The London Mayoral election (oh and the Assembly, too)

Does anyone on the other side of the Pond care about the Greater London Authority (GLA) elections that we have just had? Actually, not that many people care on this side of the Pond either and even in London the turn-out, much trumpeted by the media as being spectacularly high, was merely 45.30%, exactly the same as it was in 2008 when Boris Johnson was first elected to be Mayor. As I explained some years ago, the Mayor of London is not the same as the Lord Mayor, a position of many centuries’ standing in the City. So, more than half of London’s electorate did not bother to vote, possibly because the Mayor does not have a great deal of power and the Assembly has none or possibly because all the candidates were paralyzingly dull.

Nevertheless, Sadiq Khan’s election is a significant event in British political history: we have had Muslims in Parliament and even one or two in the Cabinet (the Conservative one, naturally); there are many Muslims in local councils and that tale has not been particularly happy. But this is the first time a supposedly practising Muslim has been elected to a reasonably high position.

The excitement about him getting the highest number of direct votes of any British politician in British history is humbug. There are no other places as large as London where direct votes are cast in our system. Altogether Sadiq Khan got 1,310,143 votes; in 2008, with the same turn-out, Boris Johnson got 1,168,738 votes, undoubtedly the highest number at the time of what any British politician had got in a direct vote. I do not recall anybody mentioning this.

I wrote a blog on the subject and some of CBz readers might be interested in reading it.

15 thoughts on “The London Mayoral election (oh and the Assembly, too)”

  1. Helen,

    Will the Defender of the Faith have to receive the new Mayor in his official capacity?

  2. Boycott, Divest, Sanction? Target Corporation is rumored to be suffering over it’s insistence that little girls share the bathroom with men.

    A fitting scenario would have Lee Rigby’s fellow soldiers stepping out of Mansion House with the jinn’s head swinging jauntily at the hip. I suppose they’ll soon be arguments in favor of the crow’s cage, or perhaps a sort of multi-culti juego de pelota…

    Either way, it’s yet more bad news for the ancestral home.

  3. I thought I was following Boris Johnson on twitter but just noticed the other day that I was actually following @MayorofLondon, the generic mayoral account. Mr. Khan took it over and rather rudely entered my tweetstream/timteline crowing about working to preventing Brexit, public transportation, banning Trump, etc. Typical Labour talk in other words.

    Other than that, I did see Goldsmith’s botched Bollywood question. That was painful to watch. And as a beer lover myself, him sitting next to Boris sipping a pint with two hands was the most awkward thing I think I’ve ever seen.

  4. Well, to start with, the Defender of the Faith is the Defender of the Roman Catholic Faith but that has never been a problem for the CoE or anyone else. One of the many curious anomalies of English history. He may or may not visit St Paul’s Cathedral (which is in the City and is, therefore, in the Lord Mayor’s domain) but there is no particular reason why he should not. There are no rules about it.

    I don’t know what he will say about any of the stories that turn up in the media, some correct, some not and, in general, we shall have to see how things go on. We have a large number of Muslims in Britain and many of them were born here. Short of deciding that they must either be deported or live in various ghettoes and not take part in British political life, I cannot see how you can stop some of them rising in politics or why you should want to. Many of us would have preferred Syed Kamall to Zac Goldsmith as Conservative candidate because of his political views, which are much more sound. As it happens, he, too is a Muslim and the son of a bus driver. The latter would have been a very useful campaigning slogan, as we know.

    Having said that, I must acknowledge that the start of Khan’s mayoralty has not been particularly good. He seems to want to be another Ken Livingstone and that is a very bad look-out. I shall write another blog and post a link her later.

  5. My friends in England are content in their little city (Not a “town” they informed me) of Chichester, which is delightful. I have the impression that “English,” as opposed to British, people are self segregating to the southeast of London. They can be in London in an hour by train, should the need arise (both are retired), and are otherwise quite satisfied to be away from the city.

    I think of it a bit as being like Orange County and Los Angeles. I was bemused a few years ago to read, in the NY Times of all places, of Orange County, China, a suburb of Beijing. The NY Times piece had photos of the houses and the place looks identical to the California version. The exception was that they had to build outdoor kitchens because Chinese cooking is too smoky and would fill the house with smoke.

    There is the NY Times story, but without the photos.

    Anyway, Chichester is a lovely, historic place. The weekend we were there was the occasion of the Goodwood Revival which was nearby.

  6. The very fact that they have to deny that Chichester is a town implies that it pretty much is a town. It’s classed as a city only by virtue of having a cathedral.

  7. people are self segregating to the southeast of London.

    That is only a temporary redoubt. When they approach the diversity ratios of America, they will have their version of Obama launch AFFH in which the central government will parachute into their too-white neighborhoods some inner city minorities in order to more fairly spread the joys of diversity to those who have been deprived of such glory.

    There will be no place to which one can run to escape the coming disaster. They will find you and they will diversify your neighborhood.

  8. “They will find you and they will diversify your neighborhood.”

    We are better armed but they will try.

  9. We are better armed but they will try.

    I will be utterly shocked and surprised, and delighted, if some white upper class neighborhoods respond with armed threats to the imposition of section 8 ghetto housing in their neighborhoods. I don’t believe it will happen.

    This is just tough talk. Actually walking the talk means that one has to be prepared to pay a big price for resisting the government and most middle class, and higher, people have too much to lose and so, instead, they buckle under and make do.

    The people who fight are those with less, or nothing, to lose and those who are backed into a corner (thinking about the Bundy ranchers.) This diversity effort isn’t targeting them yet, their neighborhoods are already destroyed, this being one of the most powerful variables for predicting support for Trump.

    Conservatives care about living life, liberals live politics as life, which is why we get so many liberals devoted to community organizing and activism. Which army wins a war, those who have full time soldiers who are trained in fighting battles or those who have no soldiers at all?

  10. The opposite is occurring. Because Progressives love urban areas so much they want forced relocation back to the cities. They enact punitive, oppressive taxation and strangle infrastructure with corrupt, unnecessary overhauls and “improvements”. Young adults are encouraged not to start families and the remaining childcare is socialized in order to be redirected to central locations to be more easily managed and manipulated for optimal ethnic and racial selection.

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