Democracy is not won behind closed doors with prime ministerial photo-ops and hand-picked media entourages. It is earned on the ground, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the communities enduring Camden’s deepening housing crisis.
On the eve of this election, we saw a textbook example of what is wrong with Sagal Abdi-Wali’s campaign. Frontline homeless outreach is commissioned with public taxpayer cash to save lives—not to serve as a private party stage set. Exploiting a statutory frontline service for a stage-managed VIP campaign visit with Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan shatters pre-election neutrality, tramples purdah guidelines, and uses vulnerable people and frontline workers as campaign props. Whilst this stage-managed PR visit was taking place, the grim reality of council policy played out just streets away: a wall of police officers stood surrounding rough sleepers’ tents on the pavement arresting vulnerable people and exposing a default strategy of enforcement and intimidation over actual support and homes. Where was the commissioned homeless outreach and support while this was occuring? We hope not too busy serving tea to their VIP guests.
The contrast on our streets could not be starker: while party leadership staged closed-door photo-ops, this was Sagal Abdi-Wali’s seat at our community hustings on Pratt Street: empty. When offered an unscripted platform to answer directly to local tenants, rough sleepers, and mutual aid volunteers, she chose not to face the room.
Credit must go where it is due: representatives from the Liberal Democrats, the Workers Party and the Greens, who had the respect and backbone to turn up, sit before the community, and answer the difficult questions. They showed that true public service requires facing the people you wish to represent.
Camden has seen at least 22 homeless deaths on our streets, soaring rents, and an escalating rough sleeping emergency met far too often with PSPOs, dispersal zones, and tent clearances rather than genuine support and permanent homes. We cannot afford more performative PR while our neighbours are displaced or left out in the cold.
While we welcome every candidate who had the decency to face scrutiny, Zack Polanski offers the most realistic opportunity for genuine hope and change in this borough. His campaign chose real engagement over staged publicity, listening directly to grassroots organisers and treating housing as an uncompromising human right rather than a political bargaining chip. At City Hall and across London, Zack has consistently fought against the criminalisation of poverty, challenged the establishment consensus, and stood firmly alongside renters against exploitation.
When power hides behind party machinery and leaves an empty chair, the community remembers who refused to face them. We need representatives who will challenge the status quo and fight unapologetically for frontline dignity.
That is why we are backing Zack Polanski.