Mayor of London election: Minor candidates create a race within a race
This year’s mayor of London election has set a record for the most ever candidates – a 20-strong field of career politicians, chancers, grifters, oddballs, cranks, culture warriors and earnest small party hopefuls.
The race itself has provided little interest for the public at large, with a Sadiq Khan victory a foregone conclusion at a time when the city has more pressing concerns (i.e. going to the boozer post-lockdown).
The last London mayoral election had a paltry turnout of 41 per cent, however in all likelihood it will fall well below that this year, with Khan having led polls by 20+ points for more than a year. The lack of enthusiasm around this year’s local elections perhaps provides a reason why we have people like actor Laurence Fox and self-help coach/YouTuber Brian Rose entering the race and featuring in the headlines. The lack of interest in the London mayor election has provided a vacuum for characters like Fox and Rose to fill as they try to soak up the media sunlight.
However, not all minor candidates in the race are middle-aged anti-vaxxers or lockdown-sceptics trying to get a few bites at publicity. Nor are they all in the mould of Count Binface – the latest iteration of the British tradition of cartoonish characters standing for high office.
Independent candidate Farah London says she is standing to provide an alternative conservative option to Tory candidate Shaun Bailey and to highlight the outrage from some against Khan’s Low Traffic Neighbourhood scheme.
The candidate, who changed her surname to London several years ago, said she used to campaign alongside Bailey as a Tory party activist.
“We have Shaun Bailey who has no chance of winning against Khan, so I decided to run,” she said.
“Shaun was a photo op person, he would come take a picture and just run off. He never liked engaging with people, he hated knocking on doors, he hated talking to people.”
London said the opposition to the Low Traffic Neighbourhood scheme, which sees cars heavily reduced or banned in some parts of London, was not getting enough attention this campaign.
“I’ve been going all over London talking to residents and it’s a massive social divide that’s been produced. It’s actually causing more pollution, because people are spending more time in their cars and [the scheme] puts diversions on areas with social housing,” she said.
London is one of a handful of candidates running non-gimmick campaigns that have no hope of winning or even getting their £10,000 deposit back (this requires getting 5 per cent of the vote). Most people would, quite justifiably, say to themselves ‘why bother?’
One potential reason for the record-breaking number of candidates could be pinned on the two major parties for not producing a strong mayoral contest this time around. Khan has run a defensive campaign, which has not provided a vision for the future of London or sparked any deep conversations on policy. This could be blamed on just how poorly Bailey has fared as the Conservative candidate. The former social worker has been a complete disaster, limping from one gaffe to the next as the party quietly backs away from his candidacy.
The sum result of this is a damp squib of an election, which has seen independent candidates run to vent their frustrations or to highlight policy issues that have gone under the radar.
Steve Kelleher, candidate from the revived Social Democratic Party, said he would not have stood if he wasn’t so fed up with the incumbent mayor. Kelleher said he resents Khan’s penchant to wade into identity politics and play up the Brexit culture war.
“Him standing as mayor on that identitarian platform has made me want to run against him more,” he said.
“This identitarian perspective, that he is very comfortable with, is divisive. If you believe in community, if you believe in neighbourhood, if you believe in tax and work you need to have unity.”
Professor Tony Travers, local politics expert at the London School of Economics (LSE), believes neither Khan nor Bailey have been inspiring candidates, but that there are also other reasons for the record number of candidates running this year.
“Neither candidate is seen even by their own parties as particularly powerful candidates and every poll taken shows one candidate well ahead,” Travers said.
He added: “Mostly though the number of candidates comes down to two things – a mixture of the fact that fewer signatures were required than last time, two per borough to get on the ballot paper, plus a £10,000 deposit.
“And also the arrival of the concept of the YouTube candidate and they’re not the only ones who will see the publicity to attend this race as attractive to them.”
This brings us back again to the two most high-profile minor candidates – Laurence Fox and Brian Rose.
Fox’s newfound fame stems more from his status as a right-wing culture warrior on assorted YouTube clips and through his Twitter handle than from his acting career. The race gives him an opportunity to keep himself in the media spotlight, while also testing the waters to see if a Trumpian sort of politician can cut through in the UK. It also helps when you’ve got people like Brexiteer millionaire Jeremy Hosking giving you £5m+ to start a new political party.
Rose, meanwhile, has a YouTube channel with 2.02m subscribers where he interviews a mix of well-respected intellectuals, entrepreneurs, spiritual figures and complete nutters. City PM revealed last week that one of these videos featured David Icke spewing the most vile and pernicious kind of antisemitic conspiracy theories, all of which go unquestioned by Rose.
The Daily Mail’s Michael Crick revealed last week that Rose had received a bevy of complaints from people who had paid thousands for his self-help course, but had received little or nothing in return. The former City worker has spent more than £1m on internet adverts and billboards.
Unfortunately for both of them, a recent ITV poll suggested they were both going to be beaten in the race by Niko Omilana – another YouTuber. Let’s hope Rose and Fox at least had a bit of fun for their millions spent.
In an election devoid of any spark or excitement perhaps the poll can stand as a testing ground for whether internet personalities can make a dent into frontline politics. It also creates a fun game to see who will top the race within a race to be the number-one alternative candidate.