Sir Robert Andrew "Robin" Wales (born 18 January 1955) is a British Labour Party politician who served as Mayor of Newham from 2002 to 2018.

In his role as mayor, Wales' visibility has arguably increased since London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, as more than 60% of the Games took place in Newham.

SOLS members were renowned for their wresting back control of the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS) from the Militant tendency in 1975.

In 2000 local authorities were granted the opportunity to directly elect an executive mayor with far-reaching decision-making powers.

In this model of governance the mayor is directly elected by voters in the borough to serve for a period of four years.

In 2002 Newham held a referendum and voted for the replacement of the traditional leader and cabinet model with the new directly elected mayoral system.

[7] In 2016 Wales won a vote of party members and affiliates to automatically re-select him as Labour candidate for the 2018 mayoral election, rather than holding an open selection.

However, a number of Labour Party members questioned the process, claiming that the Party's rules were broken because they were applied differently to different affiliated organisations, with some unions with several branches being given multiple votes whilst others who also had multiple branches were under the impression that they only had one vote.

[10] Wales has said he is committed to helping residents benefit from economic development in Newham, particularly in terms of employment and skills.

Other key developments include regeneration in Canning Town and Custom House and in the Royal Docks and Silvertown Quays.

The traders and residents were objecting to plans to demolish the market and replace it with a new market-hall with 164 stalls and 6,374 sq metres of shop units, 350 homes, a civic building and a library.

[18] It has been reported that Wales refused to work alongside the former Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman,[19] who was later removed from office for breaching electoral rules.

[21] In 2014, the mayor and council were in dispute with the Focus E15 campaign group, which complained about the lack of social housing within the borough.

Once the party affiliates' votes were added, the result was turned in favour of Wales being the only Labour candidate permitted to stand in the 2018 election.