The 2021 London mayoral election was held on 6 May 2021 to elect the mayor of London. It was held simultaneously with elections for the London Assembly, other local elections across England and Wales, and devolved elections in Scotland and Wales. The mayoral and Assembly elections were to be held on 7 May 2020, but in March 2020 the government announced the election would be postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sadiq Khan was re-selected as the Labour candidate in 2018, the Conservative Party selected Shaun Bailey and the Green Party chose Siân Berry. Rory Stewart, a former Conservative MP and minister, ran as an independent before withdrawing due to the delay in the election. Siobhan Benita, who had been the Liberal Democrat candidate, also withdrew after the election delay. She was replaced as the party's candidate by Luisa Porritt. Twenty candidates appeared on the ballot, more than in any previous election for the position.
Sadiq Khan of the Labour Party was re-elected, winning 40% of first preference votes and 55% in a run-off against Bailey.
Background The mayor of London has responsibilities covering policing, transport, housing, planning, economic development, arts, culture and the environment. They control a budget of around £17 billion per year. Mayors are typically elected for a period of four years, with no limit to the number of terms served. Under the Greater London Authority Act 1999, mayoral elections are held on the first Thursday in May in the fourth calendar year following the previous election, unless varied by an order by the Secretary of State. On 13 March 2020, the government announced the election would be postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The change in election date was ignored when calculating the four-yearly election cycle. Consequently, the following election was held in 2024, and Khan served a reduced term of three years. The incumbent mayor, Sadiq Khan, a member of the Labour Party, was elected in the 2016 election, when he defeated the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith.
In the 2018 local elections across Greater London the Labour Party increased its number of council seats to the highest level since 1978. The Liberal Democrats and the Green Party also gained seats. In the 2019 European Parliament elections, the Liberal Democrats came first in London. They won the most votes in the London region with 27%, returning three Members of European Parliament (MEPs), the party's best ever result. The Labour Party came second, with 24% of the vote, losing two seats to end up with two MEPs. The Brexit Party returned two MEPs and the Green Party won 12.5% of the vote, holding its one seat. The Conservative Party failed to get a single MEP elected in London for the first time in the party's history. In the 2019 general election, there was no net change in the number of seats for any party, although several seats changed hands. The biggest changes in vote share were for Labour, who saw a fall of 6.5%, and the Liberal Democrats, who were up 6.1%, compared to the previous 2017 general election.
Electoral system The election used a supplementary vote system, in which voters express a first and a second preference for candidates. If a candidate receives more than 50% of the first preference vote, that candidate wins If no candidate receives more than 50% of first preference votes, the top two candidates proceed to a second round and all other candidates are eliminated The first preference votes for the remaining two candidates stand in the final count Voters' ballots whose first and second preference candidates have both been eliminated are discarded Voters whose first preference candidates have been eliminated and whose second preference candidate is one of the top two have their second preference votes added to that candidate's count This means that the winning candidate has the support of a majority of voters who expressed a preference among the top two. The 2021 election was planned to be the last conducted using the supplementary vote system; in March 2021, the Government indicated its plan to change the voting system to first past the post from 2024.
All registered electors (British, Irish, Commonwealth and European Union citizens) living in London aged 18 or over were entitled to vote in the mayoral election. Those who were temporarily away from London at the time of the election (for example, away working, on holiday, in student accommodation or in hospital) were also entitled to vote in the mayoral election. The deadline to register to vote in the election was 11:59 pm, 19 April 2021.
Mayoral candidates require 66 signatures of people on the electoral register in London supporting the nomination, 2 from each of the 32 London boroughs and 2 from the City of London, and must give a deposit of £10,000 (returned if they get more than 5% in the election). The required number of signatures was lowered from 330 to reduce person-to-person contact during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the count was not completed until Sunday 9 May.
Campaign
Before the delay (2018–2020)
The incumbent mayor Sadiq Khan announced in June 2018 that he intended to stand for re-election. Later that year, he received enough nominations from local party groups and trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party that he was automatically re-selected to be the party's candidate. His re-selection followed speculation that a figure from the left wing of his party could challenge him for the candidacy. This speculation followed disagreements about the "direction of the party" between Khan and Jeremy Corbyn, who was the leader of the party nationally at the time. Khan announced in early 2020 that part of his election platform would be to deliver a "green new deal for the city". This would include making London carbon neutral by 2030 and opposing building a third runway at Heathrow Airport.
