So… Lee Anderson doesn’t like Sadiq Khan. In other news this week, the Pope believes in transubstantiation and the Beatles have split up. But if you were shocked by what Nigel Farage’s favourite former member of the National Union of Mineworkers had to say about the London mayor on GB News, just wait till you hear what some in his own party think. It is obviously not that Khan is policing the capital in consultation with Hizb ut-Tahrir, or whatever else Tory critics opposed to the most powerful Muslim politician in Britain want to imply. In what promises to be a historic year of electoral dominance for the Labour Party, the criticism is at once more anodyne and more damning.
Even if there is no general election in May — as now appears inevitable, despite the millenarian certainty with which Labour strategists have predicted otherwise — millions of voters across England will still go to the polls to elect regional mayors and councillors. There is no question that the first Thursday in May will be good for the opposition and apocalyptic for the government.
Earlier this week, Ellie Reeves, Sir Keir Starmer’s deputy elections chief, briefed her shadow cabinet colleagues on the campaign to come. It was a measure of how inured Labour politicians now are to their own success that only two people were moved to ask logistical questions much too dry to recount here — and one of them was Ellie’s ever-supportive sister, Rachel.
And who’d quibble? Labour expect the Labour mayors of Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire to be returned without hassle. Straightforward wins are expected in the new mayoralties of the North East and East Midlands. They are optimistic, but not complacent, about the West Midlands, where the Tory incumbent, Andy Street, is popular and Birmingham’s Labour council is bankrupt. Only the Tees Valley, won by the Boris Johnson favourite Ben Houchen in a 2021 landslide that might even have embarrassed Pol Pot, is considered a bridge too far.
From Labour’s Christmas list of electoral success, the only omission is London. Here most people would assume a victory for Khan so comfortable as to render the very ritual of prediction redundant. Yet put that to senior party officials, as I did this week, and the answer is more complex and less complimentary than one would think of a mayor en route to an unprecedented third term.
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They say two things. First, Sadiq will probably be fine. That much is to be expected from polls that consistently show his lead north of 20 points. But second… Sadiq is playing this all wrong. His advisers haven’t got the memo. Rather than preaching the new gospel of Starmerism to Tory voters in outer London, as is the strategy elsewhere in the country, the mayor is playing to his base.
They liken his approach to Ken Livingstone’s losing campaign in 2008, which sought to consolidate his support in the centre of the capital and failed. Like Khan, Livingstone had just extended charges for motorists to boroughs previously untouched by the grasping hand of City Hall. And like Livingstone, the mayor’s internal critics argue, Khan is taking his natural supporters for granted and neglecting those who might otherwise be converted. “His only priority,” says one shadow cabinet minister, “is upping his numbers in inner London.” To that charge, a source close to Khan insists: “Sadiq is a mayor for all Londoners and is fighting hard to win votes in every part of our city on May 2.”
Khan’s career has long been soundtracked by the background hum of bitching colleagues privately dismissive — and not a little envious — of his profile and success.
Even as he contends with threats to his life from the far right, thankless toilers in Westminster write him off as an opportunist, culture warrior and publicity junkie. In his days as a Labour MP, the whips knew him as Sneak. There have been disagreements with the leader too. Starmer blamed the mayor’s commitment to the ultra low emissions zone (Ulez) for a Tory victory in Uxbridge and South Ruislip; in October, Khan defied a personal plea from the Labour leader and called for a ceasefire in Gaza. But on questions of a rift or divide on campaigning now, a Labour Party spokesman is emphatic: “This is not a serious view from a serious person. We’re all working together to campaign and win for all of London.”
On the substance, Labour HQ and the mayor’s office — who have an integrated campaign — are in agreement. Four more years are not a foregone conclusion. Khan does not believe polls like the YouGov survey in the Evening Standard this week which put his lead at 25 points. So much so that this Saturday he will use a speech to Labour activists to talk down his own chances. He will argue that this contest is much closer than thought — perhaps the toughest any incumbent has faced since the dawn of the mayoralty in 2000.
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Khan remembers what the polls said about a walkover in 2021, and what the voters did: his first-round margin, over the accident-prone Conservative candidate, Shaun Bailey, was smaller than 5 per cent. This time, after one of the lesser spotted but most significant constitutional reforms of this century, there will be no second round and no second preferences. But not even the most optimistic Tory is willing to contend that this all adds up to anything like a realistic chance of victory for Susan Hall, the largely unknown Harrow councillor and London Assembly member standing against Khan.
Seasoned pavement politician though Hall may be, her name has only tended to feature in the national conversation when Conservatives wonder aloud about replacing her on the ballot. She is nonetheless bullish that Londoners inside and outside the blue doughnut of outer boroughs that delivered two terms to Boris Johnson are exasperated with Khan’s record on Ulez, low-traffic neighbourhoods and crime. Voters in Islington, of all places, can expect to see her on their doorsteps this week. Perhaps she might canvass Jeremy Corbyn, whose decision not to run against Labour from the left — as Livingstone did in 2000 — will help Khan. Running for mayor would cost money the former Labour leader does not have. Even if he did, he would rather spend it fighting to retain his parliamentary seat. And his friends tell me he is now busy writing his memoirs anyway.
So the odds still favour Khan, even if some in his party do not. If he is still mayor when Starmer becomes prime minister, he will have won his own way. I suspect the news will be met with a little irritation in some quarters. There will be more to come in government.
