Sadiq Khan has today warned that Labour can’t afford to be complacent ahead of the next Mayoral election in May 2020, just hours after the New Statesman revealed that he has passed the fifty per cent threshold to win his triggerprocess and is now confirmed as Labour’s candidate for the next election.
The Mayor passed the threshold for his affirmative ballot process with the support of rank and file constituency Labour parties across the city, trade unions representing thousands of workers and the Jewish Labour Movement. Some affiliated organisations and constituency parties are yet to cast their vote, and the result will not be officially announced until the end of September.
The Mayor passed the threshold for his affirmative ballot process with the support of rank and file constituency Labour parties across the city, trade unions representing thousands of workers and the Jewish Labour Movement. Some affiliated organisations and constituency parties are yet to cast their vote, and the result will not be officially announced until the end of September.
The Mayor warned that Labour faces a tough challenge in the next London election as they are not just running against the Conservative Party’s candidate – expected to be chosen ahead of their conference on 1 October – but also against George Osborne, the former Conservative Chancellor and architect of austerity who is now editor of the London Evening Standard.
The Mayor warned that George Osborne is “using the Evening Standard to try and rewrite history and cover up the massive damage that his cuts are still causing to London – whether on policing, housing or our youth and public services. He issued a rallying call to Londoners saying: ‘We can’t let him get away with it’.
Sadiq Khan used his early victory in the affirmative ballot process to outline his key achievements during his first two years in office, adding: ‘The job of the Mayor of London is to make the small changes that make a real difference to Londoners daily lives – making things just a little bit easier. And that is exactly what I’m doing as Mayor.’
· Introducing the unlimited one-hour Hopper bus fare and freezing all TfL fares for four years.
· Introducing the Toxicity Charge and Ultra Low Emission Zone to clean up London’s polluted air.
· Reducing rough sleeping by seven per cent last year after it increased for eight years in a row and doubled under Boris Johnson, and City Hall starting to build more social homes last year than ever before.
· Reducing the number of days lost to strikes on the London Underground by 65 per cent compared to Boris Johnson’s time as Mayor.
· Creating a new £45 million fund to provide more positive opportunities for disadvantaged young Londoners and to support those involved in criminality down a better path.
George Osborne has notably stepped up his campaign against Sadiq Khan over recent months. He recently used an editorial to attack the Mayor for refusing to call on Labour to adopt the full IHRA definition of anti-Semitism after he had repeatedly done so, including on the BBC Breakfast show the previous day.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said:
“It makes me immensely proud that Labour members have chosen me to be their candidate at the Mayoral election in 2020. Winning that election will not be easy. We’re not only running against the Conservative Party – and we all remember how nasty their campaign was last time – but also against the former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne’s Evening Standard. He’s using the Evening Standard to try and rewrite history and cover up the massive damage that his cuts caused to London – whether on policing, housing, youth or public services. We can’t let him get away with it.
“I could promise Londoners now that I’ll fix all their problems overnight – but it simply wouldn’t be true. There is no silver bullet for many. Some were decades in the making and will take years to fix. Some need extra funding and powers that the Mayor’s office simply doesn’t have. And some will need a new Government to fix. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.”
“We simply must win in 2020. We’ve got a lot done over the last two years: fixing the mess we inherited, laying the foundations for a better city and making the small changes that make a real difference to Londoners’ lives. But there is so much more we need to do over the years ahead and we can only finish the job with a Labour Mayor back in City Hall.”
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