I would like to congratulate Sadiq Khan for winning a momentous third term as London’s Mayor.
This should have been his greatest test — no candidate expects an increased majority a third time around, not when they’re an incumbent, and the first-past-the-post change to the voting system (introduced presumably to give the Conservatives a better chance of winning) should have made the race tighter. But in the end, not only was Khan the much better politician, but Susan Hall was the wrong choice.
I met the Conservative candidate quite a few times and quite liked her. She was clearly out of her depth, and had a rather narrow policy manifesto, but she believed in what she was doing. Her biggest problem could have been her strength, as Conservative central office kept trying to minimise her personality. I had lunch with her a few months ago in Westminster and she looked genuinely distraught that the party was not allowing her to “be myself”.
My advice was to ignore them and to shout as loud as she could, because so few people in London had heard of her (at our early morning conference two days before the election, even one of our junior staff members got her name wrong). Hall also didn’t appear to have had any media training, and while the unvarnished candidate was often outspoken and refreshingly blunt (and occasionally unintentionally funny), what she said was unsophisticated and sometimes worrying.
Sadiq Khan has got a hell of a lot to do in this third term
But in the end it wasn’t Hall who was the problem (and some ill-advised tweets early in her campaign had cast her in a poor light for many), it was her policies: she didn’t really have any. I sat down with her for a 90-minute talk at last year’s Conservative conference in Manchester and she said she was going to campaign on crime and Ulez. Oh, and not being Khan. And er, that was it. Myself and the parliamentary team chatted to her for an hour and a half without managing to glean anything personal or additionally relevant at all. Small-talk enquiries about which football team she supports, favourite restaurants and cultural netherworlds were met with shrugs or, oddly, “Why do you want to know that?” Like I say, we all quite liked her as a person, but worried about her ability to convincingly connect with people. And so it has proved. She is living proof that the Conservatives have given up on London.
Because we are London’s biggest media brand, we went out of our way to give her a platform (as we would have done for Labour if they had been in opposition), but she didn’t appear to use us as well as she could have done. Not by a long chalk.
She also didn’t feel the need to confront those huge swathes of people in parts of London who had no intention of voting for her. In mayoral elections, you have to be postcode agnostic. When he was campaigning, Boris Johnson went out of his way to meet those people who actively and aggressively didn’t like him. Because he was a good politician, and that’s what good politicians do. The Conservatives only have themselves to blame. By ignoring the minister for London Paul Scully (a Tory who would have given Khan a proper battle) and by choosing Hall they were doomed. More fool them.
More importantly, Khan is a much better politician, and, as has been proved by his increased percentage in last week’s win, Londoners like him. Which is why we endorsed him.
We didn’t endorse him because he wasn’t Susan Hall, but because he’s Sadiq Khan. For sure, he’s got a hell of a lot to do in this third term — crime in London has reached an unsustainable and frightening level — but last week he was simply the best person for the job. Which is why we backed him. Now it’s up to him to repay that trust.
