After another two-day election count and too many coffees, political editor WALTER CRONXITE sifts through the detritus of Croydon and Sutton’s part in the 2024 London elections

Having a Mayor…: Sorry to keep you all waiting

Not for the first time, Croydon kept London waiting.

It was getting on for 9 o’clock at the ExCel Centre last night when the telling teams from Croydon and Sutton councils finally finished counting up the votes from the third of the three ballot papers cast on Thursday, for the London-wide Assembly Members. Only once this was done could ours be added to all those from the rest of the capital, fed into the City Hall computer and under the Modified d’Hondt proportional representation system (don’t ask; you don’t ever want to know…) the final 11 representatives declared…

Before we move on to the outcome of all those votes, the tardiness of the count conducted by Croydon and Sutton does need to be noted. Two years ago, in Croydon, remember (how could you forget?), under the management of Returning Officer Katherine Kerswell, the borough’s local election count was continuing into the Sunday, the three days after the polls had closed. So of those who had to endure the torture have been getting treatment for PTSD ever since…

Some feared we might be heading that way again this weekend. But this time, everyone else from across London had to hang around and wait for Croydon’s tail-end Charlies and Charlottes to finish their workings-out.

Here’s how the London election vote counts work. All the votes are verified on the day after the polling day. In the past, the votes have then been counted by machines, efficiently and speedily, on the Saturday, with results all done and dusted by late afternoon. Not in 2024: as well as forcing London to adopt a less democratic voting system, the current Government effectively forced officials in the capital to go to a manual vote for the first time in 24 years (just in case the General Election had been held on May 2, too).

This slowed down everything, and everyone.

But Croydon (and Sutton) were always among the back-markers. First of all in the count of the votes for Mayor (even without any transferables this year). Then again, Croydon was in the last two when it came to declaring who the constituency Assembly Member would be. Neil Garratt, the Sutton Tory councillor, had to wait until nearly 6pm before officials confirmed he was to get another four years on the City Hall gravy train.

Watch your back: Sadiq Khan at last night’s election results, after a bitter contest with bitter Susan Hall

And everyone else from across the capital had their bags packed and their coats on, waiting to get off to the pub on a Saturday evening, while they waited for Croydon and Sutton to get their Modified d’Hondt shit together. They finally made it barely an hour before closing…

Now, more work needs to be done on discovering the causes for this laggardliness. But there is one common denominator between the never-ending count of 2022 and this wasted Bank Holiday weekend: Katherine Kerswell, the Croydon Council chief executive who receives a very generous bonus payment for being the borough’s Returning Officer.

Inside Croydon would very much welcome any insights and comments from officials working at ExCel these past three days, on Croydon’s and other areas, to help round-out our enquiries…

So to the results.

Mayor of London

Labour’s Sadiq Khan has been re-elected, the first three-term Mayor of London.

It was never even close, despite the scare stories briefed on Thursday night, and Khan’s cobblers in the week before polling day about “lend me your votes”.

Khan won with 1,088,225 votes, 43.8% of the vote, with Susan Hall securing 812,397 (32.7%). Since London elections began in 2000, only Ken Livingston in that first election has enjoyed a bigger margin of victory.

After her racist and Islamophobic campaign of lies and division, Hall delivered a typically graceless and snide concession speech at City Hall yesterday evening.

Only five of the 14 super-constituencies voted for Hall over Khan. Croydon and Sutton was one of those.

More than 2.4million votes were cast in total, on a turnout of 42.8%.

In Croydon and Sutton (42.2% turnout), Hall got 78,790 votes, 42% of the vote, to Khan’s 59,482 (31.9%). As with other outer London constituencies, the ULEZ extension will have played a factor. But there is probably also “the Croydon effect”: the legacy of Newman and his Numpties in bankrupting this borough continues to make Labour a toxic brand here, and may do so for some time to come.

That Khan’s campaign was saddled with a Newman Numpty as the constituency candidate probably had a drag on his numbers, too. Labour may well have performed well across the country in elections this week, but there’s a long way to go to rebuild trust in the brand in Croydon.

