Khan wins in London but Bailey shores up the Conservative vote
SADIQ KHAN last night won a second term as Mayor of London but saw his victory margin reduced, as Tories declared London was no longer a Labour stronghold.
Mr Khan brought in almost 1.2million votes when first and second preferences were included, giving him 55.2 per cent of the vote compared with Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey’s 44.8 per cent, with 977,601 votes.
Mr Khan’s figure is down from the 56.8 per cent he polled in 2016 against Zac Goldsmith, and he also received a significantly lower proportion of first preference votes.
In the first round of voting, just 4.7 per cent separated Mr Khan – who won 1,013,721 votes (40 per cent) – from Mr Bailey, who won 839,051 votes (35.3 per cent).
Mr Khan had beaten Mr Goldsmith by 9.2 percentage points in the first round in 2016, earning 44.2 per cent of the votes to 35 per cent.
Mr Khan, who has been London mayor since 2016, had consistently polled ahead of Mr Bailey throughout the campaign. This year’s election saw a turnout of 42.2 per cent.
It comes as a relief to the Tories, who last night celebrated the result as evidence that their long decline in London could be over as Mr Bailey’s performance marked an improvement on the party’s 2016 showing.
Mr Bailey had been written off by some in his own party, but yesterday polled higher than Mr Khan in constituencies that voted in Labour candidates for the London Assembly, including Ealing and Hillingdon, and Brent and Harrow.
A Conservative source told The Sunday Telegraph: “While this is obviously not the outcome we wanted, we are immensely proud of the campaign we ran – and we’re even prouder of Shaun.
“Pundits will talk about how Shaun cut Sadiq Khan’s majority, against the odds and despite all expectations. But more important than that, Shaun gave a voice to Londoners and issues that Sadiq Khan ignored.”
London was “no longer a city that Labour can take for granted”, the source added.
It came as a Labour source said the party had “always said it would be a close election”. “There is no question we are seeing significant impact from turnout and voters believing they could put a smaller party first preference without influencing the election result.”
A month ago Mr Bailey had been trailing Mr Khan 26 per cent on first preference votes and 40 per cent on second preferences.
Mr Khan’s re-election campaign focused on protecting jobs in the capital and steering it through recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, while Mr Bailey drew attention to the mayor’s record on knife crime.
A poll showed 46 per cent of Londoners believe Mr Khan has dealt with knife crime badly, versus 26 per cent who believe he has handled it well.
Sian Berry, the Green candidate, took 7.8 per cent of first round votes. Luisa Porrit, the Lib Dem candidate, polled at 4.4 per cent.
Laurence Fox, who ran on an antilockdown ticket for the new party Reclaim UK, lost his £10,000 deposit having failed to secure the required five per cent of the vote.
Other candidates to lose their deposit included UKIP’s Peter Gammons, Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers, the YouTuber Niko Omilana and Count Binface.
This year’s mayoral race saw voters choose between 20 candidates – the largest number that have run for the position since it was created in 2000.