Bassam Mahfouz Holds Local Assembly Seat for Labour

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But Sadiq Khan fails to top poll in Ealing and Hillingdon constituency

Bassam Mahfouz (second left) is joined by Ealing's MPs after his victory. Picture: x/Bassam Mahfouz

May 8, 2024

For the second election running the Ealing and Hillingdon constituency has elected a Labour Assembly member while voting for a Conservative Mayor.

The Conservative had hopes of a shock win based on dissatisfaction with the ULEZ, particularly in the western part of the constituency. This area includes Uxbridge where, during a recent by-election, they pulled off a surprise victory.

In the event, this proved ill-founded and, during a disastrous set of results across London and the rest of the country, the party will take little solace in the symbolic local win by Susan Hall in beating Sadiq Khan into second place. In the Mayoral contest, she got 75,396 votes ahead of 73,257 for the Mayor with the Greens and Lib Dems polling around 10,000.

Bassam Mahfouz, an Ealing councillor who won selection as the Labour candidate against the incumbent Onkar Sahota, received 72,356 votes a 3.4 percentage point fall in his party’s vote share from the last election. His Conservative challenger Henry Higgins failed to make sufficient ground with his vote share also down but it appears that Reform voters in the constituency switched to Susan Hall in the Mayoral contest with over 8,000 fewer backing Howard Cox for Mayor than the Assembly candidate. The 4.3 percentage point increase seen for Reform candidate Anthony Goodwin was not enough to prevent him coming last out of the five candidates but does appear to have been sufficient to deny the Conservatives a win in the Assembly seat.

Another contradictory aspect of the result was that Labout topped the poll for the party list seat on the London Assembly with a bigger margin over the Conservatives.

Cllr Mahfouz said after the result, “Huge thank you to everyone who supported me and made this possible. It was a victory for hope over hate, diversity over divisiveness, for fairness and a bright future.”

With the reduced majority, the seat which has elected Conservative Assembly members in the past, will be a top target for the Conservatives next time out.

2024 London Assembly election: Ealing and Hillingdon
Party	Candidate	Constituency			List
		Votes	%	±%	Votes	%
Labour	Bassam Mahfouz	72,356	37.4	-3.4	70,281	36.3
Conservative	Henry Higgins	67,495	34.9	-2.0	62,038	32.0
Green	Jess Lee	22,984	11.1	+1.1	17,796	9.2
Liberal Democrats	Kuldev Singh Sehra	15,293	7.9	0.0	13,382	6.9
Reform UK	Anthony Goodwin	15,247	7.9	+4.3	11,197	5.8
Rejoin EU					5,663	2.9
Animal Welfare					3,499	1.8
Britain First					2,855	1.5
CPA					2,445	1.3
SDP					1,757	0.9
Independent	Laurence Fox				855	0.4
Communist					780	0.4
Independent	Farah London				716	0.4
Heritage					350	0.2
Independent	Gabe Romualdo				104	0.1
Majority		4,861	2.5	-1.4
Valid Votes		193,375			193,718
Invalid Votes		1,383			1,257
Turnout		194,758	42.9	-2.9	194,975	43.0
Labour hold

The Liberal Democrats maintained their vote share in the Ealing and Hillingdon constituency vote and saw an increase on the Party List.

The party's local candidate Kuldev Singh Sehra said afterwards, "I am proud to have had the opportunity to listen the residents of Ealing and Hillingdon during this campaign. Our two local Lib Dem teams worked tirelessly to help get our message out to our communities. The Liberal Democrat Official Opposition councillors in Ealing will continue to work hard for residents, listen to their concerns, and stand up for them."

Despite its gains, Labour does still does not have a majority on the London Assembly now holding 11 out of the 25 seats. The party will be dependent on support for the Greens who have three representatives and the Liberal Democrats with two. The Conservatives now have eight members in the assembly.

There was some speculation on social media on Friday evening that the Mayoral election could end up being closer than expected. Figures released on Friday showed that turnout was down in all seven London Assembly constituencies in which Sadiq Khan polled more first preference votes than his Tory rival Shaun Bailey in 2021. Turnout had meanwhile risen in some of the constituencies which had returned Conservative candidate. With not a single vote counted at this point, these predictions of a tight contest proved ill-founded with Sadiq Khan going on to win a third term with an increased majority receiving 43.8 per cent of the votes (1,088,225) to Susan Hall’s 32.7 per cent (811,518).

Ms Hall congratulated the Mayor on his victory, before saying he must make tackling crime his top priority adding, “He owes it to the families of those thousand people who have lost [their] lives to knife crime, under his mayoralty.

“I will continue to hold Sadiq to account, to stand up for hard-working families, for motorists and for women.”

The best ever result for a winning candidate in terms of vote-share was achieved by Mr Khan in 2016, when he secured his first term as mayor with 44.2 per cent of ‘first preference’ votes, under the old ‘supplementary vote’ system.

For this year’s City Hall election and others going forward, the voting system has been changed to ‘first past the post’, meaning that voters are no longer able to choose a first and second preference for mayor. The winning candidate now simply had to receive more votes than any other.

The lowest win, by vote-share, was that of Labour’s Ken Livingstone when he won re-election in 2004, with 37 per cent of first preferences. This was down from the 39 per cent he received when running as an independent in 2000.

In that earlier contest – the capital’s first mayoral election – Mr Livingstone achieved the largest margin of victory by a London mayor over their nearest opponent, defeating Tory candidate Steven Norris by 11.9 percentage points.

By contrast, the narrowest winning margin was held by Tory mayor Boris Johnson when he secured a second term in 2012 with just 3.7 percentage points over Mr Livingstone.

Since the mayoralty’s creation in 2000, overall turnouts for City Hall elections have averaged at about 40 per cent.

Historically, the highest turnouts in London mayoral contests have been in the ‘change’ elections of 2008 and 2016 – when Tory mayor Boris Johnson and Labour mayor Sadiq Khan each seized their first victories, respectively. But even in those contests, fewer than half of eligible Londoners actually voted, as only 45 per cent turned out in each.

At the other end of the scale, the lowest turnout recorded was in the mayoralty’s first election in 2000, back when Londoners were unused to the idea of having a directly-elected mayor. Just over a third of those eligible – 34 per cent – cast their ballots.

Written with contributions from the Local Democracy Reporting Service

 

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