Labor's Sadiq Khan has been re-elected for the third consecutive time as mayor of London after the partial municipal elections held on Thursday in England, according to the count of all the areas that make up the British capital released this Saturday. Khan, the first Muslim to become mayor of the British capital, has obtained 1,088,000 votes, compared to the 813,000 ballots for the conservative candidate Susana Hall, according to figures released by the media before the official Labor victory ceremony.
Polls on voting intentions assured the victory of the progressive candidate in the middle of the electoral debacle of the Conservative Party, which leaves its leader and prime minister, Rishi Sunak, in a precarious position. The Labor politician had first become mayor of the capital in 2016, after the mandate of the conservative Boris Johnson, who was prime minister after being mayor.
The Conservatives have suffered a severe blow in the partial municipal elections in England, which have served to ascertain the opinion of the electorate in view of the general elections scheduled for the second half of the year in the United Kingdom. When the results of 103 of the 107 councils in contention have been announced, Keir Starmer's Labor takes control of 48, eight more than in the 2021 elections, while the "tories" lose ten and remain with six town councils, while the Liberal Democratic Party wins two and controls twelve. The rest is distributed among smaller parties.
The mayor has powers over transport, police and housing, and a large part of the city's budget depends on the contribution made by the central government. Khan, who was formerly MP for the Tooting constituency in south London, is responsible for a metropolis of more than eight million inhabitants, in which 44% of the population is part of an ethnic minority.
During the campaign, the politician promised that in his third term in local government he will recruit 1,300 additional police officers to reinforce security in the neighborhoods, following a sharp increase in knife crime on the streets.
In addition, it will maintain the decision made last year to expand the ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ), which requires the payment of a fee for the most polluting vehicles, a measure that received criticism and that Susan Hall had promised to eliminate.
Likewise, Khan wants to keep transport fares under control, something that will be an absolute priority, he said, due to the rising cost of living for Londoners.
