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As Sadiq Khan waited to ship his victory speech on Saturday after clinching a report third time period as London’s mayor, he shifted uneasily from one foot to the opposite.
The veteran Labour politician had come by a bruising and typically bitter contest. “It has been a troublesome few months,” he informed cheering supporters in his victory speech.
“It’s actually an honour to be re-elected for a 3rd time period, and achieve this with a report stage of assist from Londoners, with an elevated margin of victory.”
After the polls closed on Thursday, Conservative insiders had been briefing that the nation’s capital confronted a good race. However the consequence was an emphatic Labour win.
Khan, first elected mayor of the English capital in 2016, trounced Tory rival Susan Corridor by 11 share factors to safe a historic third time period in workplace. His predecessors — Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson — served two phrases every.
Khan secured greater than 1,088,225 votes, round 43.7 per cent of the entire. Corridor obtained 812,397 votes.
“It is a very dangerous consequence for the Conservatives,” stated Tony Travers, professor of presidency on the London Faculty of Economics. “Tories typically give the impression in London that they’re not attempting and have given up.”
A stronger Conservative candidate may have harnessed voter dissatisfaction with Khan’s report of supply to run a tighter contest, he stated.
Corridor’s marketing campaign sought to utilize a backlash in opposition to rising crime charges and the latest enlargement of the Ulez automobile emissions cost to London’s outskirts — the place the get together typically performs higher than it does within the centre.
She secured a majority of votes in some outer London boroughs together with Brent and Harrow, however Khan overtook her in internal metropolis areas similar to Kensington and Westminster the place the Tories maintain a number of parliamentary seats.
In her concession speech Corridor accused Khan of “patronising” voters who cared about rising crime. “The factor that issues essentially the most, and to me, is reforming the Met and making London protected once more,” she stated.
Regardless of the last-minute briefings that an upset may very well be on the playing cards, the consequence met pollsters’ expectations. Within the lead as much as polling day, knowledge from Savanta ComRes put Khan at 50 per cent and Corridor at 26 per cent. Polls had narrowed to 10 factors by Thursday.
Probably the most heated subject of competition between the campaigns was the enlargement of the Ulez, which has attracted a rising protest motion.
Ulez was launched by former Tory premier Boris Johnson when he was London mayor; since then, Khan has since expanded the scheme twice.
Jon Tabbush, director of analysis on the Centre for London, a think-tank, stated the Ulez had hit Labour’s vote in outer London boroughs however did not generate a groundswell in Tory assist.
“Tactical voting has been far simpler than Labour had hoped — the Lib Dems are performing as a stress valve for liberal Tories and London Greens are responding to squeeze on Labour,” Tabbush stated.
The competition was the primary to be held beneath the first-past-the-post system, in a transfer that analysts thought may assist the Conservatives. It’s because beneath the earlier system centre-left voters typically picked one other get together within the first spherical, earlier than backing Labour within the second spherical.
Labour was additionally buoyed by regular assist in areas with massive Muslim populations, in contrast to the drain it has skilled in different components of the nation over the get together’s place on the Israel-Hamas battle.
Rounding off his victory speech on Saturday, Khan mirrored on the nationwide image, becoming a member of different newly elected Labour mayors in calling for a basic election.
“With a Labour get together that’s prepared to manipulate once more beneath Keir Starmer, it’s time for Rishi Sunak to present the general public a selection,” he stated.
