SOAS student wins council seat

Tom King, BA Politics

Third year Adam Jogee won a seat on Haringey Council last night, representing the ward of Hornsey.

Jogee topped the poll with 1,967 votes and was elected alongside his Labour Party colleagues Jennifer Mann and Elin Weston.

Labour made gains across Haringey; taking 14 seats from the Liberal Democrats who now have nine seats to Labour’s 48. Haringey has been Labour-run since 1971 and no Conservative candidate has been elected to the council since 1998.

PhD candidate Peter Nicholls also stood for election in Haringey as a UKIP candidate but came up short.

Another SOAS student, first year Ellie Vesey-Thompson, however, lost out in her bid to become a Conservative councillor in the Camden ward of Regents Park.

Across London, Labour have taken control of Redbridge, Croydon, Merton and Hammersmith and Fulham. The Conservatives have taken Kingston-upon-Thames from the Liberal Democrats. In Tower Hamlets, independent mayor Lutfur Rahman was re-elected with 52.27% of the vote after second preferences had been counted.

UKIP have performed less well in London than elsewhere in the country. The party’s economic spokesperson Stephen Woolfe said their poorer showing was because the capital was “young and multicultural”.  The Liberal Democrats have had a grim set of results; losing 129 councillors across the country. The Greens have picked up an extra eight councillors nationwide so far.

The European Parliament election results will be announced on Sunday evening after all EU countries have finished voting.