For these London elections, of course, the votes include a significant proportion from Sutton, which might explain the 5,000-vote advantage that the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor, Rob Blackie, enjoyed over Green Zoe Garbett in this corner of the capital. Overall, Blackie helped the LibDem vote improve on their woeful 2021 performance, while the Greens’ vote was down on three years ago.

Croydon and Sutton Assembly seat

Off the rails: Tory Neil Garratt gets another four years at City Hall

Conservative Neil “Father Jack” Garratt gets another four years of £60,416 Assembly Member salary.

In Croydon and Sutton’s constituency vote for a London Assembly Member, the councillor from Sutton, who was first elected to the Assembly in 2021 got 34.7% of the vote to Labour’s underwhelming candidate, Mrs Anonyvoter, Maddie Henson, who didn’t even manage to get 30% of the vote.

While Labour nationally are enjoying stellar vote shares in most polling and election results, here the party’s numbers fell, down by 1.9% compared to 2021. It is the first time since 2008 that the Labour vote in Croydon and Sutton has been below 30%.

Garratt’s vote share also fell, by 6.4% – the fourth biggest fall in the Tory vote across all 14 London super-constituencies. Croydon and Sutton also saw the fourth biggest increase in vote for Reform, the red-necks and nut-job party.

This is where politics gets perverse. The Liberal Democrats’ vote was up by 1.4% even though in Croydon and Sutton, Trish Fivey was little other than a paper candidate. It is the LibDems’ highest vote share in Croydon and Sutton since 2008 – perhaps they should try the “say nuffink” approach more often?

Fivey, also a councillor from Sutton, has just been installed on her party’s short-list for selection for a candidate for the very winnable Sutton and Cheam parliamentary seat. She might put in more of an effort for that vote…

Expect to see a lot more of Garratt in the next couple of years. When Hall was over-promoted to the role as Mayoral candidate, Garratt took over as the leader of the Conservative group at City Hall. That position will need to be re-confirmed as the new term begins, but it is likely that he will be tasked in trying to, somehow, restore his party’s reputation for decency after the clusterfuck of Hall’s campaign over the past nine months.

Croydon and Sutton’s London-wide vote

So across London there are 13 other Assembly Members, like Garratt, elected to represent the super-constituencies. But then there’s that third ballot paper, where we get to vote for a party, or Lawrence Fox (don’t laugh).

In Croydon and Sutton, again, the Tories out-polled Labour, 32.9% to 28.9%. The LibDems got 11.9% of the Croydon and Sutton London-wide vote, the Greens 9.5%.

Once these figures from across London are processed, 11 additional seats are divvied up among the parties/candidate, who each submit an ordered list.

Labour, because they had done so well elsewhere, including winning constituency seats from the Tories, got just one “list” member, Elly Baker, as a result of this process.

The Tories, because they had done so badly overall, but had a chunky vote share, thus got five Assembly Members in through the back-door, including the Harrow hairdresser, Hall.

Both the LibDems and the Greens might need to do some serious re-thinking over this: neither of their Mayoral candidates got an Assembly seat.

The LibDems, after winning a London super-constituency for the first time (Gareth Roberts in South West London, where the Tories were relegated to third), effectively suffer a penalty for that success and so only got one London-wide Assembly Member (the obnoxious Hina Bokhari). Blackie, who had impressed during the Mayoral campaign, was only No2 on his party’s list.

The Greens were probably only ever going to get three list members, as they have had since 2021; Garbett was listed at No4.

Across the whole of London, the Green vote share was 12.9% to the LibDems’ 11%, while Reform (ha! Has a party ever been more misnamed?) was on 7.4%. And the red-necks get an Assembly seat. So maybe this Modified d’Hondt version of proportional representation could do with being looked at again.

• Tomorrow: Columnist Andrew Fisher takes a look at what Thursday’s elections might mean ahead of the expected General Election

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