‘Don’t do it as a protest vote’: Can Labour survive a green wave in Cambridge?

Labour councillor Cameron Holloway has had a front row seat for the shifting politics of Cambridge.

The leader of the city council, he currently represents leafy, well-heeled Newnham. Five years ago, it elected two Liberal Democrats and a single Labour councillor. Today, it’s the Greens who hold two seats. 

There are fears now that this trend could be writ large across Cambridge in the weeks to come, with veteran Labour campaigners predicting that traditional rivals the Lib Dems could be supplanted by Zack Polanski’s party. 

Taking nothing for granted

And with Labour defending a one-seat overall majority – and with 15 seats up for election overall – it would not take much for the council to fall out of the party’s control for the first time since 2014.

READ MORE: “We were all immigrants here once”: Is the ‘red island’ of Milton Keynes under threat from Reform?

Holloway, who took over as leader last May, has switched seats to Petersfield — on paper, a much safer ward for the party. But few, on a sunny day exactly a month out from May 7, are taking anything for granted. 

Party members have been out on multiple canvassing sessions a day in recent weeks, criss-crossing the compact city. The Greens get multiple namechecks in the organiser’s briefing the afternoon I visit, with campaigners urged to stress the local Labour party’s record on issues like tree-planting and house-building. The election will be a choice between them and us, everyone is reminded. 

“We are in a difficult set of elections,” Holloway tells the six-strong canvassing team here in Petersfield. But he is also upbeat: “We are making really good progress.”

Sitting later inside the Live and Let Live pub, on a terraced backstreet, he admits that his main focus is on retaining  the council. 

“There’s high stakes nationally at all times,” he tells LabourList. “But for me, I’m mainly worried about — will I still be in post? Will I still be leader of the council on May 8th and beyond?”

Both general and local elections here have mostly followed the same pattern for the last two decades, a straight battle between the Lib Dems and Labour. There is no threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform, with the party expected to pick up only a handful of votes across Cambridge.

Neither are the Tories a danger, with Kemi Badenoch’s party in possession of a sole seat. 

Unhappy progressives

But this does mean that if the Greens can overtake the Lib Dems as the party of choice for unhappy progressives, Labour could be in trouble. 

There are signs already that this is exactly what’s happening, with a Lib Dem councillor in Trumpington defecting to the Greens in March, adding to the sense of momentum behind Polanski’s party. 

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The Greens already have a clean sweep of the three seats in Abbey, in the north-west of the city, something it’s hoping to replicate elsewhere. Most worryingly for Labour, the Greens’ canvassing efforts are reaching across different localities and demographics.

“There’s no particular type of ward that they are doing well in,” says Holloway. 

Local vs national

Like other Labour-held administrations, councillors here are hoping voters reward local successes. That often means housing, with Cambridge city council one of the top 10 home-builders in the country. But it also means pointing to previous policy clashes with the Greens and Lib Dems, with Labour highlighting the former’s opposition to plans to create a designated bathing area in the River Cam. 

There has also been a recent well-publicised row at the Lib Dem-controlled Cambridgeshire county council over plans to scrap free school meal holiday vouchers. “Don’t just do it as a protest vote” says Holloway. “Vote on who you want as a local council.”

But unfortunately for the local party, the national backdrop is unavoidable on the doorsteps. “There are, as you could probably guess, some concerns over Keir as our leader, but that’s an inevitable part of if you’re in government, you’re going to get criticised,” says Mike Davey, a former council leader here. 

A Petersfield councillor since 2019, he says there is no doubt the Lib Dems are being “supplanted” here.

“Polanski has been successful,” he says. “What I think we’re finding is that the Greens have been successful in giving certain national messages that are resonating with the voters of this area, which is a ‘liberal’ area and people are open to that.”

Live and Let Die?

There are some quirks to this election too. Voters will go to the polls once again next year to elect a new shadow unitary authority, as part of the government’s swathe of local democracy reforms. 

Then there is also a row about the exact design of a mooted development corporation in the region, as part of Labour ministers’ Oxford-Cambridge “growth corridor” ambitions. Around £400 million has already been earmarked for the region, which Rachel Reeves has described as a potential European Silicon Valley.

Davey, an Edinburgh native who spent much of his career in Sunderland, suggests locals here can sometimes view those plans a little differently. 

“If the government went to Sunderland and said ‘Here’s £400 million’ people would then go ‘fantastic’. 

“Here it’s slightly different. It’s more about how you protect and conserve what’s great about this city. It’s about how you accept national responsibility to grow. It’s about how you therefore make sure that local people get what’s right for them.”

Then again, there is also the fact that here in Cambridge, a university city, Shabana Mahmood and the party’s tough immigration policies are unlikely to go down well. 

Back in the Live and Let Live pub, sipping an orange juice, Holloway offers a careful reply to the question of whether these policies, which might win over Farage-backing voters elsewhere, are backfiring in Cambridge. 

Over 1,000 refugee families, mostly from Ukraine and Afghanistan, have come to the city in recent years.

“We, locally, are a city that’s got about a third of people who come from abroad, they were born elsewhere,” says Holloway. 

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“That’s something that I love about Cambridge. I studied languages at university, my wife is an immigrant. That’s the case for so many people here, that they have a really strong connection to lots of different countries. 

“That’s something fantastic about Cambridge, how diverse and outward looking we are.”

We leave the pub, as cars clog what only half an hour ago was a quiet backstreet. Another local problem, Holloway notes dryly. 

For now, it’s up to voters to decide — will Labour live to fight another day, or is it live and let die?

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