London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Aug 22, 2025

‘It’s his turf’: why London’s mayoral race is personal for Boris Johnson

‘It’s his turf’: why London’s mayoral race is personal for Boris Johnson

Analysis: at the root of the PM’s outburst against Sadiq Khan is his anger at the Tories’ expected humbling in May

Boris Johnson had almost finished his most recent Downing Street press conference, when his tone suddenly changed. Sadiq Khan had left a “black hole” in Transport for London’s finances, said the energised prime minister, and the capital’s mayor should be held to account for his profligacy.

Beyond the ensuing controversy about Johnson using a Covid-focused event to launch a partisan attack, his words demonstrated something else: the prime minister was still deeply invested in a city he ran for eight years, and painfully aware that a successor as Conservative mayor looks increasingly unlikely.

A series of polls, including one on Tuesday, put Khan, the Labour mayor who took over from Johnson in 2016, on 50% or more of first-choice votes on 6 May, more than 20 points ahead of his Tory rival, Shaun Bailey.

While many Conservatives privately blame Bailey’s often hapless campaign and candidacy for the gap, it also illustrates one of the starkest changes to affect British politics in recent years – a more general Conservative collapse in London.

Tony Travers, visiting professor at the London School of Economics’ department of government, has produced a chart showing how the general election vote share in London, which broadly tracked the wider totals in Britain for decades, started to diverge widely in the late 90s, and in particular since 2010.


At the 2019 election, Labour’s London vote share was 15 percentage points higher than its national total; the Conservatives’ was 13% points lower. Since 1992, the number of London seats held by Tory MPs has nearly halved.

It is, Travers says, in part down to national factors, such as changes in party allegiance that mean younger, urban voters increasingly support Labour. Additionally, London’s demographics have changed.

Johnson’s mayoral election wins in 2008 and 2012 were largely based on a “doughnut” strategy – harvesting votes from more suburban, and often more predominantly white, outer suburbs. However, Travers says, outer London is increasingly diverse – “more like inner London used to be”. A YouGov poll last week found Khan winning easily in outer London, with a 45% to 28% lead over Bailey on first preference votes.

The Conservatives could very easily drop below their current low of eight of the 25 London assembly seats, Travers predicted, while in the next round of London council elections, in 2022, more boroughs could become, in effect, one-party Labour states.

To an extent, history is repeating itself. The Conservative-led push to create the Greater London Council in the early 60s was in part to expand the capital’s local government into the suburbs, after 31 years of continuous Labour rule on its inner-city predecessor, London county council.

However, there is a notably personal element. Johnson’s eight years running London are central to his personal mythology as a politician, and were arguably key to his appeal to Conservatives to replace Theresa May, as someone who had proved he could win in Labour strongholds. He delivered on this, winning an 80-seat Commons majority by re-colouring much of Labour’s “red wall” seats in blue.

This time, Johnson’s appeal across the party divides was very different. In city hall, Johnson combined very recognisably Conservative attitudes to issues such as policing with an at times liberal image – an Islington-dwelling, cycling mayor who backed an amnesty for undocumented migrants. In contrast, as prime minister he was the designer of an ultra-tough Brexit, presiding over a No 10 fizzing with forays into culture wars on race, statues and the BBC.

Shaun Bailey earlier this month. Many Tories privately blame his hapless campaign.

As a politician, Johnson is famously adaptable, but some close observers wonder whether, at heart, he was more comfortable with the mayoral incarnation. One thing is certain: he seems to take the expected Conservative electoral humbling in London very personally.

“I think he feels it’s his turf, as it were, and it’s quite possible he resents the Tories losing there,” says Jenny Jones, a Green peer who, as a London assembly member, had many clashes with the then-mayor.

Jones wonders whether the government’s recent announcement that the London election system will be moved to first past the post, penalising smaller parties such as hers, could in part be a belated revenge: “I think he did find it very uncomfortable to be so challenged. It must have annoyed him that we were there, constantly drawing attention to his flaws.”

While Johnson remains publicly loyal to Bailey, there is an inescapable sense that he feels that if he were unleashed into the mayoral fray again, he would have a chance of defeating Khan.

