Saturday, 5 May 2012

Boris Johnson wins London mayoral election: Politics live blog

? What happened earlier - all the action from the mayoral and local elections
? Boris Johnson wins mayoral election - results
? Summary

12.40am: Here's an early morning summary.

? Boris Johnson has been re-elected as London's mayor, but by a narrower lead than expected. After a count that dragged on until midnight, Johnson beat Ken Livingstone by 51.5% to 48.5% - a margin of three points. Johnson's victory came after the Conservatives suffered heavy defeats in the local elections, and it will renew interest in how he has managed to develop a more attractive form of Conservatism than that promulgated by his rival, David Cameron. Livingstone said Johnson's victory had probably "settled the question of the next Tory leadership election".

? Ken Livingstone has announced that he will not stand for election again. During the mayoral contest he dodged questions about whether he would stand again if he lost. But, in his speech at the count, he said this was his last election. It marks the end of a long and extraordinary career in London electoral politics which at times saw Livingstone confounding political rivals as powerful as Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

That's it from me. Thanks for the comments.

12.22am: Boris Johnson's speech was quite unremarkable, but Ken Livingstone's was more interesting, partly because took a swipe at the media, which he seemed to blame for contributing to his defeat (and also for encouraging cities outside London to reject mayors, but fostering anti-politics sentiment), but largely because it's the speech that marks the end of Livingstone's remarkable career in electoral politics.

He said that under Ed Miliband Labour had won in every part of the country. He predicted that Johnson would be the next Tory leader, saying: "I suspect this result has settled the question of the next Tory leadership election." And then he spoke about his own future, or non-future, in poltics.


This is my last election. Forty one years ago, almost to the day, I won my first election promosing to build good council housing and introduce a free bus pass for pensioners. Now I have lived long enough to get one myself. I did not think I necessary would at the time. Since then I have won 11 more elections and lost three. But the one that I most regret losing is this. This is the defeat I most regret, because these are the worst time for 80 years and Londoners needed a mayor to help them get through this very difficult period.

12.19am: Here's an audioBoo with Boris Johnson's acceptance speech.

I'll post Ken Livingstone's too if anyone puts it on audioBoo.

12.08am: Here are the results in more detail.

First round

Boris Johnson (Conservative) - 971,931
Ken Livingstone (Labour) - 889,918
Jenny Jones (Green) - 98,913
Brian Paddick (Lib Dem) - 91,774
Siobhan Benita (Independent) - 83,914
James Webb (Ukip) - 43,274
Carlos Cortiglia (BNP) - 28,751

And here are the second round figures, after second preferences have been taken into account

Johnson - 1,054,811 (82,880 from second preferences)
Livingstone - 992,273 (102,355 from second preferences)

Johnson - 51.53%
Livingstone - 48.47%

12.01am: Ken Livingstone is speaking now.

He says Boris Johnson's result has settled the outcome of the next Conservative leadership election.

He congratulated Jenny Jones on coming third. But that is not a sleight on Brian Paddick, he says. He says it's not Paddick's fault that the Lib Dems did so badly. Nick Clegg was to blame, he says.

In the assembly elections Labour made "striking gains", he says.

He says this is his last election.

? Livingstone announces he will not stand again for election.

He says this is the one defeat he most regrets. Because "these are the worst times for 80 years". Londoners needed a mayor who could help. He is sincerely sorry.

This was not a conflict between two men. It was about the lives of 8 million Londoners. He says newspapers demean themselves when they fill their pages with smears. He wonders whether this played a role in cities outside London deciding not to have mayors.

He wonders what might have happened if the BBC had gone ahead with its Question Time debate, and let mayoral candidates appear on the Today programme. There was "bias" in the media, he says.

11.56pm: Boris Johnson is speaking now.

He says London is going through a neo-Victorian renaissance. Visitors to the Olympics will witness all the regenetion going on. Johnson says he wants to ensure that young Londoners are able to take the jobs created.

