Sadiq Khan wins historic third term as London mayor

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Labour has comfortably won the London mayoral contest with Sadiq Khan securing an unprecedented third term in office, adding to the electoral gloom hanging over Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives.

Speaking after his victory was declared, Khan said it had been “a difficult few months”.

“We faced a campaign of nonstop negativity,” Khan said. “We answered fear-mongering with facts, hate with hope, and attempts to divide with efforts to unite.” 

He also called for a general election, echoing other Labour candidates who won across the country.

In Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham easily landed another term as Labour mayor while the party also won other mayoralties, including Liverpool, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, by big margins.

In spite of speculation that the mayoral contest in London could be tight, Khan attracted more than 1mn votes, a 43.8 per cent vote share, easily seeing off his Tory challenger Susan Hall, who won 32.7 per cent.

There had been speculation that Hall could pull off a shock win in the contest after figures showed that voter turnout was higher in the capital’s outer boroughs, where Tory support is strongest.

The mayoral and local council election results announced on Saturday compounded the hammering the Conservatives faced on Friday in contests across England and Wales.

Burnham easily won a third term, as expected, albeit on a slightly reduced vote share of 63 per cent. The Conservatives trailed on 10 per cent, roughly half of what the party secured at the 2021 mayoral election.

Burnham, like other directly elected mayors, promised to adopt “a place first, rather than party first approach”.

In Liverpool city region, Labour’s Steve Rotheram won the mayoralty comfortably for the third time with a 68 per cent vote share. The Conservatives finished second with 10 per cent.

Labour’s Oliver Coppard was re-elected as mayor in South Yorkshire with an increased vote share of 50.9 per cent. Like Rotheram in Liverpool, Coppard had pledged to bring the area’s bus network back under local control. The Tories finished second with 16.5 per cent.

Labour’s Tracy Brabin was comfortably re-elected for a second term in West Yorkshire. The former MP secured just over 50 per cent of the vote. Conservative Arnold Craven took second place with 15 per cent.

Despite the dismal results, Sunak has so far survived a mooted threat to his leadership from anxious Conservative MPs.

Later on Saturday he was hoping for brighter news, with speculation in Tory circles on Friday that Andy Street would hold on as Conservative mayor of the West Midlands.

But that contest was on a knife-edge on Saturday evening with Street’s team requesting a full recount in Coventry, part of the mayoral area, suggesting that provisional results pointed to a Labour victory.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s stance on the Gaza war has cost the party support in the region, officials admit, with Muslim voters switching to pro-Palestine independent Akhmed Yakoob.

Ellie Reeves, Labour’s deputy campaign co-ordinator, told the BBC: “We have to be honest, we have lost some support and we need to rebuild trust with those Muslim communities.”

However, the overall picture for the Conservatives is bleak. The party has suffered about 400 council seat losses and the BBC calculated that its projected national vote share was 25 per cent, a record low.

Labour also won the Blackpool South parliamentary by-election on a swing of 26 per cent from the Conservatives, the third highest such swing since the second world war.

Sunak, writing in the Daily Telegraph, tried to emphasise the positives from the vote. “Thursday’s results showed that voters are frustrated and wondering why they should vote,” he wrote.

“The fact that Labour is not winning in places they admit they need for a majority shows that Keir Starmer’s lack of plan and vision is hurting them. We Conservatives have everything to fight for — and we will, because we are fighting for our values and our country’s future.”

There was relief in Downing Street on Friday that Sunak appeared to have survived the threat of a mutiny by Tory MPs, with rebels admitting they would have to stick with the prime minister through to the general election.

Sunak’s allies feared that if Lord Ben Houchen had failed to hold on to the Tees Valley mayoralty on Friday, it would have sparked panic in the party. In the event Houchen won, and hardcore plotters against Sunak went to the pub.

However the grim electoral news for the Conservatives on Saturday will have unsettled Tory MPs, who return to Westminster on Tuesday after the bank holiday weekend.