“Havering needs radical change, and the country needs to be rescued” says Andrew Rosindell, the Romford MP, with emphatic urgency. Our interview, which began on a pub bench, has become a speed-walk through his constituency town. Any let-up in pace and Rosindell instructs his agent and me to walk faster: Nigel Farage, his party leader, is expected any minute and he’s still got to place his charity bet on a Grand National racehorse. (He opts for Monty Star, and seems pleased when told it’s a “medium risk” choice.)
We arrive in Romford’s market square to a crowd waiting for Farage. Black and yellow “Vote Reform” placards are distributed, and rosettes hurriedly pinned to jackets. Passers-by enthusiastically pledge their allegiance. It’s the early afternoon when Farage appears at the meeting point by a B&M. He looks at home. His Capri blue suit glows fluorescent in the glaring sun, briefly camouflaging him in the equally luminescent blue and orange shopfront. Farage greets Rosindell and the local Reform councillors and candidates, before strolling up the marketplace, shaking hands and pausing for selfies with butchers and flower-sellers. This used to be a cattle market; cows, sheep and pigs were herded here in the Middle Ages. Now an entourage of aides, campaigners and journalists dutifully follow Farage. He is our shepherd and the only four-legged creature present is a Dachshund sporting a Reform rosette.
Farage backs Rosindell’s plan to pull Havering out of the Greater London Authority (GLA). Everyone here calls the idea “Hexit”. “Sadiq Khan’s London just feels a million miles away from here,” the Reform leader tells me. “This is a chance to rethink and question if we would be better off with a smaller London… Havering hasn’t been part of Essex for 65 years, but these areas still feel an emotional attachment to the old counties.”
Havering is quiet. Residents like it that way. Tucked into the north-eastern corner of the M25, it is deepest suburbia, sheltered from its edgier east London cousins. Good schools back on to expanses of prized greenbelt where cattle mooches. It is one of the least densely populated London boroughs, and has one of the highest birth rates. And if Reform wins the council in May, and Rosindell gets his way, Havering may leave the capital for good.
Rosindell has represented his hometown of Romford, Havering’s principal town, since 2001. He was a staunch Conservative until January of this year, when he defected to Farage’s party. Now he’s the chief agitator for Hexit. Residents appear to be keen on the idea of their own localised Brexit. A year ago, a Havering Daily poll of a few thousand residents revealed that more than 68 per cent would support “leaving London and returning to Essex”.
I meet the MP in Romford, outside a red-brick pub adorned with the St George’s Cross and a Union Jack. We park ourselves on a picnic bench and Rosindell launches in: “We are not in London, we are in Essex – so why are we under the control of the London mayor?” He says he “wants it to be clear”, that his vision is “not for Havering Council to then be governed by, or to ‘rejoin’, Essex”. He wants his borough to become an “independent unitary authority”; autonomous, and free from any higher power – answerable to neither London nor Essex.
The GLA, which was formed in 2000, controls the fire services, Met Police, Transport for London (TfL) and housing and urban planning. It also takes around 25 per cent of council tax from households, much to Rosindell’s chagrin: “Everything is London, London, London. Havering has paid hundreds of millions to the GLA since it was created, for which it’s hard to see what we get.” He nurses a strawberry and lime Kopparberg as he cites police station closures and inadequate public transport connections inside the borough; the former is a London-wide issue, the latter a common outer-borough complaint. Leaving the GLA will solve these issues, he says, because “we’ll get back control of our money”.
Farage has promised a referendum on Havering leaving the GLA, but more details won’t be given until Reform’s next general election manifesto is published. What’s certain is that the split would require a bill through parliament. If Reform wins Havering Council’s election on 7 May, as is predicted, the council wouldn’t be able to leave the GLA immediately. “But what we will have is a council that wants a new relationship with London,” says Rosindell.
One of those campaigning for a council seat is Bailey Nash-Gardner, 21, founder and co-director of the online news platform Politics UK. He joined Rosindell’s office after leaving school and defected to Reform with the MP. This is the first election he has stood in. He promises his constituents a “common-sense” approach to governance. The Reform tagline is also why he believes Havering would be better off outside the GLA: “If we became a unitary authority, we’d be able to lobby the government directly. You wouldn’t need the Mayor of London for this, or Keir Starmer for that, everything would be done directly with the government.” As for staying in his role at Politics UK, “I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”
Rosindell insists that he’s not just campaigning for Hexit because he doesn’t like Sadiq Khan. “I said all the same things to Boris Johnson,” he says. “I’ve always believed that the GLA is nothing more than an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.”
Hexit’s sticking point, however, is TfL’s freedom pass – which allows certain groups of people, for example the elderly or disabled, to get free or discounted travel in London. If Havering leaves the GLA, City Hall has confirmed that “residents would no longer be eligible for those Transport for London and London Borough travel concessions that require you to be a resident of London”.
