The next Mayor of London will be elected on 5th May 2016 after incumbent Boris Johnson has decided to return to parliamentary politics after becoming the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the 2015 General Election. But in what is effectively a two-horse race, will it be Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith or Labour man Sadiq Khan who gets voted into this heavy-hitting position? Read on as we give our predictions and outright winner betting tips ahead of what looks like being a closely fought battle. We’ve also got the latest live betting odds comparison to ensure you get the best price whoever you back.
As mentioned, there are really only two candidates in with a realistic chance of becoming the next Mayor of London. One of them, Zac Goldsmith, is the son of the billionaire financier, Sir James Goldsmith, and the husband to banking heiress Alice Miranda Rothschild. The other, Sadiq Khan, was born in London to a working class family of Pakistani immigrants, his father working as a bus driver and his mother a seamstress. Khan studied law and became a solicitor, specialising in civil liberties and racial discrimination cases.
In short, we have a true battle of the old aristocratic order versus the new meritocratic, multicultural London. While it might be a little far to dub the London Mayoral Election a ‘clash of civilisations’ it certainly gives the media a nice narrative of ‘posh versus working class’ to run with over the next few months.
At present there is very little between the two in the betting odds, with Khan the slight favourite at 5/6 with William Hill, with Goldsmith just behind at 11/10 with 10Bet. Much will no doubt depend on how the candidates’ respective political parties are doing at the time of the election. The fact that Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of the Labour Party could well push Khan to victory as the left-winger’s election ahead of the likes of Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall has rejuvenated the party at grassroots level and might well lead to a greater turnout than would otherwise have occurred amongst Labour supporters.
Of course, the media have been laying into Corbyn (and by extension Labour) ever since it looked like he might have a chance of being elected leader of his party. And this is likely to continue ahead of the election in May next year with many newspaper owners (i.e. billionaires) concerned about the implications of a left-leaning Labour government or even a Labour London Mayor. But we predict that the electorate will see through the constant attacks on Corbyn and given that the vast majority of Londoners are working class – as opposed to billionaires! – we expect most to instinctively side with Sadiq Khan.
Of course, there is a sizeable minority of the London populace who might be averse to voting for Khan because he is from an ethnic minority, but given the multicultural and cosmopolitan nature of the UK’s capital, we think this will have a negligible effect. With Labour having won 45 of the 73 seats available in London in the last General Elections (seven more than in 2010), we fancy Sadiq Khan will be swept to victory to become the London Mayor in May next year, so back him now before the momentum grows and his betting odds shorten.