LONDON –
Sadiq Khan, Labour’s London mayor, cruised to victory on Saturday, securing a third consecutive term on the City Council, on another hugely disappointing day for the Conservatives ruling the UK ahead of the impending general election.
Khan won just over a million votes, or almost 44 percent of the vote, more than 11 percentage points ahead of his main rival, Susan Hall of the Conservative Party. His is the single most important mandate of any politician in the UK.
There was frantic speculation on Friday that the result would be closer than previously thought, but Khan’s victory showed a shift from Conservative to Labor compared to the previous mayoral election in 2021, even though it was held under a different electoral system.
Khan, who replaced Boris Johnson as London mayor in 2016 and has sweeping police and budget powers, has been an increasingly divisive figure in recent years, regardless of the facts for or against, particularly in the suburbs, where it was worse than in the city center.
His supporters say he has multiple achievements to his name, including expanded housing construction, free school meals for young children, keeping transport costs under control and generally supporting London’s minority groups. His critics say he has overseen a rise in crime, opposed cars and unnecessarily allowed pro-Palestinian rallies to become a regular weekend feature.
“We faced a campaign of constant negativity, but I couldn’t be prouder to have responded to scaremongering with facts, hate with hope, and attempts to divide with efforts to unite,” Khan said in the final outcome statement. . Among the candidates behind him was Count Binface, his head covered by a rubbish bin, a colorful and common presence in British elections.
“We ran a campaign that was in line with the spirit and values of this great city, a city that sees our diversity not as a weakness but as an almighty strength, and that rejects right-wing populism and looks forward, not come back,” Khan added.
The current Labor mayors of Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire were also re-elected on Saturday. For Labour, arguably the best result came in the West Midlands, widely regarded as the UK’s key region, where the ruling Conservative party lost.
Labour’s latest successes came after it took control of councils across England that it had not had for decades. The party was also successful in a special election for a seat in Parliament, which if translated into a general election would lead to one of the Conservatives’ biggest defeats.
Although the Conservatives suffered a drubbing in the local elections, it appears that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will not face a new rebellion within his ranks.
Sunak could breathe a sigh of relief when the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley, in northeast England, was re-elected, albeit with a depressed vote share. Sunak had hoped Andy Street would hold out in the West Midlands, but he lost to Labour’s Richard Parker, who claimed a majority of less than 2,000 votes.
One negative for the Labor Party was that its vote in heavily Muslim areas of England was depressed by opposition to the party leadership’s strongly pro-Israel stance on the war in Gaza.
Starmer admitted the party has had problems with Muslim voters, but the results were generally positive for the man favorite to become prime minister at the next general election.
Sunak has the power to decide the date of the next election, and has indicated that it will be in the second half of 2024. Starmer urged him not to wait.
“We are tired of their division, their chaos, their failure,” he said Saturday. “If you leave your country in a worse state than when you found it, 14 years later, you do not deserve to be in government one moment longer.”
Thursday’s elections in much of England were important in themselves, as voters decided who runs many aspects of their daily lives, such as garbage collection, road maintenance and local crime prevention. But with national elections approaching, they are seen through a national prism.
John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said the results show Sunak has not helped the Conservative brand following the damage accumulated by the actions of his predecessors, Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss.
“That, in a sense, is the big takeaway,” he told BBC radio.
Sunak became prime minister in October 2022, following Truss’s brief tenure. He left office after 49 days following a budget of unfunded tax cuts that shook financial markets and sent borrowing costs for homeowners soaring.
His chaotic – and traumatic – leadership compounded the difficulties of the Conservatives after the circus that surrounded his predecessor Johnson, who was forced to resign after being found guilty of having lied to Parliament about breaches of the coronavirus lockdown in his offices. Downing Street.
By late Saturday afternoon, with most of the 2,661 seats up for grabs in the local elections counted, the Conservatives had lost around half of the 1,000 seats they were defending, while Labor had won about 200 despite some losses apparently related to Gaza.
Other parties, such as the centrist Liberal Democrats and the Greens, also made progress. Reform UK, which is trying to usurp the right-wing Conservatives, also had some successes, especially in the special parliamentary election in Blackpool South, where it came within less than 200 votes of taking second place.