Rosindell dismisses this as “scaremongering”. He argues that the freedom pass has “nothing to do with the Mayor of London and the GLA… it’s a scheme that Havering buys into. Every time a nice old lady goes into London on the Elizabeth Line and uses her freedom pass, it’s Havering Council that foots the bill.”
The freedom pass is funded by 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation, and is a statutory scheme enshrined in the 1999 GLA Act. This means London’s freedom pass holders are eligible for free transport because the London boroughs are legally obliged to pay the GLA to fund the transport network. This is covered by the boroughs through penalty fines such as parking violations, as well as council tax.
“We just don’t want to be under the GLA,’ says Rosindell, but caveats that “it doesn’t mean we’re leaving Greater London. We’ll still be a London borough, and part of the Greater London region. That’s not going to change, because we’re part of the greats.” It seems at odds with a parliamentary speech he made last May, when the then-Conservative MP said, “Havering belongs in Essex, not Greater London.”
I ask him if it’s a bit like having your cake and eating it. “It’s not having a cake and eating it,” Rosindell replies. “They’re taking our cake and they’re eating it. So it’s the opposite. We don’t have a cake. We’ve got a lovely cake, but we can’t eat it, because it’s given away.”
Not everyone supports Hexit. “There’s no evidence that Havering will be better off [outside of London],” says Councillor Keith Darvill, leader of Havering’s Labour group. “In fact, I think it would be the reverse.” He has served on the council for 24 years, and before that was the MP for Upminster – one of the borough’s most eastern points. Nevertheless, he’s firmly pro-London. “Being part of the GLA means you can have influence at the discussion table, lobbying the government.”
Havering Council is led by the Havering Residents Association, an independent party. Its leader, Ray Morgan, agrees with Darvill: “We’d still be connected to London through things like public transport. How would leaving be conducive to negotiating a good deal? And if we did leave, the price of services won’t change.”
“And you’ve got to ask – what will happen to the London weighting? Would it be an excuse for employers to pay lower wages?” asks his colleague, Councillor Graham Williamson, the cabinet member for regeneration.
To them, Rosindell’s campaign is playing politics. “I think it’s all down to securing the MP’s future seat,” says Morgan. He hypothesises that Rosindell, fearing a potential merger between Havering and its Labour-stronghold borough neighbours Barking and Dagenham or Redbridge, is concerned he “could be out of a job”. “I think this is more about protecting himself.”
Darvill agrees: “Politically, it suits him to be in firm opposition to Khan.” The London Mayor is not particularly well liked in Havering. Khan has only visited a handful of times, and proposals to build several high-rises have further damaged his reputation of not caring about the borough. Darvill understands why residents may not like Khan, but also accuses the Romford MP of “minimising the complexity” of the relationship between each London council and its governing body: “I would say that coming up with such nonsense without explaining it properly does harm to our democracy and no service to the people of this borough.”
Discontent has been simmering in the borough, like so many others on the outskirts of the metropolis. In 2025 Havering was named among the unhappiest places to live in the UK. “It’s not like it used to be,” is what almost every local says to me when I ask them why. They almost always cite immigration as the main reason.
Romford Market was once the crown jewel of the borough. Its geographical location – equidistant between the centres of Essex and London – allowed it to thrive since the 13th century; until 1958, livestock trundled down the Colchester Roman road to be sold on trading days. At its last peak, in the Eighties, Romford Market boasted 339 licensed traders. Today, numbers have dwindled to 60.
“This was the heart of the community,” says one stallholder, Graham, 52, who flogs miscellaneous household items, mostly for a pound. He serves customers discount deodorant and mouse traps as we speak. “But life is different now. It’s harder.”
He doesn’t have an opinion on whether Hexit would change anything, but he will be voting Reform UK in the upcoming elections, to stop “illegal immigration”.
Despite the Havering Daily poll, on-the-ground appetite for Hexit seems generally tepid. “I’m an Essex girl, but I like being a Londoner too,” says Ann, 79, the volunteer manager of Havering Museum. She doesn’t see it as the solution to Havering’s problems, and she wouldn’t want to jeopardise her freedom pass. Ann is one of the few people I meet who doesn’t support Reform. But immigration is still high on her list of concerns.
In the market, I ask Nigel Farage if his support for Hexit would change if Laila Cunningham, Reform’s candidate for London mayor, wins the 2028 election. “No,” he says genially, “because this is the sort of thing people ought to have a say on once every generation.” He doesn’t see a possible referendum on Havering’s future as bureaucracy for the sake of it because “democracy is not bureaucracy. They’re two completely different things.” He’s clearly pleased with this new rhyming slogan, so reminiscent of those that were spurned on the Brexit referendum.
Rosindell, a steadfast Brexiteer himself, refutes any similarities between Hexit and Brexit, because “this campaign isn’t about the European Union”: “Domestic local government structures are in no way comparable to being legally bound to a political union with other nation states.” Nevertheless, with over-simplified solutions for disenfranchised communities, a hero for them to rally around and scapegoats to blame, it’s hard not to feel like we’ve been here before.
[Further reading: Labour faces a local election wipeout in England]
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