Sadiq Khan has a fight on his hands. A new poll from J.L. Partners for the Sun places the Tory candidate for London mayor, Susan Hall, just 3 points behind Khan with the election next May looking to be a tight context.
Labour suffered a high-profile defeat in the recent Uxbridge by-election as voters made their dissatisfaction with Khan’s expanded Ulez known.
The latest poll results are startling:
Sadiq Khan (Lab): 35%
Susan Hall (Con): 32%
Howard Cox (Reform): 8%
Zoe Garbett (Green): 5%
Rob Blackie (LD): 5%
Other: 2%
Hall has been a staunch critic of Ulez, going so far as to call it “nothing but a cash grab”. No doubt there will be Tory pressure on Cox to stand down rather than splitting the anti-Ulez vote.
The Labour party is not worried at all, clearly… At half-six this morning came a panicked plea to London members’ inboxes: “We’re neck-and-neck in London…This is serious, we can’t let the Tories do to London what they’ve done to the UK.”
Then came the jab at Hall: “Especially when you consider the extreme out-of-touch Tory candidate for Mayor. We’re talking about someone who celebrated Liz Truss’s mini budget, which sent your mortgages and rents soaring, and who liked tweets praising Enoch Powell.”
It must be said Hall was rather dreadful on an LBC phone-in this morning, saying she “did not recall” liking pro-Powell tweets. She also suggested kids should play football with the police to ease community tensions – don’t the Met have enough to do?
As Uxbridge showed, there is enough frustration with Khan for swathes of voters to opt for an alternative. Although Hall was a controversial choice, she now appears to have a shot at victory.
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