office in Bolton West, Crewe, and Nantwich in an attempt to win support from her party. With more than 200 votes up for grabs, Shahul-Hameed polled “in single figures” in the Bolton selection meeting after dropping out of the latter.
She also failed in her bid to be the Labour Party’s candidate for mayor of Croydon in 2021. It was said that Shahul-Hameed’s selection motto, “I can do more for the people I care about,” may have been crafted for Alan Partridge.
Rowenna Davis, a Labour councillor who resigned as chair of the scrutiny and overview committee of Croydon Council last September, has been identified as a candidate for mayor.
One of Davis’s advantages is that he is not tarnished by his affiliation with the Newman period. In 2022, she was initially elected to the council for her home ward of Waddon.
In contrast to Croydon’s Conservatives, Davis never supported any Newman council budget, as she indicated to one of her Conservative colleagues last month.
During the Budget discussion, Davis stood up to shouty Tory bullies and ran her own, customized mayoral campaign on social media for six months, escaping the formalities of a Labour campaign.
Following Perry for the Conservatives and Richard Howard for the Liberal Democrats, Labour is the final of the three major parties to announce their candidate for mayor in 2026.
How has Manju Shahul Hameed’s work in mental health impacted her political career?
She is well-known in the community thanks to her foundation’s initiatives to combat stigma and increase awareness of mental health issues. Her political career may gain from this distinction since it will strengthen her standing as a committed public worker.
Shahul-Hameed’s background in mental health as a councillor and previous cabinet member probably influenced her choices of policies. In line with her political function, her awareness of community needs can assist in forming programs that deal with mental health concerns.
Her expertise in mental health policy stems from her background in health and social care as well as her doctorate in this area. Her credibility and influence in political circles may be enhanced by this expertise.