Zoë Garbett has begun her term as mayor of the London Borough of Hackney following a significant electoral breakthrough for the Green Party of England and Wales in local elections earlier this month.Garbett’s victory ended decades of Labour political control in the east London borough and formed part of a broader advance by the Green Party across England.

Nationally, the party secured more than 500 council seats, gained control of five councils and won two mayoralties during the local elections.The result in Hackney drew particular political attention because of the borough’s longstanding association with the Labour Party.

In addition to Garbett winning the directly elected mayoralty, the Green Party expanded its representation on the council from four councillors to 40. Labour’s representation fell from 50 seats in 2022 to nine.“Before the election, I was saying it’s going to be really different this time, there is going to be a different landscape in London,” Garbett said.

“But I genuinely did not think it would be to this scale.”The political shift in Hackney reflects wider changes in voter alignment in parts of urban England, where housing costs, public services, environmental policy and dissatisfaction with established political parties have become increasingly influential local issues.Hackney is one of London’s most socially and economically diverse boroughs.

According to Hackney Council data, around half of residents are from Black and other global majority communities. The borough also contains significant disparities in income and living conditions, with affluent neighbourhoods existing alongside areas of long-term deprivation.Government data from the English Indices of Deprivation has identified Hackney as one of the country’s most severely affected areas for child deprivation.

Life expectancy in the borough also remains below the national average despite sustained regeneration and investment in parts of east London over the past two decades.Garbett now oversees a council administration responsible for services including housing, transport, public health, adult social care and environmental management.

Hackney Council operates with an annual budget of approximately £2 billion.Housing policy is expected to become one of the defining issues of Garbett’s administration. The borough has experienced sustained gentrification over recent years, driven by rising property prices, private investment and population growth across east London.

Those changes have contributed to pressure on social housing availability and concerns over displacement among long-term residents and community organisations.Garbett said her administration intends to prioritise the expansion of what she described as “genuinely affordable homes” alongside investment in council housing maintenance and safety improvements.

She also announced plans for a programme called “Who Owns Hackney”, which she said would focus on identifying empty properties that could potentially be repurposed for public or community use.“There is no extra money from government but we’ve got all these assets in empty properties and we could be doing much more,” Garbett said.

Her comments reflect wider financial constraints facing local authorities across England. Councils have faced prolonged budgetary pressure following years of reduced central government funding combined with rising demand for social care, housing support and local infrastructure spending.

The mayor said concerns about displacement and loss of community space were particularly relevant for Black residents and Black-owned businesses in Hackney, where redevelopment and rising commercial rents have altered the borough’s social and economic composition.“Black spaces for black communities and black-led business have been kind of pushed out of Hackney,” Garbett said.

“So it is a question of how can we use the council’s assets to push back against some of that and open up these spaces for people to use again.”The Green Party’s electoral growth has prompted debate within British politics about whether the party’s platform has broadened beyond its traditional environmental focus into housing, public services and economic inequality.

Garbett rejected suggestions that climate policy had become secondary within the party’s agenda.She said climate policy remained central to the borough’s proposed governance framework and described climate justice as a guiding principle linking multiple policy areas, including housing resilience, public health, urban planning and transport.

“Everything I do has got climate and climate justice at its centre,” Garbett said. “It’s one of our core principles that runs through our manifesto, from trying to buy back council homes and make housing safer and more resilient, to rewilding in parks, from public health to transport.”Her administration is expected to face immediate scrutiny over how environmental priorities are balanced against financial limitations and rising service demands.

Like many London boroughs, Hackney continues to manage pressures linked to temporary accommodation costs, adult social care funding and infrastructure maintenance.The political implications of the Hackney result extend beyond local government. The Green Party’s gains in London and other urban centres have raised questions about future competition between progressive parties for voters dissatisfied with Labour while also opposed to right-wing political movements.

Garbett acknowledged concerns among residents regarding national political developments, particularly around immigration policy and the growth of right-wing parties in parts of Britain.

“I speak to residents all the time in Hackney who are terrified about the changes to immigration for them or their family members and communities if Reform get in,” she said, referring to Reform UK.She said the Green Party’s local performance created a responsibility to demonstrate effective governance and provide an alternative political model capable of retaining progressive support.

“We’ve got a responsibility to deliver and to make sure that people are looking to the Green party as an alternative rather than to Reform or further rightwing parties,” Garbett said.

The change in leadership at Hackney Town Hall marks one of the most significant local political realignments in London in recent years and places the borough at the centre of wider debates over urban governance, environmental policy and shifting electoral loyalties in Britain.

The elections across England, Scotland and Wales marked Labour’s most serious political setback since the party returned to power in the 2024 general election, ending more than a decade of Conservative-led government.Writing in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Starmer acknowledged public dissatisfaction following Thursday’s vote but rejected calls for Labour to shift ideologically in response to the results.“

The right lesson is to listen to voters,” Starmer wrote, adding that doing so “doesn’t mean tacking right or left.”The strongest advances came from Reform UK, the anti-immigration party that expanded its footprint across England, Scotland and Wales as disillusioned voters increasingly turned toward nationalist and insurgent political movements.With nearly all ballots counted, Labour lost almost 1,400 council seats in England and relinquished control of several local authorities.

Reform UK secured nearly 1,500 of the roughly 5,000 council seats contested, while the Green Party also posted strong gains with more than 500 seats won.The outcome was particularly severe in Wales, where Labour lost control of the devolved government for the first time since the Welsh parliament was established in 1999.

Nationalist party Plaid Cymru emerged as the largest political force, followed by Reform UK, with Labour falling to third place.In Scotland, the Scottish National Party retained its position as the largest party but failed to secure an outright majority, winning six fewer seats than in the previous regional elections in 2021.

Although Labour’s performance in London was less damaging than some party officials had feared, the broader results underscored mounting public unease over the government’s economic record and a series of policy reversals and political controversies since taking office.

The election setback comes as British households continue to face persistent cost-of-living pressures, sluggish economic growth and strained public services, conditions that have increasingly benefited smaller opposition parties and anti-establishment movements.