But those on the other side of London’s political divide view this as fantasy. “Johnson has constantly underestimated Sadiq,” says one ally of the Labour mayor. “And he does seem to take Sadiq’s success very personally.” Khan, they argue, is as adept as Johnson in waging war in the “new age of social value politics”, for example his public disputes with Donald Trump.

And while Conservatives may hope that a disastrous London election next month will be largely down to Bailey’s failings, this would be a false comfort, the ally said: “That would make sense if more than half of Londoners had even heard of Shaun Bailey. But they haven’t.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Ukraine Declares De Facto War on Hungary and Slovakia with Terror Drone Strikes on Their Gas Lifeline
Animated K-pop Musical ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Becomes Netflix’s Most-Watched Original Animated Film
New York Appeals Court Voids Nearly $500 Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump While Upholding Fraud Liability
Elon Musk tweeted, “Europe is dying”
Far-Right Activist Convicted of Incitement Changes Gender and Demands: "Send Me to a Women’s Prison" | The Storm in Germany
Hungary Criticizes Ukraine: "Violating Our Sovereignty"
Will this be the first country to return to negative interest rates?
Child-free hotels spark controversy
North Korea is where this 95-year-old wants to die. South Korea won’t let him go. Is this our ally or a human rights enemy?
Hong Kong Launches Regulatory Regime and Trials for HKD-Backed Stablecoins
China rehearses September 3 Victory Day parade as imagery points to ‘loyal wingman’ FH-97 family presence
Trump Called Viktor Orbán: "Why Are You Using the Veto"
Horror in the Skies: Plane Engine Exploded, Passengers Sent Farewell Messages
MSNBC Rebrands as MS NOW Amid Comcast’s Cable Spin-Off
AI in Policing: Draft One Helps Speed Up Reports but Raises Legal and Ethical Concerns
Shame in Norway: Crown Princess’s Son Accused of Four Rapes
Apple Begins Simultaneous iPhone 17 Production in India and China
A Robot to Give Birth: The Chinese Announcement That Shakes the World
Finnish MP Dies by Suicide in Parliament Building
Outrage in the Tennis World After Jannik Sinner’s Withdrawal Storm
William and Kate Are Moving House – and the New Neighbors Were Evicted
Class Action Lawsuit Against Volkswagen: Steering Wheel Switches Cause Accidents
Taylor Swift on the Way to the Super Bowl? All the Clues Stirring Up Fans
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Apple Expands Social Media Presence in China With RedNote Account Ahead of iPhone 17 Launch
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Cambridge Dictionary Adds 'Skibidi,' 'Delulu,' and 'Tradwife' Amid Surge of Online Slang
Bill Barr Testifies No Evidence Implicated Trump in Epstein Case; DOJ Set to Release Records
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
The CEO Who Replaced 80% of Employees for the AI Revolution: "I Would Do It Again"
Emails Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Character.ai Bets on Future of AI Companionship
China Ramps Up Tax Crackdown on Overseas Investments
Japanese Office Furniture Maker Expands into Bomb Shelter Market
Intel Shares Surge on Possible U.S. Government Investment
Hurricane Erin Threatens U.S. East Coast with Dangerous Surf
EU Blocks Trade Statement Over Digital Rule Dispute
EU Sends Record Aid as Spain Battles Wildfires
JPMorgan Plans New Canary Wharf Tower
Zelenskyy and his allies say they will press Trump on security guarantees
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Escalating Clashes in Serbia as Anti-Government Protests Spread Nationwide
The Drought in Britain and the Strange Request from the Government to Delete Old Emails
Category 5 Hurricane in the Caribbean: 'Catastrophic Storm' with Winds of 255 km/h
"No, Thanks": The Mathematical Genius Who Turned Down 1.5 Billion Dollars from Zuckerberg
The surprising hero, the ugly incident, and the criticism despite victory: "Liverpool’s defense exposed in full"
Digital Humans Move Beyond Sci-Fi: From Virtual DJs to AI Customer Agents
YouTube will start using AI to guess your age. If it’s wrong, you’ll have to prove it
Jellyfish Swarm Triggers Shutdown at Gravelines Nuclear Power Station in Northern France
×