Who would have thought that when the Tories pushed through first-pass-the-post voting for the Mayoral contests, it would mean Sadiq would romp home with an increase majority for a third term as Mayor of London? Clearly not those who proposed and passed this change but thats actually what has happened, as it forced Lib Dem and Green voters to vote tactically rather then for their candidates when they had the choice of either Sadiq Khan or Susan Hall on the Mayoral ballot. The latter of whom made no overtunes to them at all on their policy priorities with her anti-ULEZ position and indeed probably frighten many of them with her historical social media activities.
All the misguided excitement the day after the polls was solely based on the turn out figures of 40.5 per cent being 1.5 per cent lower then 2021 but also the GLA constituency figures suggested that Outer Londoner had turned out more than Inner London. Posing the question, of whether we going to see a shock result given the low turn out and first-past-the-post would make it closer even though the polls suggested Sadiq and Labour were some 20 per cent ahead.
In the end Sadiq romped home winning by 275,828 votes with a 10 per cent plus lead with much tactical voting clearly by Lib Dems and Greens and maybe even by some Tories! The latter something l detected after the declarations in my local pubs. Pollsters do also need again to look at their methods being some 10 percentage points out and personally like the French, l would not have any polls two weeks before the actual vote itself. They can have some undue influences particularly amongst commentators.
Let’s not forget the London Assembly
The results were remarkable stable at London’s City Hall with Mayor being re-elected and the make-up of the Assembly almost identical to previous election. In spite of some little dramas around individual constituency results, the final outcome is just one less Tory Assembly Member (AM) – replaced with one Reform AM.
With the London Assembly the reality is that things have not change that much at all, with 11 Labour AMs, 3 Green AMs, 2 Lib Dem AMs except the Tories lost one of their seats to Reform UK and are now down to 8 AMs. So critically Sadiq, will be able to still pass his annual budgets of fare freezes, meals for school kids and action on air pollution. Whilst the non-labour AMs totally 14 members, can still hold control of all the Scrutiny Committees which do much of their work during the year.
The one change in the Labour make up was of course the gain of West Central constituency covering City of Westminster, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham, bringing in Cllr James Small-Edwards for the first time. A seating councillor for Bayswater in the City of Westminster already. Whilst we had a lower turnout then 2021 in West Central by 4 per cent, the Reform vote helped lose the seat for the Tories. Which by implications meant Labour lost one on the Labour Top up List via the d’Hondt system, a sad fate l have also suffered.
So it will back to much the same for the next four years in London regional government and hopefully a Labour government at the next General Election this year that can work with the Sadiq administration to improve matters for Londoners after 14 bleak years even for Londoners after austerity and brexit.
A copy of this blog has been published in SEBRA News W2 – Summer 2024 Edition