He says he will fight for a good deal for London.

It has been a gruelling campaign. He is sorry to see the loss of Conservative colleagues on the assembly.

He says he also wants to compliment Ken Livingstone. He said nice things about Livingstone four years ago. "A fat lot of good it did me," he says. But he is going to repeat them, in the belief that hope will triumph over experience. He says he hopes they can have the "non-taxpayer funded drink" that he promised four years ago.

(Johnson said in 2008 he would like to catch up with Livingstone for a drink. That never materialised. Livingstone, I think, said once Johnson would only want to meet up with him if he (Livingstone) had blonde hair and grew breasts.)

11.55pm: Here are the figures after second round preferences were taken into account.

Boris Johnson - 1,054,811

Ken Livingstone - 992,273

11.53pm: Boris Johnson has been declared the winner.

11.49pm: How are the results going to be announced? Tom Clark has a theory.

11.46pm: If you are fed up waiting, you could always watch Boris Johnson's victory speech from 2008.

It lasts just over four minutes.

11.42pm: Here's the note sent out by London Elects about an hour ago explaining why there has been a delay in getting the final result from Brent & Harrow.

All batches of ballot papers were registered and scanned. Two batches went to storage without some ballot papers being manually entered as required. Manual entry is required when a scanner cannot read a ballot paper ? for example if a ballot paper is damaged. It is not an issue with the scanners.

The issue was identified during the verification stage. These two batches are being re-processed. To make this happen as quickly as possible we have separated out into several smaller batches. This is why the progress screens appear to show a changing number of verified ballot papers.

We will declare as soon as possible but it is obviously important that every vote is counted.

11.39pm: At City Hall the candidates have apparently been summoned to hear the final results.

11.36pm: More from Twitter.

11.24pm: The result is either due in seven minutes, 10 minutes or half an hour (Sky), depending on who you believe.

11.23pm: Sky's Adam Boulton says they are determined to get the result out before midnight.

11.22pm: We're almost there.

11.11pm: The Newsnight pundits panel is quite lively tonight. Alastair Campbell seemed to concede that Labour would have done better in London with a different candidate. When it was put to him that another Labour candidate would have won, he said that was "entirely possible". And Miranda Green, the Lib Dem representative (she used to be Paddy Ashdown's press secretary), said "Brian Paddick was not Lembit Opik - that was his great strength [when the Lib Dems were selecting a candidate]", which is about as faint as praise can get.

Kirsty Wark also had a good line. She said, I think, that a Tory had told her that David Cameron had been described as a Tony Blair mark 2. Instead he was worried that Cameron was turning out to be a Tony Blair grade 2.

11.09pm: Paul Goodman, the former Tory MP, has posted this on Twitter.

Goodman used to work with Johnson at the Telegraph, so he knows all about Johnson's adherence to deadlines.

10.58pm: But I have got some company in the live blogging world as we wait for London to sort itself out. The Tory MEP Daniel Hannan has resumed his elections live blog at the Telegraph. He's just put up a post about Jenny Jones.

Jenny Jones, the delightful archaeologist who contested the London mayoralty for the Greens, has beaten Brian Paddick, the LibDem, in the battle for third place. Jenny is a proper radical, who extends the logic of her politics to the EU, clocking it for the racket it is. She is a strong supporter of the campaign for an In/Out referendum. It will be interesting to see whether the BBC, which always treats the LibDems generously, can come up with a formula that justifies their being bracketed with the big two rather than with the Greens and UKIP. I'm sure it'll manage.

10.55pm: The news gets worse and worse.

10.46pm: We're focusing on the contest between Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone, but the London mayoral elections have also seen the Lib Dems do dreadfully. Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem candidate, seems to have been pushed into fourth place, behind the Greens, on less than 5% of the vote. On Newsnight just now Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said that it was inevitable that the third party got squeezed in a contest like this. But that ignores the fact that, in the mayoral contest, the Lib Dems are now the fourth party. And it does not explain why Paddick is doing so badly when he got 10% of the vote in 2008, and Hughes got 15% of the vote when he stood for the Lib Dems in 2004.

