According to the polls - if you trust them anymore - the race for City Hall and the mayoral election in London is a foregone conclusion. Political pundits have had Labour’s candidate Sadiq Khan with a healthy 7-10% lead for many months, climbing up to 20% on second preferential votes. A bet with all of the main political betting sites won’t get you odds of better than 1/12 on for Khan, yet given the total inability of pollsters to correctly predict the last UK general election then the Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith at 8-1 looks like a worthwhile punt, especially if voter turnout is as low as expected.
This election promised much but, largely down to the sheer lack of zest and personality of the two main candidates and the fact that the the election has been completely overshadowed by the EU referendum on the UK’s continued membership of the European Union, those outside of the Westminster bubble would be forgiven for not knowing that London goes to the polls this Thursday. One quirk of this election is that Sadiq Khan held on to his Tooting seat at the general election last May with a majority of only 2,842 votes while Zac Goldsmith romped home with a majority of 23,015. London has traditionally always been seen as Labour’s to lose and it was only through the sheer force of personality of Boris Johnson that the Tories able to win in 2008 and 2012.
This election has been fought along narrow lines by both candidates. The main policy differences between the two candidates are around transport fares, council tax and the housing crisis in London.
Khan has announced that he wants to freeze transport fares, which has been criticised by his rival with assistance from the Transport Secretary Patrick Mcloughlin who claims that Khan’s transport plans would cost £1.9 billion to deliver with no way to pay for it (Khan estimates a fare freeze would only cost £450 million). Goldsmith has instead plumped for a line about investment needed for a transport system struggling to cope with the sheer number of passengers and rising population. This in turn has allowed Khan to talk of a 17% fare rise under a Goldsmith mayoralty.
Goldsmith has promised not to raise council tax. Labour says it ‘might’. Khan has centered his campaign squarely around forcing developers to build more affordable housing (50% affordable target for any new development) and campaigning for the power to limit rent rises. Goldsmith has warned against this approach, fearing it might bring construction to a halt. Goldsmith has promised to increase homebuilding, doubling it to 50,000 a year by 2020 by focusing on releasing brownfield land. Khan has countered by releasing data claiming that 98% of Londoners could not afford a starter home under Tory plans. According to the Housing Charity, Shelter, households must earn £77,000 in order to afford a Conservative ‘starter home’, which can cost up to £450,000.
Goldsmith is in essence defending Boris’ record. Transport in London has improved under the mayor and is no longer the number one issue. Pollution linked to travel is topical however and both Goldsmith and the man he hopes to succeed are ardent opponents of any Heathrow airport expansion.
Sadiq Khan however has gone out of his way to position himself as his own man and put distance between himself and the Labour leader, despite having nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership last summer. He has vowed to be the most business-friendly mayor the capital has seen, prompting a scathing attack from leading businessman and former Labour peer, Alan Sugar.
It’s important not to forget that in addition to the Mayoral race there will be local elections across the country this Thursday, as well as the Welsh Assembly, Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament elections. Labour, however, are in trouble. They are projected to lose seats overall in the local elections. Historically you have to go back to 1982 for the opposition party to lose seats in local elections in a non-general election year. If Labour only polls around 30%, despite all of the Tory mishaps and troubles of late for David Cameron and the party, this will be a very bad signal to the Labour leadership about how they are viewed nationally. The party could be on course for its worst local election result for 35 years and losing up to 175 seats. Labour MPs will be carefully watching results in the Holyrood and Welsh Assembly elections. To put it in context, in Wales, Corbyn was asked not even to visit. If Labour's election performance falls below their poll rating (45%) the party could be on course for its worst ever vote share in a National Assembly election.
In Scotland the unthinkable could happen and Labour could be pushed down into third behind Conservatives. Scotland used to be the Labour heartland. After last year’s general election result and the SNP landslide it may never see power again. Last week’s Scottish leaders’ debate centred around a second possible referendum debate. SNP activists are fearful that numbers can only go south from their current position and therefore Nicola Sturgeon should be busting a gut to push for another referendum just 20 short months after the last vote. The 2014 referendum was positioned as a ‘once in a lifetime vote’; interpret that as once a parliament.
The damage of the anti-Semitism row within the Labour party that has seen both Naz Shah and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone suspended by Labour is as yet unknown. Khan was quick to distance himself from Livingstone, a man that ‘Red Ken’ has previously gone on record about saying there was but a cigarette paper between them on policy. In response Zac Goldsmith has received a lot of backlash for embracing his own branded version of Project Fear, asking whether London can be trusted in the hands of Khan, a man who on numerous occasions has shared a platform with radical preacher Sulaiman Ghani – someone who, in the words of David Cameron, has gone on record as supporting Islamic State. Conservative central office is very disappointed that this line of attack has not gained traction in either the media or polls. To a certain extent the line of attack has only served to discredit Goldsmith and has been perceived as desperate smear tactic, ‘dog whistle’ politics.
The key to the Mayoral race will be turnout which could be as low as 45% given the race has failed to captivate the capital. When turnout is low it is usually the young and poor that don’t vote, two demographics of the electorate most likely to vote for Khan, which is why Labour are taking nothing for granted. Look out for the Merton borough result on the night, which has backed the successful candidate in all three Mayoral elections thus far. If Khan can win Merton back for Labour this will bode well for his vote share city-wide.
Only a fool in modern politics would stake their name to a bold claim regarding the results on Thursday. However, bar a serious upset in the policy landscape in the next few days, most commentators expect London to elect its first Muslim Mayor this week. There probably won’t be too many tears spilt in Conservative Central office. A win for Khan will only cement the feeling at Labour HQ that Jeremy Corbyn is ‘on the right track’. For the boys in blue that’s exactly where they want him, with the considered thinking being that he is unelectable to a national electorate. Tooting Tories are already rolling up their sleeves in expectation of a by-election should Khan become Mayor.
As for the Labour moderates who were sharpening their knives, they will need to remain in the kitchen drawer for now while Corbynistas point to London as the litmus test for their message getting across. As for the local council results, prepare to witness the Labour spin machine move into overdrive; ”it’s all about London”…