Keir Starmer’s niece to run in safe council seat after black candidates barred

Keir Starmer’s niece will contest a safe Labour council seat after two black candidates were barred from running. Ellie Sandover will run in Bensham Manor, the second safest Labour seat in the borough. Good old Croydon seems to be a centre for Labour controversies in recent weeks…

Inside Croydon reported on 30 April:

Sandover was selected in August last year, among the first to be announced of Labour’s full slate of 70 council candidates standing in the local elections next Thursday.

The outlet said:

Two of Bensham Manor’s sitting councillors, Eunice O’Dame and Enid Mollyneux, both black women, were blocked by Labour from standing as candidates in 2026. For most of the past four years, Mollyneux has been Labour’s shadow cabinet member for community safety.

Sandover reportedly previously worked at Croydon’s Legacy Youth Zone:

In her mid-20s, former BRIT School pupil Sandover has a degree from the Central School of Speech and Drama, and while she was working at Legacy and in Sarah Jones’s parliamentary office last year, she also managed to complete her Master’s in law.

She is the daughter of Starmer’s sister Kate Swabey, a care nurse. Inside Croydon said:

It was Swabey to whom Starmer, when the leader of the opposition, referred to as “my sister is a poorly-paid care worker” in a Prime Minister’s Questions back-and-forth with Boris Johnson in 2021.

One Labour staffer told the paper “that’s news to me” when Inside Croydon asked about Sandover running in the seat.

Concerned locals speak of a ‘parachuted’ niece

Locals told Inside Croydon about their concerns that Sandover:

Labour members in Bensham Manor have also noted how Sandover has been rarely sighted recently, suggesting that she might have gone on holiday during the short campaign period, though this has not been confirmed.

Adding:

On social media, at a crucial time in the election campaign, Sandover’s last canvassing selfie was posted on April 9. Flytipping and uneven pavements were the residents’ concerns Sandover heard on that occasion, “no small issues for people in the place they call home”, she tweeted.

One concerned local said:

Ellie’s a very new member to the party.

And Inside Croydon reported:

The usual requirement by the Labour Party is for those seeking selection as a candidate to have been a member for at least six months – which suggest that Sandover must have been a party member by at least February 2025 were she eligible to be selected that August.

They added:

Bensham Manor ward is in Croydon West, the constituency of MP Sarah Jones.

Interned with Starmer ally MP

Sandover reportedly interned with Sarah Jones MP, a Starmer ally and junior Home Office minister “in May and June last year [2025]”.

The Fraud author Paul Holden posted on X:

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So let's get this straight… two sitting black councillors are deselected in Croydon. The Party's bureaucrats enforce a mandatory shortlist… and the result is KEIR STARMER'S MID-20s NIECE gets picked to stand for the 2nd safest ward?

She might be very smart and capable, and…

— The Fraud (@StarmertheFraud) April 30, 2026

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Jones is a pretty standard example of a Starmerite MP. Her register of parliamentary interests names her son, Joseph, as an employee for Flint Global — a consultancy firm with defence and energy interests. The MP also appears to have taken multiple overseas trips funded by the Antisemitism Policy Trust, whose website has promoted the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism and platformed right-wing ex-Labour MP turned ‘independent advisor to UK government on antisemitism’ John Mann.

Jones also reportedly accepted event tickets worth hundreds of pounds from Global Media, the “shadowy conglomerate” behind LBC radio.

Keir Starmer has questions to answer, and not just on whether his niece was parachuted into a safe seat. You’d think a man whose government is falling apart, and whose credentials as a principled and ‘forensic’ lawyer lay in tatters, would be a bit more mindful in this febrile climate…

Featured image via Twitter

By Joe Glenton

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