Why Sadiq Khan faces a tough fight in London even as Labour surges ahead

No surprise that Sadiq Khan has been re-selected as the Labour candidate for mayor of London. It is reported he received 96 per cent internal party support, despite some misgivings on the left. Khan will be going for a third consecutive term in 2024, and, if successful, he will be the first mayor to have done so since the post was established in 1999; Boris Johnson enjoyed two terms, while Ken Livingstone failed to win a third in 2008.

Superficially, things look good for Khan even at this distance. A recent YouGov poll suggests Labour enjoys a 44 per cent lead over the Conservatives in London – a remarkable 62 per cent to 18 per cent score, and the biggest regional gap in Britain. Khan has won each of his last two elections, and he also led in the first round: he beat Shaun Bailey by 44 per cent to 35.3 per cent in 2021, and Zac Goldsmith by 44 per cent to 35 per cent in 2016. He obviously enjoys high recognition and benefits from London being among the youngest, most diverse and pro-European parts of the UK. Looking at the next general election, it’s possible the Tories will be wiped out in Greater London.

However, there are some important factors that could yet deprive Khan of a hat trick.

First, most awkwardly, is his own relative unpopularity. Londoners may be happy to vote for Keir Starmer to be prime minister, and for Labour to run historically Tory borough councils such as Westminster and Wandsworth (which Labour captured last May), but Mayor Khan is a different proposition.

Last January saw Khan’s net approval rating falling firmly into negative territory for the first time since he became mayor in 2016; 48 per cent of adults in the capital say he is doing badly with more than a quarter of those surveyed saying he was doing very badly. By contrast, only 38 per cent say he is doing well – a fall of 7 percentage points since the last time YouGov conducted a survey on the mayor’s performance in March 2021.

Londoners will be more than familiar with the list of serious grievances in the capital: the cost of living, safety and quality of housing; the state of public transport and cuts to rail services; the finances of Transport for London, road congestion, the extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone and of course violent crime. Inevitably, a long-standing incumbent will be blamed when things go wrong, even though Khan can legitimately plead the effects of Covid and Brexit on the London economy. Still, he is accountable, and he’ll probably have a tougher time at the next election than the previous two.

Khan also faces two additional obstacles that are not of his making. The Westminster government has quietly changed the electoral system for the mayoralty, introducing a first-past-the-post system rather than the current supplementary vote. It gives the Tory candidate a better chance of winning because most of the second preference votes of Green and Lib Dem voters go Labour’s way.

Another change that will depress the Labour vote disproportionately is the introduction of photographic voter ID, to deal with a relatively small problem. It is bound to be controversial in a close contest.

One last disadvantage for Mayor Khan would be if the 2024 general election were to be held on the same day as the London elections – on Thursday 2 May, for instance. Higher turnouts tend to favour Conservative candidates, other things being equal.

Together, it gives the Tories a chance of snatching City Hall from Labour in arguably Britain’s most progressive city at a time when they are suffering landslide defeats elsewhere.