Starmer's niece selected for safe Croydon seat as two Black women councillors are deselected

Two long-serving Black women councillors have been blocked from standing for Labour in one of its safest wards in Croydon – while Keir Starmer’s niece, a woman in her mid-20s who interned for a Labour government minister last year, has been selected to stand in their place ahead of next Thursday’s local elections.

The revelations, first reported by Inside Croydon, have prompted significant concern among Labour members in the Bensham Manor ward, who describe the process as a parachute selection that bypassed democratic norms and removed two experienced local representatives to make way for a candidate with connections to the highest levels of the Labour Party.

Who Ellie Sandover is

Ellie Sandover is a candidate in Bensham Manor ward, the second safest Labour ward in the Croydon borough. She is the daughter of Katy Swabey – one of Keir Starmer’s three siblings and the twin of Nick Starmer, who died aged 60 in December 2024. Swabey is a qualified nurse working in the care sector. She is the same sister to whom Starmer referred publicly at Prime Minister’s Questions in 2021 when he told Boris Johnson: “My sister is a poorly-paid care worker.”

Sandover is in her mid-20s, a former pupil at the BRIT School in Croydon and a graduate of the Central School of Speech and Drama. She completed a master’s degree in law while simultaneously working as youth engagement lead at Croydon’s Legacy Youth Zone and as a parliamentary intern for Sarah Jones – the Labour MP for Croydon West and a junior minister in Starmer’s government – in May and June of last year.

She was selected in August 2025, among the first of Labour’s 70 Croydon council candidates to be announced. Her selection was managed by Labour’s London Region rather than by local party members.

Who was replaced – and how

Two sitting councillors in Bensham Manor, Eunice O’Dame and Enid Mollyneux, were both blocked by the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee from standing again as candidates in 2026. Both women are Black.

Mollyneux has served as Labour’s shadow cabinet member for community safety for most of the past four years – a senior role in the Croydon Labour group selected for her by Labour leader Stuart King. Despite this, nameless and unaccountable NEC officials deemed her unsuitable to stand as a candidate.

O’Dame had, as recently as last year, been considered suitable enough by the Labour Party to stand as a parliamentary candidate in the 2024 general election – albeit in the unwinnable seat of Kingston and Surbiton. In 2026, the same party decided she was not acceptable as a council candidate in a ward she already represented.

In total, four Black women were among six sitting Croydon Labour councillors blocked by the NEC from standing in 2026 – a pattern that Labour members in the borough have described as deeply troubling.

The selection process – and what members say

Labour’s standard rules require those seeking selection as candidates to have been members for at least six months before their selection meeting. Sandover was selected in August 2025, meaning she would need to have joined the party by no later than February 2025 to meet that requirement.

Croydon Labour members say no proper selection meeting took place in Bensham Manor. “Bensham Manor members disappointed no selection happened,” one member said. Her candidacy was, in the words of Inside Croydon, “hand-picked and imposed” through the regional party machinery rather than through local democratic process.

Members in the ward say Sandover’s relationship to the Prime Minister was known to Croydon MPs Sarah Jones and Natasha Irons, despite a Croydon Labour official telling Inside Croydon “that’s news to me” when asked about it – while carefully avoiding an outright denial.

Concerns have also been raised about Sandover’s visibility during the campaign period. Her last canvassing post on social media was dated 9 April – more than three weeks before polling day. Members have described her as “not very visible in campaign or community,” saying they were “missing Enid Mollyneux.”

One member said: “Ellie’s a very new member to the party.” Another described her as having been “parachuted into a safe Labour seat.” Where Sandover lives has not been confirmed, with reports that she has not disclosed her home address to local members.

The broader context

The Croydon selection controversy sits within a Labour Party that has spent months asking the public to trust its judgement on questions of propriety, transparency and fairness – even as the Mandelson vetting scandal has dominated the headlines and the Prime Minister faces a formal parliamentary standards investigation.

It also comes in a Croydon that has its own troubled selection history. Four people are currently facing charges of cybercrime offences over the 2023 Croydon East parliamentary selection, a case that exposed the lengths to which internal Labour Party power struggles can go.

The optics of the Bensham Manor situation are uncomfortable for a party whose Prime Minister has publicly spoken about his sister as a symbol of the underpaid, undervalued workers that Labour is supposed to represent. The ward where that same Prime Minister’s niece has now been installed as a candidate – displacing two Black women who were deemed unacceptable by anonymous NEC officials – is Labour’s second safest in the borough.

Labour was approached for comment but had not responded at the time of publication.