Latest
BACK AGAIN
Sadiq Khan voted in as London Mayor for third term despite ULEZ backlash – as Andy Street loses out in West Midlands
The victory comes after an overnight scare for the Labour incumbent
SADIQ Khan has been voted in as London Mayor for a third term - despite a backlash over his hated ULEZ levy and 20mph zones.
The Labour incumbent beat Tory rival Susan Hall by a whopping 275,828 votes - bagging more than one million votes.
4
4
4
4
Khan secured just over 1,088,000 votes to be re-elected London Mayor for a third consecutive term.
He beat Hall in Greenwich and Lewisham, Southwark and Lambeth, City and East, West Central, North East and South West.
Labour's Andy Burnham has also been re-elected as Greater Manchester Mayor after winning 426,749 votes.
Rishi Sunak suffered another major blow after Tory big beast Andy Street was turfed out of office in a knife-edge vote.
Read More UK News
In a shock upset for No10, Mr Street lost the race to be re-elected West Midlands mayor in a narrow defeat to his biggest rivals.
Labour’s Richard Parker beat Mr Street by 1,508 votes to become Mayor of the West Midlands.
In total Parker managed to secure 225,590 votes while Mr Street was narrowly ousted after accumulating 224,082 marks on the ballots.
Ellie Reeves, Labour’s deputy national campaign coordinator, has tweeted to congratulate Richard Parker on his victory in the West Midlands mayoral race.
Most read in The Sun
She called the result, which is yet to be confirmed, an “incredible and significant victory”.
Mr Street was originally estimated to have lost by between 2,000 to 3,000 votes.
But after a series of dramatic recounts, hundreds of extra votes were found throwing the result into doubt for several hours.
Amid chaotic scenes, sources said counters who had clocked off for the night had to be summoned back from the pub to help as the vote went long.
It ended a grim weekend for the Tories - who lost over 470 council seats and were thumped by Labour’s Sadiq Khan in London.
Hall came away with just under 813,000 votes despite predictions of a knife-edge race.
She won the south-east London borough of Bexley and Bromley, tallying 111,216 votes.
The former MP himself had warned supporters on Thursday turnout for the elections was low and therefore the "risk" of the Tories winning had "skyrocketed".
But his eight-years in office made it more challenging to defend his record from opponents and voters.
After the Tories suffered heavy defeats, Rishi is expected to come out swinging with a policy blitz which could see him hint at the tax cuts he is planning for later in the year.
But No10 is on high alert in case the knives come out for Rishi again following the torrent defeats.
In the weeks ahead, the PM is expected to hammer home his decision to hike defence spending to 2.5 per cent by 2030 - which Labour has refused to match.
Khan's win comes despite widespread anger over the ULEZ clean-air levy and surging knife crime in the capital.
On his watch, the Metropolitan Police was placed under special measures after a series of failures.
Sadiq Khan is a failure who can't accept Lawless London - he thinks machete gangs are only on TV, blasts James Cleverly
Meanwhile, official figures revealed knife crime in London hit a record high of 14,577 offences in the year to December.
This marked an increase of 20 per cent in 12 months.
His decision to extend his clean air zone, ULEZ, to outer London was also shrouded in controversy and sparked fury among motorists.
The policy proved to be one of the main dividing lines with his Tory rival, who vowed to scrap it.
Among 10 key pledges, Mr Khan offered a one-year Transport for London (TfL) fare freeze and four years of free school meals for primary pupils.
Thirteen candidates were standing for the top job and voters also elected a local London Assembly member and a capital-wide one.
Mayoral votes have little bearing on general election intention as they tend to be much more personality-based.
The London election came alongside votes in 107 local authorities across England and for mayoral positions in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, and Tees Valley.
Turnout for the West Midlands mayoral election was 29.8 per cent, it was revealed earlier today, with the vote initially going Mr Street's way.
Solihull was the first of seven council areas to declare its results, with Street polling well ahead of Labour's Richard Parker.
Fellow Conservative Ben Houchen was re-elected as mayor of the Tees Valley yesterday, providing some relief to Rishi Sunak after the party suffered heavy losses.
Labour avoided potential embarrassment in the North East mayoral contest.
Its candidate, Kim McGuinness, overcame independent Jamie Driscoll, who had quit Labour after being barred from running as the party’s candidate.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Labour's Steve Rotherham has been comfortably re-elected as mayor of Liverpool.
And Keir Starmer's party also won North, South and West Yorkshire mayoral races, it was announced this afternoon.
The Tory vote is collapsing across the country
By JACK ELSOM, Chief Political Correspondent
HOWEVER you spin it, the local elections have been inescapably bad for Rishi Sunak.
Across the country the Tory vote is collapsing - from the Red Wall penetrated by Boris Johnson in 2019, to the party’s traditional southern fortresses.
Sir Keir Starmer - the night’s main winner - could not have been quicker in dashing to Blackpool Friday morning for a triumphant by-election victory lap.
It is Brexit-voting towns like this seaside resort he needs to regain if he wants to cruise into No10 some time later this year.
And Labour capturing once-true blue military areas like Rushmoor ought to send shivers up the spine of Conservative high command.
Braved-faced Tory apparatchiks point to the usual caveats: that governing parties always get a kicking outside general elections.
That may be true, but it will be cold comfort for those in Downing Street who know they are running out of road - and time - to defy the polls and win an historic fifth term.
There are still some glimmers of good news for the ever-optimistic Mr Sunak to look to.
By clinging on to the Tees Valley mayoralty, he appears to have headed off a brewing mutiny from those within his party ready to hand him a whisky and a revolver.
It gives him a narrative to sell both to voters - and Conservative plotters - that he’s still in the fight.
And for all their noising off, Reform flopped in the Blackpool vote that should have been their ideal contest.
The task for Mr Sunak now is to convince disillusioned Tories flirting with Nigel Farage’s insurgents that it’s a straight-up him vs Sir Keir at the General Election.
That job will be made easier if can prove his flagship Rwanda plan works and deliver another round of tax cuts.
But the clock is ticking.
Topics