Dire day for Tories as Labour wins in West Midlands and London

Andy Street loses knife-edge to Labour’s Richard Parker by 1,508 votes as Sadiq Khan secures historic third term

Rishi Sunak’s hopes of reviving Conservative fortunes suffered a double blow on Saturday as his party lost the West Midlands mayoral election and Sadiq Khan secured a third term in London.
On a dire day for the Tories, Andy Street lost the West Midlands mayoralty – which he had been expected to retain – to Labour’s Richard Parker by 1,508 votes.
Susan Hall, the Conservative candidate for London, lost with just 32.7 per cent of the vote to Mr Khan’s 43.9 per cent.
The West Midlands result – which came after a recount was ordered – was a major blow to Mr Sunak, who had been hoping to cling on to the mayoralty there after a series of crushing local election defeats left the Tories with fewer seats than the Liberal Democrats for the first time since 1996.
It will bolster Sir Keir Starmer, whose Labour Party toppled the Tories in the Blackpool South by-election, picked up swathes of council seats and won the majority of mayoral elections.
Mr Sunak said it was “disappointing” to lose the West Midlands, but pledged to “take the fight to Labour”, while Sir Keir hailed the result as “phenomenal” and “beyond our expectations”. Mr Street said it has been his “honour to serve and to lead this place for the last seven years”.
On Saturday night, the West Midlands result was delayed for several hours amid demands for a recount as the result remained on a knife edge throughout the afternoon.
Initially, “bundle checks” – seen as a “soft” recount that involves flicking through the piles of votes to check for any anomalies – took place. After this, a full recount was ordered in Coventry, delaying the results even further.
Akhmed Yakoob, a pro-Palestinian independent candidate, secured nearly 20 per cent of the vote in Birmingham, eating into Labour’s share.
Across the country, Labour support plummeted in areas with a high Muslim population, analysis by The Telegraph has found.
But Reform UK’s votes proved more critical in swinging the result for Labour, with the party’s vote share more than the difference between the two candidates.
James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, admitted that the local election results had been “tough” and “there is no point in pretending otherwise”. Speaking to The Telegraph, he claimed voters who had “drifted away” from the Tories would “come back to us” in time for the general election.
He said Labour were trying to “sneak” into Downing Street without explaining what they would do when they get there, claiming their plans for an amnesty on illegal immigration would be “catastrophic” and a “massive invitation card” to people smugglers.
This week, Mr Sunak will attempt to get back on the front foot with a series of announcements on getting people back to work, clamping down on anti-Semitic hate speech and pressing ahead with deporting migrants to Rwanda.
He will unveil new plans aimed at helping people with mental health conditions to remain in the workforce and, in the run-up to the Nato summit in July, he will urge allies to boost their defence spending.
Plans to move against Mr Sunak fizzled out on Friday, with Tory rebels declaring any rebellion all but over by Saturday night. “It’s over, it’s done,” said one. “Rishi is going to ride it out until the election. Part of the reason we are putting down arms is so he has no one to blame but himself for the election result.”
On Saturday evening, Sir Simon Clarke, s former Cabinet minister, told a Tory WhatsApp group the results were “awful” and “should be a massive wake-up call”.  
Writing for the Telegraph, Richard Holden, the Conservative Party chairman, urged MPs to stop “sniping from the sidelines” and “get behind our Prime Minister”.
In London, Mr Khan remained defiant over net zero policies after he was re-elected for a third term as Mayor.
In a hint that he will not abandon his controversial Ulez expansion, he said in his victory speech that London has “already made great strides cleaning up our air” and vowed to “continue to tackle pollution” whether it is “found in our streets or our rivers”.
The Labour Mayor received 1,088,225 votes (43.8 per cent), a majority of nearly 276,000 over Ms Hall, who secured 812,397 votes (32.7 per cent). The result represents a 3.2 per cent swing to Labour.
Ms Hall won the outer London boroughs of Havering and Redbridge, Croydon and Sutton, Bexley and Bromley, Ealing and Hillingdon, and Brent and Harrow.
In Brent and Harrow, she managed a 1.2 per cent swing from Labour – a result likely to reflect her background as a Harrow council leader and discontent at Mr Khan’s expansion of the Ulez scheme last August.
Mr Khan’s comfortable win sparked recriminations over the Tories’ handling of candidate selection and the campaign, with one Tory MP saying the Conservative Party’s campaign was so poor that they had “basically gifted” the mayoralty to him.
Paul Scully, a former London minister who sought the Tory mayoral nomination but did not make the shortlist, said there had been a “selection failure” and the Tory campaign had been too negative.
“The campaign has all been about ‘keep mentioning Sadiq Khan and just saying he’s inadequate’,” he said. “You can’t sit there, get in the mud and be just throwing things at the Mayor… you’ve got to come up with a positive vision.”
But a campaign source said Ms Hall was “very proud” of the result because she had “massively defied expectations”, adding: “Take a look at what the party is polling nationally in London, it’s about 16 per cent, and look at Susan’s vote share – she was 32 per cent.
One of Ms Hall’s central promises was to reverse Mr Khan’s Ulez expansion if elected. The source said: “If you go to the outer boroughs, turnout was up – and that’s down to Ulez, hands down. If Sadiq thinks Ulez has been accepted, it hasn’t. He has got to scrap it.”
In Manchester, Andy Burham was elected as Mayor for a second term, winning a landslide victory as he vowed to be “forthright” with Sir Keir. He told Sky: “I certainly would point out if things were wrong – I won’t hold back from doing that.”
Tracy Brabin retained her job as Labour’s West Yorkshire Mayor after winning just over half of the votes.
Labour won three of the eight police and crime commissioner elections declared on Saturday after gaining nine PCCs from the Conservatives on Friday and holding five. The party now has 17 PCCs, the same as the Tories, with two results yet to be declared on Sunday.