Labor plan for the election of Mayor Gerrymander London will backfire

Providing voting to adolescents may get headlines, but workers also plan to election rigs for the Mayor of London by restoring additional voting. This is a plan based on dangerous assumptions, warming James Ford

Workers are clearly panicked. There is a very real fear that, in 2028, a very unpopular combination of labor government in Whitehall and the mayor who had long been sank into the missed housing target and increased crime would not be the winner of the votes. Even the possibility of new labor candidates for the mayor may not be enough to maintain the city hall in the clutches of workers.

When coming to an shameless election search, the announcement that children aged 16 and 17 years will get votes during the next election may have attracted all the headlines, but that is not the only cunning strategy expressed by workers recently to hold fast to power. Hidden in the depth of the British Devolution Bill is a clause to restore additional voting in the election of mayor in the UK, including those in London. (The 2022 Election Law has, briefly, making all the elections of the Mayor first passing the post).

The calculus of the selection by the workers is clear: this voting change must be enough to pile up the deck against conservatives and reforms. The additional voting system, which is used for elections in the city hall from 2000 to 2021, always benefit workers, because Green and LIB DEM voters tend to vote their second preferences for workers rather than conservatives. Indeed, in every mayor election in London between 2004 and 2021, workers get more votes of the second preference than conservatives, often with significant margins. Conservative strategists have long been afraid of nightmare scenarios in which a labor candidate can become a mayor based on the second preference voice, even if conservative has effectively won popular votes in the first preference.

Dangerous assumptions

However, labor strategies are based on a number of dangerous assumptions.

First, workers assume that around 300,000 newly printed teenage voters in London will support workers very large. This is a big assumption and, because the previous poll ignores this demographic, there is no data to determine how teenagers will vote or even how much it is likely they are to choose at all. It should not be assumed that younger voters can refuse Sirene’s call from a more radical party.

Second, workers should not assume that the broad ‘Rainbow Coalition’ of London about Progressive – LIB DEMS, The Greens, various outskirts and independent socialists – will save a labor candidate by lending all their second preference votes. Progressive has a wider choice than before, including more independent (independent candidates come second in six London constituents last year) and the new Left Left Jeremy Corbyn might reduce candidates for the city hall (maybe Corbyn itself) which will further complicate things for labor. No one can forget that Ken Livingstone became Mayor in 2000 as an independent candidate with 39 percent of the first preference vote, pushing workers to third place with only 13 percent of the votes.

There is no data to determine how adolescents will vote or even how much they are likely to choose at all. It should not be assumed that younger voters can refuse siren calls from a more radical party

Both Lib Dems and Green have become far more significant strengths in the election of London in recent years, securing 5.8 percent of the votes in the 2024 Mayor election, finishing in third and fourth place and collectively calculated nearly 300,000 votes. In the general election a few weeks later, Lib Dems took six London while green seats in second in 18 shocking London seats. The leaders of these two parties will be very aware that to really break through they need to be better in taking votes from workers through the use of smarter tactical voting, including possible to instruct their supporters to lend their two preferences to each other than workers.

The political assumption that has the potential for the three laborers is that the revival of reforms is only a problem for conservatives. However, the 2025 local election clearly shows that the reform rebellion is as well as his adept at winning the disappointed labor voters. Given that the additional voting system makes tactical voting is not only easy but cannot be avoided, then reform and conservative voters will be given incentives to lend each other’s second preference votes as the best way to defeat workers in London. Indeed, if reforms and Toreies can be persuaded to enter the pact to officially encourage their voters to lend each other’s second preferences, workers may find themselves locked from the City Hall.

Politics in London, like throughout Britain, is no longer a binary pursuit. Voters have more choices and have shown themselves too willing to use these choices. By returning to the voting system that serves them well on the political days of two parties, workers may have placed nails in their own coffin.

James Ford is a former advisor to Mayor London Boris Johnson