Sadiq Khan, a two-term center-left mayor of London, on Saturday became the first three-time winner of the post by a comfortable margin, in a new setback for Britain’s ruling Conservative Party as elections approach. general elections imminent.
Mr 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 creation from this position in 2000.
With Labor well ahead in opinion polls ahead of the looming general election, many analysts expected Mr Khan to score a comfortable victory in a city that tends to lean left, but some saw the potential for a surprisingly close vote. race against Susan Hall, representing the Conservatives.
That prospect quickly faded on Saturday, when it became clear that victory was imminent for Mr. Khan, and in the final results he won more than a million votes, or 43 percent of the total, with Ms. Hall getting about 32 percent.
“We have been faced with a relentless campaign of negativity,” Mr. Khan said in an acceptance speech initially disrupted by heckling, adding: “We have responded to alarmism with facts, to hatred with hope and attempts to divide by efforts to unite.
The vote itself took place on Thursday, alongside other local and municipal elections in which the Conservatives, led by the British Party Embattled Prime Minister Rishi Sunaksuffered a series of setbacks.
The electoral system for London Mayor has changed since Mr Khan’s last re-election, in 2021, and the government has also introduced a new requirement for voters to show photo ID. Some analysts fear this could deter poorer and younger voters, among whom Labor tends to vote well.
Against a backdrop of falling living standards and with limited powers as London mayor, Mr Khan had to fight to convince Londoners that he was improving their lives. Opinion polls taken before the vote gave her a strong lead over her Conservative rival, Ms Hall, but a smaller advantage than her party enjoys in national polls.
But ultimately Mr Khan improved on his 2021 performance after promising free school meals for pupils, a freeze on travel fares and more house building.
Ms Hall had campaigned to reduce the area covered by London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone, or ULEZ, an anti-pollution measure that charges owners of some older vehicles 12 pounds and 50 pence, or about $15.50, to every day of driving.
ULEZ was introduced to central London by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, when he was mayor. But it was Mr Khan who extended his focus to the outskirts of London, arguing it was vital to improve poor air quality, which is known to have contributed to at least one death in London.
While central London is a stronghold for the Labor Party, the Conservative Party normally performs much better in the more suburban areas of outer London, where a much larger proportion of households own a car. Last year, when Mr Johnson left Parliament, the Conservatives won a special parliamentary election to replace him in Uxbridge, the district he represented on the outskirts of London, after campaigning against ULEZ.
The negative reaction from owners of older vehicles in the region has prompted the government to rethink the cost of environmental policies more broadly. Shortly after the Uxbridge competition, Mr Sunak announced a weakening Britain’s climate change targets.
In her campaign, Ms Hall also targeted Mr Khan’s record on tackling crime in the capital, even though one of her party’s attack adverts, which showed people running to safety , attracted ridicule when it emerged that the footage used had not been filmed in London, but at Penn Station in New York in 2017.
After finding her missing wallet last year, Ms Hall told radio station LBC that she believed it had been taken from her pocket on a London Underground train, using the episode as an example of how crime was out of control under Mr Khan. The wallet was later returned by a retired businessman, who said he found it on a train seat and that it appeared to have been lost rather than stolen and thrown away.
Ms Hall also faced criticism after previously suggesting that the Notting Hill Carnival, a famous annual Caribbean street event in west London, should possibly be moved in the interest of public safety, and liking a social media post describing Mr Khan as the “nipple-high mayor of Londonistan”.
Mr. Khan was the target of a more directly anti-Muslim attack from Lee Anderson, a lawmaker who was suspended from the Conservative parliamentary party after claiming that Islamists controlled London because Mr. Khan had “given our capital city “. to his comrades.
Mr Anderson admitted his remarks 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, after competed with him since 2016 on issues such as immigration and terrorism. In 2019, after the mayor publicly opposed During his state visit to Britain, Mr Trump accused Mr Khan of being “mean” to him, while misspelling his name and mocking his stature.
Shortly afterMr. Trump also called the London mayor a “disaster,” citing several stabbing attacks in the British capital and writing on social media that London needed to replace Mr. Khan as soon as possible.
Given that Mr Trump is not popular in Britain, the former president’s attacks are unlikely to have harmed Mr Khan, who has refuted any of the accusations against him. In 2019, Mr Trump described the London mayor as a “Stone-cold loser.”