10.45pm: London Elects have explained the reason for the latest delay.

10.31pm: Grim news from Evan Davis.

The Mirror's James Lyons is in despair too.

10.29pm: Tim Donovan, the BBC's London political editor, says that it is "very, very certain" that Boris Johnson will be elected mayor.

He says the delay has been caused by the discovery of two ballot boxes containing papers that have not been counted. They are now being counted by hand.

10.27pm: I liked this from the BBC's David Cornock.

10.14pm: While we're waiting, this post from Paul Waugh is worth reading if you want more on how Ken Livingstone came to be selected as Labour's candidate for London mayor. Here's an extract.

Ken backers wanted the London selection fast-tracked. He had the profile and organisation on the ground and knew he had a great chance. But Ken sceptics wanted to delay the selection to 2011, knowing that Boris was only selected a mere 6 months before coming from nowhere to win City Hall.

Harriet Harman and party general secretary Ray Collins could have vetoed the faster London timetable. Yet they were persuaded that the London Labour Party ? which has many Ken backers in its number ? needed to be rebuilt and that it would take two years to do so.

But just imagine if this NEC sub committee had decided to separate out the two races. They could still have finalised the leadership race in September, but perhaps decided to hold off the London selection until the following year. That way, bigger names than Oona King (who was thrashed by Ken) could have had a chance to stand, same some insiders.

Alan Johnson, who was mooted by some as the perfect candidate to take on Boris (great backstory, former London postman and former Home Secretary, utterly likeable), had only just been re-elected to Westminster in May 2010. He was literally and mentally knackered, a friend tells me. He couldn't let down his Hull constituents so soon.

10.10pm: The Evening Standard's Joe Murphy says YouGov has won the London mayoral polling contest.

10.04pm: Here are the figures in the mayoral contest with results in from 13 of the 14 London constituencies.

Boris Johnson: 913,154
Ken Livingstone: 822,835
Jenny Jones: 94,183
Brian Paddick: 85,964

I've taken the figures from the BBC.

10.02pm: The Daily Mail's Tim Shipman has been told the Boris Johnson is still on course for victory.

10.00pm: More news from City Hall.

9.52pm: My colleague Dave Hill says he's heard that they have found two more ballot boxes from Brent & Harrow to count.

9.48pm: Bad news for anyone hoping to go home, or go to bed. There seem to be further delays.

Here's PoliticsHome's Paul Waugh on Twitter.

And here's ITV's Tim Gatt

9.39pm: James Forsyth at Coffee House says Boris Johnson will be a force in the land if, as expected, he wins tonight.

Boris will now be a force in the land. He represents a distinct brand of vote-winning Conservatism. It'll be intriguing to see how he uses his new found status: will he use it to push for lower-taxes and Euroscepiticism, or will he stick to London and the Olympics for the next few months at least?

In the Daily Telegraph today Fraser Nelson has set out a similar argument at more length.

Whatever result is announced tonight, Boris Johnson has already emerged as the champion of a new strain of British Conservatism. London is now a Labour city, and yesterday's election ought to have been a walkover for its candidate, Ken Livingstone. Yet Boris will either win, or come very close to doing so, because he has established an appeal far broader than that of David Cameron's party. He has done so not by apologising for Conservatism, but by embodying its virtues ? and his success has been astonishing. Even his detractors are beginning to wonder if the clown prince might just be on to something.

If all this causes you great alarm, you might want to read this post from Tim Bale at Coffee House. He thinks the idea of Johnson becoming prime minister is "almost certainly fantasy politics".

For an alternative view, read Christopher Hope at the Telegraph. He has identified three scenarios that could lead to Johnson getting the top job.

