Labour’s search for a swift recovery in its electoral fortunes will intensify this week as the party in London begins choosing its candidate to succeed Boris Johnson as the capital’s mayor next May. Sadiq Khan, the re-elected MP for Tooting who ran Labour’s general election campaign in the capital, has announced his resignation as Labour’s shadow justice secretary and shadow minster for London, paving the way for his long-expected entry into the selection contest, which begins officially on Wednesday.
Khan is expected to join Tottenham MP David Lammy and transport commentator Christian Wolmar as a declared candidate in the next few days. It is anticipated that Dame Tessa Jowell, the former Olympics minister who stepped down as MP for Dulwich and West Norwood before the election, and Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, will formally announce their challenges shortly having earlier said they would do so once the general election was over. Another London Labour MP, Gareth Thomas, who represents Harrow West, is considering running and will be making his decision in the next few days.
The selection battle will follow Labour’s gaining seven parliamentary seats in London, taking its total to 45 out of 73 and increasing its vote share to 44% compared to 37% in the 2010 election. These successes contrasted sharply with the party’s poor performance in the UK as a whole, where a net loss of 26 seats and a vote share of just 30.4% resulted in a Conservative majority government and the resignation of Ed Miliband as Labour leader.
Khan, a former transport minister, has described himself as a good friend of Miliband and ran his successful campaign to become Labour leader in 2010, but can be expected to combat any negative association with the failures of the national campaign by arguing that Labour’s policy offer and the activist “ground war” he organized led to a significant strengthening of the party’s position in the capital while the Conservatives, though gaining three seats at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, lost four to Labour and secured the same 35% vote share as five years ago. Responding to his decision to step down, Labour’s acting leader Harriet Harman told Khan he had been “outstanding” as shadow London minister and thanked him for his “role in the success of Labour in the London local election results last year as well as in the general election on Thursday.”
Appearing on the London section of the BBC’s Sunday Politics show, Hammersmith’s re-elected Labour MP Andy Slaughter, a shadow justice minister, expressed his hope that his (now former) boss Khan would stand, saying he believes his backstory “represents what’s good about London”. Khan is the son of a bus driver who migrated from Pakistan. Over one third of Londoners were born overseas and Labour commands strong support among the capital’s ethnic minority voters.
Khan is thought likely to be a frontrunner along with Jowell, who was culture secretary and minister for women under Tony Blair, as well as later becoming minister for London under Gordon Brown. Seen as remaining loyal to Blair’s creation of New Labour, Jowell will be considered by her supporters as more likely to appeal to the political centre ground and the sorts of Londoners who rejected Labour in the affluent Battersea constituency, a challenging marginal which the party nonetheless hoped to win only to see the Conservative incumbent prevail with an increased majority. Jowell is also probably still better known than Khan, despite the exposure he received during the campaign.
Labour’s overall results in Conservative seats they targeted were uneven, with wins in four, including impressively wiping out a 5,404 Tory majority in suburban Ilford North, counterbalanced by an unexpected failure to overturn a tiny Tory 2010 majority of 106 in Hendon, a defeat by just 165 votes in Croydon Central and failures in Harrow East and the always difficult Finchley and Golders Green. Local factors appear to have played a part in these disappointments while the general collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote enabled the removal from Bermondsey of the long-entrenched Simon Hughes along with two other Lib Dem targets Labour had always anticipated winning.
Jowell was shadow London minister under Miliband until succeeded by Khan. In a major speech at the London School of Economics last December, she outlined a vision for grounding austerity-era politics in “community values” and stressed the need for improved childcare provision and “decency for all”. She has also engaged in what one London Labour MP who speaks well of her has described as “left positioning” by laying stress on inequality and pledging to “get tough” on foreign property investors who don’t live in London homes they buy.
Lammy will enter the selection contest buoyed by a big increase in his majority in Tottenham and bearing a policy platform that seeks to redress what he sees as the consequences for social solidarity of both economic and social liberalism in the capital. Abbott, who reinforced her strong position in Hackney North, will be the candidate of the party’s left, promising support for strong unions and housing policies that are more radical than those in Labour’s election manifesto.
Wolmar, who has addressed dozens of grassroots meetings in the past year, has the greenest policy agenda, strongly advocating a reduction in car use and an increase in cycling and pedestrianisation. Thomas, who chairs the Co-operative Party, has argued that Outer London areas like his are poorly served by public transport and that Londoners should have more say in decisions made by Transport for London.
The candidate selection process, which has undergone some recent adjustments, will require applicants to receive a minimum of five nominations from London’s 73 constituency parties (CLPs) to go forward to an interview with a shortlisting panel. Each CLP can nominate two people, at least one of whom must be a woman. Affiliated organisations, which include the unions, can also each make a single nomination, and these will be taken into consideration by the panel. All London party members, together with affiliated union members signed up by June 12 and other members of the London public who become registered supporters for a £3 fee by the same date, will vote for those shortlisted in the election. This will be conducted under the single transferable vote system. The result is due to be announced on 31 July.
