Conservatives lick wounds in local elections
Sadiq Khan, the Labour Party’s mayor of London, romped to victory at the weekend, securing a record third straight term at City Hall, on another hugely disappointing day for the UK’s governing Conservatives ahead of a looming general election.
Khan won a little over a million votes, or nearly 44 per cent of the total, more than 11 percentage points ahead of his main challenger, the Conservative Party’s Susan Hall. His is the biggest individual mandate of any politician in the UK.
Khan, who replaced Boris Johnson as London mayor in 2016 and who has widespread policing and budget powers, has been an increasingly divisive figure in the past few years regardless of the facts for or against, particularly in the suburbs, where he fared worse than in the inner city.
His supporters say he has multiple achievements to his name, such as expanding house-building, free school meals for young children, keeping transport costs in check and generally backing London’s minority groups. His critics say he has overseen a crime surge, been anti-car and has unnecessarily allowed pro-Palestinian marches to become a regular feature at weekends.
“We faced a campaign of non-stop negativity, but I couldn’t be more proud that we answered the fearmongering with facts, hate with hope, and attempts to divide with efforts to unite,” Khan said at the declaration of the final result.
“We ran a campaign that was in keeping with the spirit and values of this great city, a city that regards our diversity not as a weakness, but as an almighty strength, and one that rejects right hard-wing populism and looks forward, not back,” Khan added.
The incumbent Labour mayors in Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire were also re-elected. For Labour, arguably the best result was in the West Midlands, widely regarded as the key bellwether region of the UK where the Conservative incumbent lost.
The latest successes for Labour came after it seized control of councils across England that it hasn’t held for decades. The party was also successful in a special election for a seat in Parliament, that if translated to a general election would lead to one of the Conservatives’ biggest-ever defeats.
Though the Conservatives suffered a drubbing in the local elections, it looks as though Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will not face a further rebellion among his ranks.
Sunak was able to breathe a sigh of relief when the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley in the northeast of England was re-elected, albeit with a depressed share of the vote.
One negative for Labour was that its vote in strongly Muslim areas in England was depressed by opposition to the party leadership’s strongly pro-Israel stance over the war in Gaza.
Labour leader Keir Starmer conceded that the party has had issues with Muslim voters, but the results in general were positive for the man who is favorite to become prime minister at the next general election.