9.22pm: The Evening Standard's Joe Murphy wrote a blog recently saying there should be an inquest in the Labour party into how the party selected Ken Livingstone as its candidate in London. While Boris Johnson is more popular than his party in London, Livingstone is less popular than his.

Labour figures have generally resisted the temptation to criticise Livingstone in public. But Frank Dobson has virtually told that BBC that he thought Livingstone was the wrong candidate.

Dobson also insisted that the Tories chose the right candidate.


Maybe it's also a combination of the Tories choosing the right candidate. I remember saying several months ago that Boris might win provided all those people who say "I might vote for Boris, he's a bit of a card" - if all the people who like him because he's a bit of a card turn out out, he might just scrap over the line.

Of course, Dobson is not a neutral witness on the subject of Livingstone. He was Labour's official mayoral candidate in 2000, when Livingstone won as an independent. Dobson came in third with just 13% of the vote.

9.16pm: Tony Travers, the LSE local government expert, is telling the BBC that it "still isn't clear" what's going to happen. The message does not seem to be going down in the press room, where I expect everyone wants a result soon.

9.12pm: Michael Thrasher, the University of Plymouth psephologist, has told Sky News that it would take a "very spectacular result indeed" for Boris Johnson not to win the London mayoral contest not given the lead he has built up. "Like you, I think Johnson will be relected London mayor," he told Adam Boulton.

9.07pm: Here are the London assembly results that have come in so far. Thirteen of the 14 constituencies have declared.

Another 11 seats are allocated on a city-wide basis, using the additional member system, a form of PR.

9.02pm: If you like facts and figures, these two Political Studies Association briefing papers on the London mayoral contest may interest you.

? A briefing note from Tony Travers and Patrick Dunleavy.

? A slideshow briefing on the contest.

9.00pm: It's "not long to go", according to the official London Elects twitter feed.

8.53pm: Here's some Twitter comment on the contest.

From the Daily Mirror's Kevin Maguire

From the BBC's Andrew Neil

From the Guardian's James Ball

8.49pm: Boris Johnson's press team are claiming victory, according to the BBC.

8.46pm: Bob Neill, the Conservative communities minister, told journalists in the press room at City Hall that a Boris Johnson victory would be good for London.


A Boris victory would be good news for London. There would be continued value for money in the way that the city's run, continuation of imaginative policies, continued investment in London's transport network, and, in particular, improvements in the jobs agenda.

8.30pm: Boris Johnson is expected to be named as the winner of the London mayoral elections soon and I'll be covering the result here. Earlier we were covering the mayoral and local election results on a separate live blog, but I'm afraid the software couldn't stand the excitement and the blog crashed.

The election experts are already saying that Johnson has won. This is what YouGovs' Peter Kellner told the BBC about an hour ago.


[Boris Johnson] has a clear lead. It is currently running at about 4 percentage points. Boris was up 1 point from four years ago. Ken is up 3 points from four years ago. So the gap has closed by 2. The gap was 6. The gap is now 4. It may change very slightly with the remaining 5 seats. But not by much.

[What we are seeing with second preferences] is that Ken is slightly ahead, but there's not much in it. So if Boris is coming out 3 or 4 points ahead on the first count, as I think he wil, that's too big a lead for Ken to overturn. So my prediction is that Boris will be up at around 51 and a half, 52%, Ken 48, 48 and a half per cent. A tantalisingly narrow vote. But I think it is just wide enough, with the figures we've got, to say Boris has won.

And here are the latest figures, with results in from 12 of the 14 London consitutuencies. I've taken the numbers from the BBC.

Boris Johnson: 861,367
Ken Livingstone: 753,436
Jenny Jones: 86,568
Brian PaddickL 80,005

You can find the detailed numbers on the London Elects website.

Andrew Sparrow

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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2012/may/04/boris-ken-london-mayor-election-result

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