General election 2024: Meet the seven hopefuls vying for votes in Hackney South and Shoreditch

The candidates standing in the general election on 4 July have been announced.

In Hackney South and Shoreditch, there are seven candidates fighting for your vote.

Below is more information about the key pledges of the parties they represent, as well as some history of their time in politics.

Candidates appear in alphabetical order.

Anil Bhatti – Reform UK

The Citizen has been unable to find further information on Bhatti, but can clarify that the photo displayed on the Who Can I Vote For? website is incorrect. The image is a picture of a late Marxist professor of the same name who died in October 2023.

The Reform UK manifesto has not yet been released, but party leader Nigel Farage has confirmed it will be published on 17 June.

Reform UK has called the upcoming election the “immigration election”, and the party has pledged to introduce a migrant tax that will force employers to pay an increased National Insurance rate of 20 per cent for every foreign employee.

The party has already discussed vastly reducing legal migration by leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and introducing a “one in, one out” migration quota.

Laura-Louise Fairley – Green Party

Fairley has spent her career working in the charity sector and took to Instagram to say: “Combining my lived experience as a neurodivergent single mother living in a close-knit community in Hackney with my professional career in humanitarian response and climate change, I can compassionately represent the people and voices of Hackney and beyond.”

In the same post, she details that she wants “a nature act that would protect and restore the natural world”, a rent freeze, safer homes, protection of the NHS from privatisation, an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and free school meals for all children.

The Green Party manifesto was released this morning, with headlines including a plan to boost health and social care spending by £50 billion a year.

This will be funded by an eight per cent raise on National Insurance for those earning over £50,270, and a one per cent wealth tax on assets over £10 million that stretches to two per cent for assets worth over £1 billion.

The Greens have also said they would invest £40 billion a year in the shift to the green economy by introducing a tax on any activities that involve the emission of carbon dioxide.

Meg Hillier – Labour Party

Meg Hillier has been the Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch since 2005.

Her career in politics began in 1994 where she represented Sussex ward at Islington Council. She then served as the Mayor of Islington between the years of 1998 and 2002.

Before becoming an MP, she was the north-east London’s Assembly Member at City Hall.

As an MP, Hillier spent a year as the Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero back in 2010.

The Labour Party is yet to release its manifesto, but it is expected to be published on 14 June.

According to a website that tracks MP’s voting records, Hiller “followed instructions from her party and voted the same way as Labour MPs” on the “vast majority of issues”.

Shahed Hussain – Workers Party

Hussain lives in Twickenham and in a statement on the Workers Party website says: “I have been living and working in and around London for many years, which has made me acutely aware of the issues in the area.

“My experiences have shaped me and given me a deep understanding of the community’s needs.”

Alongside running an accounting firm, Hussain has volunteered with the Citizens Advice Bureau for a decade, a role he says has been both “challenging and rewarding”.

During this time, he also founded the Ethnic Integration Society, a charity “aimed at promoting diversity, inclusivity, and cultural harmony”.

The Workers Party’s key pledge is to the “redistribution of wealth and power in favour of working people”.

Its manifesto says it is “committed to a reversal of policies aimed at deindustrialisation” and to “exploring innovative demands for workers control and participation in the future of industry through trade unions”.

They also want a referendum on net zero targets, better public participation in private shareholder investment, and to give everyone the option of retiring at 60 with “adequate pension provision”.

Joanna Kate Reeves – Conservative Party

Reeves is the association chair for Holborn and St Pancras Conservatives. She is also the chair of Conservative Friends of Neurodiversity and Conservative Friends of Education.

The Holborn and St Pancras Conservatives website, Reeves says her “background is in education, [and] I now own and run a small media company and I chair Macmillan Cancer Support’s flagship fundraising event and my college alumni society”.

In his first major policy announcement of the election campaign, incumbent Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed to bring back national service for school leavers. This would open military placements to 30,000 youngsters with residential stays at army barracks or other military facilities.

Lower taxation is a Conservative manifesto headline, with a pledge to abolish National Insurance payments for almost all self-employed people.

Another leading party policy is a vow to increase NHS spending above inflation in each year of the next parliament.

The Tories have also promised to deliver 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors in that time, compared to 2023 levels.

Theo Roos – Liberal Democrats

Roos previously represented the Conservative Party in the 2018 Westminster Council by-election. He is now a member of the executive committee for City of London and Westminster Liberal Democrats, and is involved in the party’s Opportunity, skills and Training Working Group.

Tackling sewage is one of the party’s primary manifesto pledges. It wants to create a public water company and introduce legally binding targets to prevent sewage dumping into bathing waters and highly sensitive nature sites.

The Liberal Democrats also want to repair the UK’s “broken relationship” with Europe and introduce a £9.4 billion package for the NHS and social care in England, paid for by raising taxes for banks and closing finance loopholes used by the super-rich.

Carol Susan Small – Workers Revolutionary Party

The Workers Revolutionary Party manifesto was revealed on The News Line, a socialist publication.

The manifesto calls for wages to automatically rise in line with inflation, the reversal of benefit cuts, and the immediate nationalisation of “banks and major industries”.

The Workers Revolutionary Party also wants all Trade Union Congress leaders who “remain silent and refuse to organise a general strike” to be replaced, and says it will “massively fund the NHS and drive out all privateers from healthcare”.