The Conservative Party selected Shaun Bailey as its candidate in September 2018. In his selection campaign, he emphasised fighting crime. This included "maximising" CCTV coverage of London as an alternative to increasing the number of police officers and giving automatic jail terms for acid attacks. In the weeks after his selection, Bailey was criticised for sharing an Islamophobic tweet attacking Sadiq Khan. He was also criticised for controversial views he had published earlier in his career about multiculturalism, Islam and Hinduism. He was the first Conservative mayoral candidate to also stand in the London Assembly election at the same time.
The Green Party chose Siân Berry as their candidate in February 2019. She had been their mayoral candidate in the 2008 and 2016 elections and had served as co-leader of the party since 2018. She launched her campaign with a focus on housing, calling for a "people's land bank" which would let communities bring empty buildings and land back into use.
Siobhan Benita was selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate in November 2018. Benita had run as an independent candidate in the 2012 London mayoral election. She had come in fifth with 3.8% of first preference votes, while the fourth-placed Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick received 4.2%. Benita criticised Khan's action on knife crime in London. She formally launched her campaign for the London mayoral election on 13 February 2020. She said she wants to legalise cannabis in London. This would reduce levels of knife crime, she said, by removing power and money from gangs and freeing up police time. She also pledged to reduce violent crime in general and reopen closed police stations. On the environment, she said she would reduce air pollution and declared an aim to "reach zero-carbon" by 2030.
The former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage said in August 2018 that he was considering running as the UKIP candidate. He said that he would be more successful than the Conservatives. He left UKIP in December 2018 and became the leader of the Brexit Party in March 2019.
On 4 October 2019, Rory Stewart announced he was standing as an independent candidate for the London mayoralty. At the time he was sitting as an independent MP. He had been a Conservative MP and came fifth in the Conservative leadership election. He was then expelled from their Parliamentary group due to his opposition to a "no deal" Brexit. He left the House of Commons when he did not contest a seat in the December 2019 general election. In February, he asked for people to sign up for him to stay on their sofa for a night so that he could listen to their concerns.
After postponement (2020–2021) On 13 March 2020, the election was delayed to May 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Other local elections in England were also delayed. Stewart withdrew from the campaign in May 2020, saying the delay in the election meant it was impractical to sustain a campaign as an independent. He chose not to endorse any other candidate. In July 2020, Benita withdrew from the campaign; she also cited the financial difficulties of sustaining her candidacy. The Liberal Democrats selected Luisa Porritt as their new candidate on 13 October 2020. She called for a curfew on bars and restaurants that was in place as part of pandemic restrictions to be removed.
Following the first COVID-19 lockdown, the United Kingdom saw a sharp fall in public transport use. This led to the government giving Transport for London (TfL) a bailout of £1.6 billion. The national government made the bailout conditional on the London government raising fees on the service, increasing the London congestion charge, ending free bus travel for the young and suspending free travel at certain times for over-60s. Bailey accused Khan of raising the congestion charge, which Full Fact said was inaccurate. The bailout contributed to concern that Boris Johnson's Conservative government wanted to intrude on the mayor's authority. Later in 2020, the housing minister Robert Jenrick sent a letter to Khan which said that the council housing programme and the balloting of council housing estates on any estate changes put into the new 2020 London plan should be dropped. The letter also criticised Khan's proposal for rent controls. On 24 October, Khan wrote on the LabourList blog that he wouldn't support the proposals from the government.
In December 2020, Bailey published leaflets with City Hall branded claiming that Khan was raising council taxes by 21.2%. Lawyers for the Labour Party referred the matter to the Crown Prosecution Service, saying that the leaflets were illegally fraudulent under the Representation of the People Act 1983. In February 2021 The Guardian reported that nearly 40% of donations to Bailey's campaign had come from the businessman Michael Ashcroft.
Tensions arose in some cases around campaigning under lockdown restrictions. On 24 January 2021, Rose and six of his staff were fined by the police for breaking lockdown rules while filming promotional material for his campaign. That month, the government said that door-to-door campaigning or leafleting by individual party activists was not allowed under COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. In February, Rose was stopped by police while canvassing who told him it was not allowed under COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Rose complained the restrictions prevented him from competing with larger political parties. In March, police visited the Reclaim Party candidate Laurence Fox to warn him about coronavirus regulations.
The Times reported that officials in the Conservative Party had twice tried to remove Bailey as their candidate, but had decided not to as they could not find a "credible alternative".
Policy and the short campaign (March 2021 – May 2021) The official Statement of Persons Nominated was published on 31 March. Twenty candidates appeared on the ballot, significantly more than in any previous election for the position.