Sadiq Khan, London’s two-term center-left mayor, on Saturday became the first three-time winner of the office by a comfortable margin, dealing a new setback for Britain’s ruling Conservative Party ahead of impending elections. general.
Khan, from the main opposition Labor party, was initially elected to the role in 2016, becoming London’s first Muslim mayor, and is now the first politician to win three consecutive terms since the role was created in 2000.
With Labor far ahead in opinion polls ahead of a looming general election, many analysts expected Khan to cruise to a comfortable victory in a city that tends to lean left, but some saw the potential for an unexpected and tight victory. race against Susan Hall, representative of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party.
That prospect quickly faded on Saturday, when it became clear that victory was looming for Khan, and in the final results, he garnered more than a million votes and 43 percent of the total, while Hall garnered about 32 percent.
“Sadiq Khan was absolutely the right candidate,” Labor Party leader Keir Starmer said before the final statement. “He has two deadlines behind him and I’m sure he has another deadline ahead of him.”
The vote itself took place on Thursday alongside other local and mayoral elections in which the Conservatives, led by embattled British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, suffered a series of setbacks.
The electoral system for London mayor has changed since Khan was last re-elected, in 2021, and the government also introduced a new requirement for voters to present photo ID. Some analysts feared that could deter poorer and younger voters, among whom the Labor Party tends to do well in polls.
Amid falling living standards and with limited powers as mayor of London, Khan struggled to convince Londoners that he was improving their lives. Opinion polls before the vote gave her a strong lead over his Conservative rival, Ms Hall, but a narrower lead than his party enjoys in national polls.
But Khan ultimately improved his performance in his last election in 2021.
Hall had campaigned to reduce the area covered by the London Ultra Low Emission Zone, or ULEZ, an anti-pollution measure that charges owners of some older vehicles 12 pounds 50 pence, about $15.50, for each day they drive.
While inner London is a Labor Party stronghold, the Conservative Party typically performs significantly better in the more suburban areas of outer London, where a much higher proportion of households own cars. Last year, when Johnson resigned from Parliament, the Conservatives won a special parliamentary election to replace him in Uxbridge, the constituency he had represented on the outskirts of London, after campaigning against ULEZ.
The reaction from owners of older vehicles in the area prompted a broader rethink within the government about the cost of environmental policies. Not long after the Uxbridge contest, Sunak announced a weakening of Britain’s climate change targets.
In his campaign, Hall also took aim at Khan’s record fighting crime in the capital, although one of his party’s attack adverts, which showed people running to safety, sparked ridicule when it emerged that the footage used were not filmed in London. but at Penn Station in New York in 2017.
After discovering his wallet was missing last year, Hall told radio station LBC that he thought it had been taken from his pocket on a London Underground train, and used the episode as an example of how crime was out. of control under the Khan government. The wallet was later returned by a retired businessman, who said he had found it on a train seat and that it appeared to have been lost rather than stolen and discarded.
Hall also faced criticism after previously suggesting that the Notting Hill Carnival, a famous annual Caribbean street event in west London, should potentially be relocated in the interests of public safety, and liking a social media post that He described Khan as “the nipple.” -high mayor of London.”
Khan was on the receiving end of a more direct attack on Muslims from Lee Anderson, a lawmaker who was suspended from the Conservative parliamentary party after claiming that Islamists were in control of London because Khan had “given away our capital city.” to his companions.”
Anderson admitted his comments were “a bit clumsy” but refused to apologize and later joined Reform UK, a small right-wing party.
But it was former President Donald J. Trump who became the London mayor’s best-known critic, having feuded with him since 2016 over issues such as immigration and terrorism. In 2019, after the mayor publicly opposed his state visit to Britain, Trump accused Khan of being “nasty” to him, while misspelling his name and mocking his height.
Shortly after, Trump also called London’s mayor “a disaster,” citing several stabbings in the British capital and writing on social media that London needed to replace Khan as soon as possible.
Given that Trump is unpopular in Britain, the former president’s attacks are unlikely to have harmed Khan, who refuted one of the charges brought against him. In 2019, Trump described the mayor of London as a “cold loser.”