Sir Sadiq Khan has said polls suggesting Labour is set to be decimated in London at the upcoming local elections “scare me” as he made a heartfelt plea to voters not to take their frustrations with central government out on councils.
The Mayor of London told the Standard he is “so angry” about “the omnishambles” of Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador and the “distraction” it has caused ahead of May 7, when Londoners will head to the polls to elect their councils.
Labour currently controls 21 of the 32 London boroughs. But the party could lose its top vote share position in up to 14 of the capital’s councils next month, a shock poll revealed this week.
The YouGov survey laid out the scale of the hammering threatening Sir Keir Starmer’s party as its vote share in the city is predicted to nosedive from 42% at the 2022 borough elections to just 26%.
Sir Sadiq told the Standard: “What I would say respectfully to Standard readers is don’t use May 7 as a referenda on how perfect or imperfect the Labour government is, and I appreciate in two years they have not done all you wanted them to do.
“But remember what the Labour government has done. If you are a renter you have rights you never had before, if you’re a worker you have rights you never had before, if you are a parent you have free childcare you have never had before.”
A Labour council “working with a Labour mayor and a Labour government” can do more than a party that uses the town hall “to protest”, Sir Sadiq argued after some Green and independent candidates based their campaigns around the war in Gaza and the government’s response to it.
“The Labour councils, we have got 21 of them, they are doing a good job,” Sir Sadiq added. “But the polls scare me, the polls worry me because they don’t reflect my experience of what the councils are doing.
“They do reflect what I hear on the doorsteps when I knock on doors. People aren’t unhappy with me, people have concerns about the government and they want to take it out on councils.”
“I can hand on heart say that in the past not all Labour councils are good,”
The Mayor highlighted that Labour local authorities had helped him build more council homes, reopen youth clubs and clean up the city’s air over the last decade, but he acknowledged the anger voters had after several scandals involving central government and the Prime Minister.
“I’m so angry in relation to this whole omnishambles in relation to Peter Mandelson’s appointment, knowing what we knew,” Sir Sadiq said.
“But also what a distraction it is to those hard working activists members knocking on doors. How offensive is it to the victims of Epstein and the families.
“And so I hope over the next few days, with this now out of the way and Prime Minister Keir Starmer apologising unequivocally but also clear indication from Olly Robbins it is now unarguable that Keir Starmer didn’t know that Peter Mandelson had failed [security] vetting, so we can now get on and have a debate and argument about the issues that matter to voters.”
Sir Keir is facing mounting criticism from Labour ministers as more senior government figures are set to be grilled over Mandelson's vetting process.
It comes after sacked Sir Olly Robbins appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday to give evidence about the role Downing Street played in the appointment of the Labour peer.
Labour backbenchers have openly voiced doubts about Sir Keir's future since it emerged last week that the Foreign Office decided to appoint Mandelson despite the fact he failed the vetting process.
