Hall “ran a good campaign” against Khan, the Tory chairman claims

MP Richard Holden pointed out that the outcome of the City Hall election was narrower than most polls had indicated, local democracy reporter Noah Vickers reports.

Susan Hall has beaten expectations in the London mayoral election, the Tory party chairman said, after polls showed she had “no chance at all” of becoming London mayor.

Hall lost the election by the largest ever margin in terms of raw votes in London mayoral history, but MP Richard Holden pointed out that the result was actually narrower than most polls had indicated.

The party chairman said that despite pre-contest polls showing it would be “impossible” for the Conservatives to beat Labor incumbent Sadiq Khan, Hall had narrowed his margin of victory “by a lot”.

Asked if, before the election, he thought it was possible for Hall to win, he said: “You always have to go into an election thinking it’s possible to win.

“That’s why we’ve invested a lot of resources, that’s why we’ve done 40 visits across London. But we also know it will be very difficult.”

Khan received 43.8% of the vote, while Hall took 32.7% – the lowest Conservative vote share in 20 years.

“I’m very disappointed that Susan didn’t cross the line,” Holden said. “But the polls showed we didn’t stand a chance.”

He said that a YouGov poll released just two days before the election had given Khan a 22-point lead over Hall, but this had been reduced to eleven points in the actual election.

It was therefore “a hell of a different result”, Holden said, and was “significantly better than the 2019 general election result”, as the Tories were 16 points behind Labor in London in that contest.

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He argued that the mayoral race was therefore “a good springboard” for Tory candidates in the general election and that Hall “ran a good campaign”. But he said it was hampered by both the “national polling position” and the fact that Mr Khan is “a sitting mayor with the full power of their office behind them”.

The Speaker also said there was “a lack of enthusiasm for Labor and Mayor Khan”, despite Khan receiving around 75,000 more votes than last time, while Hall received around 80,000 fewer votes than her predecessor Shaun Bailey – when looking at “”first preferences” under the old supplementary vote system used in previous mayoral contests.

He added that the Conservatives had won a number of council by-elections on the same day as the mayoral race, which he said proved “things are a bit tighter than some of those national opinion polls would suggest”.

Labor had shown “outrageous” tactics during the election, Holden said, pointing to a claim made online by shadow health secretary Wes Streeting that a win for Ms Hall would be a “win for racists, white supremacists and Islamophobes”.

In an interview with Sunday TelegraphHall said she was “not going to complain to CCHQ” (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) when asked if she received enough support from the party’s head office – although she revealed she was only assigned one dedicated staffer, who he was part-time until the last three weeks of the race.

Holden rejected suggestions that she could have received more help from the party. “Susan has had huge support from CCHQ,” he said. “In fact, her whole campaign was based in CCHQ.

“So he had a lot of support from the whole team, whether it was cash, fundraising or wider support from the team. And certainly from me personally, he also had a tremendous amount of support in the campaign.”

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