Before the counting had even started, senior Tory sources were briefing that their candidate for London mayor, Susan Hall, had pulled off a spectacular, and unlikely, victory.
Despite the Labour incumbent, Sadiq Khan, having a consistent polling lead throughout the contest, Tory insiders briefed journalists that the mood was “chipper” at the Conservative headquarters on Friday night after polls closed, and that they were “utterly convinced” Hall had won.
Such was their conviction that even some London Labour figures, who probably should have known better given no votes had yet been counted, began privately questioning whether the result could be tighter than they had expected.
Khan himself had expressed concerns earlier in the week about the assumptions being made about a Labour victory, wary of complacency dampening his vote.
“People said Scotland was a Labour country, we’ve all seen how that ended,” the nervous London mayor told the Guardian on Tuesday. “I remember being told by Ken Livingstone’s team in 2008 that there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of Boris Johnson winning. We know how that movie ended.”
But as the votes mounted up for Khan, and it became apparent to even the more creative elements of the London Tory party that turn-out did not automatically translate into more votes for Hall, party insiders had to admit they had been wrong.
While senior party figures pointed the finger of blame at “overexcited” activists, despite the rumours appearing to originate from CCHQ, Labour sources noted the 24 hours between votes being cast and counted had left a “moral vacuum” to suck in social media speculation.
Khan’s allies were reassured after hearing voter turnout was 40.5%, only down 1.5% from 2021 despite the introduction of voter ID. It had been one electoral change that Khan had feared could greatly hamper his vote at this election.
The results when they came spoke for themselves, with Khan piling up votes right across the capital, including in “super constituencies” in the west and south-west of the capital that had previously been held by the Tories. At about 2pm, Labour called victory.
And contrary to suggestions his vote would suffer as a result of extending the Ulez road user scheme, it appears to have done him some favours. He took some of the Green party’s vote share in Merton and Lewisham, after weeks spent arguing that the London mayoralty was a two-horse race.
“It’s clear green voters heeded Sadiq Khan’s message that if they didn’t vote for him, in this first past the post voting system there’s a risk they’d end up with a Conservative mayor, Susan Hall, who was less enthusiastic about green policies,” said Prof Tony Travers of the London School of Economics, while noting the Liberal Democrats did much less tactical voting.
The mayor’s allies will also have taken some comfort from the fact he seems to have retained Muslim voters and also, despite his stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict going further than the national Labour party, managed to keep the support of many Jewish voters in Barnet and Camden.
One Labour loyalist likened Khan to being the “sweetener for a Labour government”, noting his policies were able to attract leftwingers crying out for radical change, while also impressing those closer to the centre.
Yet his victory, while his biggest yet over the Tories in London, was still substantially below Labour’s national polling lead. The last-minute speculation over the result may have given some Tories a temporary reprieve, but their defeat in London simply foreshadows an even bigger one at the general election.
