âItâs not going to be a landslideâ: how will Sadiq Khan fare in the battle to be London mayor? | Sadiq Khan![]() At a youth club in Brixton, Sadiq Khan shoots some pool with a group of teenagers. He listens to some tracks recorded in the clubâs small studio. He chats with them about a recent hiking trip. He recounts a visit to the countryside with his own youth club that included his first encounter with a cow. âWeâd go out and count how many animals we saw,â he says. âCows, sheep, horses. In inner London, you didnât see them.â Itâs a scene in which Khan is at his most convincing, at home in a youthful, multicultural London. Today, heâs unveiling £30m for youth services. Khanâs relaxed demeanour may seem unsurprising given opinion polls that give him leads over Tory rival Susan Hall north of 20 percentage points. Yet if you listen to Khan, or the experts taking a close interest, there are some strange political currents tugging below the surface in the capital. Given Labourâs strong lead both in London and nationally, why has Khan been claiming to be in the hardest fight of his political life? Why have internal critics questioned his tactics? Why do his Tory opponents accuse him of underestimating a backlash against him? And despite such a commanding lead, why do some analysts believe this is the last London contest he can win? Letâs start with a spoiler. Excluding a calamity, Khan will almost certainly win in May. That, at least, is the conclusion of all the independent analysts and pollsters that spoke to the Observer. Yet beneath that headline, they point to vulnerabilities that could at least severely dampen a Khan victory party in May. âPut me on the spot for a personal opinion and Iâd say heâll probably win, but I think itâs not going to be the landslide that the polls suggest it might be,â says Dr Elizabeth Simon from the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary, University of London. Even before considering the specific pressures he faces this May, Khan leads a city that has faced a tumult of change since he took office in May 2016. His honeymoon lasted just a month before the Brexit vote upended the capital city â it led to an exodus of EU citizens, fewer European arrivals and so far the London economy is estimated to be £30bn worse off by some calculations. With those effects still playing out, Covid hit, providing another blow as Londoners worked increasingly from home and others took the chance to move out. The collapse in travel also blew a hole in the cityâs finances and left Khan battling a hostile government for funds. In more recent times, events in Gaza have heaped further pressures on community relations in London, including protests, which Khan has had to navigate. Meanwhile, the generational challenges of affordability continue, most strikingly apparent in the falls in the number of children in the city. Beyond that, Khan and London have been the targets of culture-war clashes. Thatâs all on top of the notoriously difficult challenge of securing a third term. And all while staying broadly in line with Keir Starmerâs new-look Labour regime that has been â sometimes publicly, sometimes privately â uneasy about Khanâs tactics. He is more passionately anti-Brexit, pro-congestion charge and unabashedly metropolitan than the national Labour leadership, which is desperately trying to woo disgruntled Tory voters. Khan is the first to argue this election is his toughest â unfavourable changes to how the election will work are top of his anxieties. âThereâs a reason why the Conservative party is the most successful party in the western world,â he says. âItâs not just that they know how to win elections, they are even willing to change the rules to make it easier for them to win. If we were speaking before the last election, the Labour party was also, inverted commas, miles ahead. On election day though, in the first round, we only won by 5%. In the second round, I then won by a lot because many Lib Dems and Greens gave me their second preference, and Iâm very grateful. Those Lib Dems and Greens havenât got that insurance policy [this time].â Thatâs because the voting system has been changed to first past the post. Those second preferences that previously helped Khan are no more. Meanwhile, he says new voter ID rules could affect 900,000 Londoners â disproportionately his supporters. So that 5% margin from 2021 could, he claims, be eroded. Simon also points out how hard the contest has been to predict in the past. âThat said, our recent poll from February showed that Khan had a 25 percentage point lead overall, and other kinds of similar polls have come up with similar levels of lead in the last few weeks,â she says. âSo things like voter ID effects and the size of this underestimation of other candidates would have to be quite big to completely erode Khanâs lead, but itâs not impossible.â With Labour polling so high nationally and the Tories continuing to nosedive, why isnât Khan polling even higher than he did before the 2021 contest? One answer is incumbency. Winning a third term is hard and his team have sought advice from those involved in Michael Bloombergâs successful third term bid in New York in 2009, Tony Blairâs historic 2005 victory â and even those involved in Ken Livingstoneâs failed attempt in 2008. Stopping the contest turning into a referendum on Khan was the main lesson â achievements on free schools meals and fare freezes are being heralded. Thereâs no doubt that expanding the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) has solidified the view of a decent chunk of Londoners. The Tories managed to win the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection last year by opposing the expansion. Itâs no surprise Hall is pledging to ditch it. Perhaps more significantly, the policy earned a rebuke from Starmer, who warned there was âsomething very wrongâ when a party policy ended up on a Tory leaflet. Relations between the London mayorâs team and the Labour leaderâs office are, by all accounts, much improved now. But there continues to be a residual criticism by some in Labour of the type of campaign Khan wages â some regard it as too focused on a core vote, bolstered by those Green and Lib Dem tactical voters, at odds with the Starmer drive to reassure swing voters. It is an accusation put even more bluntly by Hallâs allies. Hall herself was said to be too busy to speak to the Observer, but those close to her accused Khan of complacency. âHe seems to be ignoring quite a sizeable chunk in London,â said one Tory. âHeâs focusing on core Labour turnout areas and passion projects. If you go on the doorstep, the minute you say âSadiq Khanâ the conversation changes really fast. Thereâs a big anti-Sadiq vote out there.