Sadiq Khan Re-Elected London Mayor For Historic Third Term
Sadiq Khan gives a victory speech after winning the London mayoral election (alamy)
3 min read
Sadiq Khan has been re-elected as Mayor of London for a third term, beating the Tory candidate with a comfortable majority.
The Labour mayor secured just under 44 per cent of the vote, compared to Conservative candidate Susan Hall who won 32.6 per cent.
Khan, who has been mayor since 2016, won a majority in West Central and South West, where the Conservatives took the lead on first preference votes last time around.
He also took the lead in Greenwich and Lewisham, Merton and Wandsworth, North East, Enfield and Haringey, Lambeth and Southwark, and Barnet and Camden.
Khan also won in City and East, another inner London area.
Hall took the lead in the outer boroughs of Bexley and Bromley and also Brent and Harrow, as well as Ealing and Hillingdon and Havering and Redbridge.
The Conservatives also held Croydon and Sutton.
Sources close to Sadiq Khan claimed that London had rejected a negative campaign from Hall.
Liberal Democrat candidate Rob Blackie came in third with 5.8 per cent of the vote.
The Green's Zoe Garbett was in a close fourth, also recording 5.8 per cent, while Reform UK's Howard Cox was in fifth.
Turnout in the contest was 40.5 per cent, according to figures released on Friday evening, with the highest turnout recorded in Bexley and Bromley at 48.38 per cent.
The turnout is down slightly on the last mayoral election in 2021, when it was around 42 per cent. That contest had been delayed for a year due to the Covid pandemic.
The mayoral elections this week were the first run under the first past the post system after changes brought in by the Electoral Reform Act 2022, and were also the first mayoral elections since the introduction of mandatory voter ID.
Labour had encouraged people who had backed them as a second preference in earlier contests to back Khan this time around, although polling had consistently suggested that Khan was in front.
In his manifesto, Khan pledged that he would work to make his universal free school meals programme permanent, and would freeze Transport for London fares until at least 2025.
He also promised he would build 40,000 new council homes by the end of the decade and said that he would work with a Labour government if they win the general election to recruit and train 1,300 more neighbourhood police officers.
Hall had pledged to rescind the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone if she had won the mayoralty.
The system, which means non-compliant, more polluting vehicles have to pay £12.50 per day, was expanded to outer London in summer 2023.
She had also made promises on policing and homes, pledging to recruit 1500 more police officers and to set up two police bases in every borough, as well as building more family homes.
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