Labour lawmaker Sadiq Khan, a former government minister and son of a bus driver from Pakistan, is tipped to beat Conservative multimillionaire environmentalist Zac Goldsmith in the race to run the British capital.
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Goldsmith, 41, is a member of parliament for Richmond Park, in the borough of London.
In other elections today – dubbed “super Thursday” because of how many polls are taking place – around 40 new police and crime commissioners will be elected and mayors will also be chosen in Bristol, Salford and Liverpool.
Susan Williamson, a 57-year-old care worker, said she had voted for the Scottish National Party leader, Nicola Sturgeon, who led her party to a sweeping victory in a British parliamentary election in 2015.
They could also provide a barometer of the durability of the right-wing UK Independence Party.
The countrywide elections were considered a test for the Labour Party in the first nationwide polls since Jeremy Corbyn became the party’s new leader past year.
If these results reflect first preference votes in the official election, then it would require second preference votes to decide who will succeed Boris Johnson as mayor.
“There’s a chance that there are people who are nearly subconsciously put off (voting for Khan) by the dog-whistle racism… people who wouldn’t like to say “I’m not going to vote for Sadiq Khan”, but will have a wobble at the ballot box”, said Anthony Wells, director of political and social opinion polling at YouGov.
The attacks, carried out by Islamist extremists, left 52 people dead.
Khan has repeatedly been accused during the campaign of support for Islamic extremists, which his team has condemned as smear tactics.
Referring to Goldsmith in particular, Boff said: “He received advice and he was wrong to accept advice [about the campaign]”.
Such circumstances could, arguably, present themselves next month if Britain votes to leave the European Union, but if the votes from Scotland favor staying.
Former Tory chairman Sayeeda Warsi tweeted “Are we Conservatives fighting to destroy Zac or fighting to win this election?” Another letter, which warned that Labour wanted to tax gold jewellery owned by many Indian families, was also seen as stoking community tensions.
Khan has tried to distance himself from Corbyn and the more left-wing members of the party, but Goldsmith has done about everything he could to remind voters that a vote for Khan cannot take place in isolation.
One of those accused of having made anti-Semitic remarks was Ken Livingstone, the last Labour figure to serve as London mayor.
“The only effect of the Zac Goldsmith campaigning is probably just to entrench all those long-standing issues the Conservative Party have got with appealing to ethnic minority voters”, he said. “I’ve fought extremism all my life”. The council said the problem had been fixed by late morning, and urged voters who had been turned away to try again or apply for an emergency proxy vote.
The race for the mayoralty has been marked by negative campaigning between two very different candidates.
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Goldsmith, an environmental activist, used to edit The Ecologist magazine. He was elected to Parliament in 2010.