â The latest polling does show Khan polling slightly more strongly in inner London than the outer âdonutâ that delivered Boris Johnson his victories, but it is not particularly pronounced. Other analysts say that an abrupt change in approach from Khan would make little sense. âHeâs probably not the person to be a reassurance figure in the outer boroughs,â says one pollster who has carried out private work in London. âThat time has been and gone. Itâs not how he won last time, either.â Khan simply dismisses such analyÂses as plain wrong. âIâm everywhere,â he says. âI was in Kingston over the weekend, last time I checked Kingston wasnât in central or inner London. Not only am I here for all Londoners, but Iâm campaigning everywhere as well. There are no âno-goâ areas for me.â Merton, Harrow, Brent and Barnet have all been visited in recent days. Then thereâs crime, which tops the list of concerns for Londoners. âAcross London crime is what comes up all the time,â says a Tory campaigner. âThe real worry, if you take Bexley as an example, is that burglaries have increased. In inner London, businesses talk about shoplifting. Knife crime comes up pretty much everywhere.â Hallâs flagship offering is an extra £200m for policing. Khan is also pledging more police on the streets. after newsletter promotion There are also, however, some almost dystopian trends that have continued under Khan that feel too big for any mayor to tackle with their limited powers. âThe trend line that has been there for a while is still there,â says writer John Lanchester, whose eloquent works have portrayed both Londonâs diversity and its inequalities. âItâs that sense of London being slightly hollowed out by money and that some of the jobs that cities need in order to stay lively, vibrant and diverse donât pay enough to live there. âFalling school registrations isnât a warning sign, itâs an actual emergency happening right now. Itâs a disaster. It should be a genuine source of panic in the political class and for the people who run London. That means thereâs a whole demographic which youâre driving away. If your city doesnât appeal to aspirational young people, itâs got a real problem. A huge part of it is housing.â Both Khan and Hall have included big housing pledges in their campaigns. Khan promises the âgreatest council homebuilding drive in a generationâ and the completion of 40,000 new homes by 2030. Hall pledges to make it âeasier to build the family homes that Londoners wantâ. But given the alarming trends, smaller parties are trying to tap into general disenchantment. âPeople can see primary schools closing and families moving out of the city, people know that theyâre finding it really hard to just participate in day-to-day life,â says Zoë Garbett, the Green partyâs candidate. âI hear that people arenât sure what Labourâs offering.â Any evidence that smaller, progressive parties are picking up protest votes is a problem for the Khan campaign. Another uncertainty is the impact of Labourâs stance on Gaza. It has angered many in the Muslim community, as well as those on the left whose support Khan has previously enjoyed. Khan broke ranks to call for an immediate ceasefire months ago. All these political challenges are hard for an incumbent of eight years, however propitious the circumstances. Pollster opinions of Khanâs personal approval ratings vary from not great to âvery badâ. Some have even concluded this contest should be the last outing for Khan in London. âI cannot think that heâll stand for a fourth term, because he definitely wonât win,â said one pollster, speaking anonymously. âI imagine that they will be lining up a new candidate. The performance for mayor of London will be much more disappointing than it is elsewhere in the country in terms of swing.â Peter Kellner, the veteran pollster, said that while a Khan defeat would be âpretty catastrophic for Labourâ, he struggled to see that outcome. He added that Starmerâs team would be trying to learn any lessons should Khan underperform. âLabour becomes vulnerable when people feel their lives are threatened by what Labour is proposing â and that was certainly the case in Uxbridge,â he says. âLabour doesnât need to actually have such a plan. But if people think that the Labour government might, itâs the sort of thing that an unscrupulous Tory campaign might propose.â There are signs that Khan is coming up with formulations that fit in with Starmerâs drive to reassure voters, without departing from the proud metropolitan that is his authentic self. He even credits a previous brand of Tories and hits the culture warriors where it hurts â patriotism. âI donât think David Cameron and George Osborne were anti-London,â he says. âThe prime ministers that followed have been very anti-London. Thereâs a tactic and a strategy to this. The easiest way in their view to win votes in the north-west, north-east, east and west Midlands and so forth, is to bash London. It used to be the EU, and now itâs London. Theyâve realised that the lessons from overseas are that cultural wars do work in relation to winning elections. âPark for a second the economic benefits for our capital city that come from diversity. Do we really think itâs patriotic, slagging off the capital city? I think the Conservative party will look back in years to come with regret, embarrassment and shame that they didnât stand up more to those of the Tory party whoâve thrown fuel on the fire of this culture war. And itâs very dangerous by the way, it polarises communities.â Even as the mayoral campaign kicks into full swing, chroniclers of the city are fearful of the social and economic forces that will loom over any holder of the office. âA very dark future would be if the whole of London became a version of Mayfair â a kind of stage set thatâs empty most of the time,â says Lanchester. âYou have rich people who own the properties but mainly donât live there, and then poor people who come in from miles away to service them â and no one in the middle. âItâs a sort of museumification. Itâs hard to imagine that happening in a vibrant, diverse, energetic, astonishing global capital. But if youâre driving away people in their 20s and 30s, how do you fix that short of a huge campaign to create places for them to live? Maybe some of these issues around polarisation and having a target painted on Londonâs back are an early sign [of the political ramifications].â Source link Posted: 2024-03-24 06:24:37 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|