Losing control of this council would be the end of Labour as we know it

Losing control of this council would be the end of Labour as we know it

The London local elections of 2006 were painful for Labour, with the party – then in government with Tony Blair in his penultimate year as prime minister – losing eight councils across the capital and ending up with the lowest number of seats since the 1960s. But there was one stand-out success: a landslide win in Lambeth, south London, where then local campaign chief Morgan McSweeney, who would go on to lead Keir Starmer into No 10, helped secu…