Black Women Out, Starmer Family In: Labour’s Croydon Row Explodes

Local election season should see parties trumpeting their grassroots strength, their commitment to community voices and their talent for picking candidates who actually reflect the places they want to represent. Labour in Croydon has managed to do the opposite, serving up a selection row so ugly that even the party’s own members are struggling to defend it. Labour has reportedly blocked two sitting Black women councillors from standing again in Bensham Manor, a safe Labour ward, while the party’s new slate includes Keir Starmer’s niece.

What The Times reported

Ellie Sandover, the daughter of Starmer’s sister, has won selection as a Labour candidate in Bensham Manor, a ward that Inside Croydon describes as the borough’s second safest Labour seat and that The Times calls one of Labour’s most winnable. She has youth work experience, a master’s in law and a stint as a parliamentary intern. The problem is not her CV. It is the story of how she got the slot.

According to reporting cited by The Times, six sitting Croydon councillors were deselected before the candidate selection process, including five women, four of whom were Black women. In Bensham Manor specifically, incumbents Eunice O’Dame and Enid Mollyneaux were reportedly blocked by the party from standing for re‑election, depriving local Labour members of the chance to keep two experienced Black female councillors. Mollyneaux held a senior Labour group role as shadow cabinet member for community safety. O’Dame carried Labour’s banner as a parliamentary candidate in Kingston and Surbiton in 2024. A candidate Labour believed was good enough to stand for Parliament was suddenly not suitable to stand in a safe council ward she already represented.

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Local members say the party excluded them from the decision‑making process, and they have criticised what they call centralised control and cronyism. One local member told Inside Croydon that a lack of selection disappointed Bensham Manor members, and that Sandover ‘had not been doing the work’ ahead of polling day.  Steven Downes, the local journalist who broke the story, said: “They are angry because they have had no say in the selection process. And they are the ones the party will expect to spend hours next week to ‘Get Out The Vote’.” He added that an independent candidate in Bensham Manor had found Labour voters “furious” on the doorstep, saying “they miss their hard‑working councillor”.

Labour has defended the result, with a spokesperson saying Sandover was selected “in line with Party rules and procedures”. But a process that is technically compliant can still be profoundly undemocratic. “Paperwork is not democracy” sums up this row. Labour can produce as many forms as it likes; the outcome remains. Two sitting Black women councillors are out. The prime minister’s niece is in. The party now asks members to campaign for a candidate they did not meaningfully choose.

Croydon Labour already had a selection scandal

This row does not exist in a vacuum. Recently, authorities charged four activists in Croydon, the same Labour heartland, over allegations that someone manipulated a party database to fix a parliamentary candidate selection in Croydon East – including a charge of perverting the course of justice. Those charges remain criminal charges, not convictions, and the suspects retain their right to a fair trial. But the fact that Labour finds itself fighting a nepotism row in one Croydon selection while a separate Croydon selection is the subject of criminal proceedings tells you everything about how rotten the party’s internal culture has become. When a party has to handle two selection controversies in the same borough, something has gone very wrong.

Labour’s hierarchy of racism problem has not gone away

The racial optics of this row are particularly damaging because Labour has already visited this place before. The Forde Report, which Starmer himself commissioned, found a perception inside the party of a “hierarchy of racism where Labour treated anti‑Black racism and Islamophobia as secondary concerns”. Martin Forde KC, the barrister who wrote the report, later warned that a feeling still persisted: “if you step out of line as a Black MP or councillor, the party throws the book at you”. Labour’s own actions in Croydon now co‑sign that perception.

Four out of six deselected Croydon councillors were Black women. Labour can call that a coincidence if it likes. I call it a warning sign.

Starmer promised something different

The selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) February 4, 2020

In 2020, during his leadership campaign, Starmer tweeted that Labour selections needed to be “more democratic” and that the party “should end NEC impositions”. It was a direct pledge to let local members choose candidates rather than having shortlists managed from the top. Bensham Manor is the opposite of that promise. It is an NEC‑managed selection that removed local incumbents, bypassed local members and produced a result that looks exactly like cronyism.

Labour’s problem is not one awkward family connection. Labour’s problem is that its own machinery has produced a picture so ugly that even the excuses now sound like evidence. Black women out, family member in, members bypassed, safe seat protected. Labour can call it procedure. Voters may see something else.