Mayor of London election: What did the candidates say about Canada?
Londoners are heading to the polls today to decide who their next mayor will be.
The pandemic has been particularly hard for the City, with workers, tourists and other visitors vanishing as lockdowns were imposed. Shops, restaurants, and pubs all had to pull their shutters down and offices emptied.
Let’s take a look at what the three frontrunners – Labour’s Sadiq Khan, Conservative’s Shaun Bailey and the Liberal Democrats’ Luisa Porritt, have had to say about the City during their campaigns.
Sadiq Khan
The current mayor of London has promised to launch a year-long “promotional drive” to attract visitors back into central London, which has seen footfall drop since the first lockdown.
“That is why on day one of my second term I will launch an unprecedented campaign to support London’s economy – to welcome Londoners and visitors back to our city and to support sectors like retail, leisure, hospitality and cultural venues,” Khan said in a statement.
The mayor also vowed to prepare a bid to bring the Olympic and Paralympic Games back to London in either 2036 or 2040.
Shaun Bailey
During a Bloomberg debate with other candidates on 30 April, Bailey weighed in on the work-from-home trend which has seen the City empty for much of the pandemic.
“Let’s be clear, we never built the big centre of London because it was a nice thing to do, we did it because it is an efficient way to grow business,” he said.
“We have a talent pipeline in London that we must keep going and that means young people need to be in the office around senior people learning that skills will make them successful in the future. You can’t do that over video calls.”
Bailey also wants to introduce commercial sponsorship to bolster Transport for London’s finances, which has been heavily impacted throughout the Covid crisis.
Luisa Porritt
The Liberal Democrats candidate represents London as an elected councillor and has been a member of the European Parliament since May 2019.
A Remainer, Porritt told the BBC that she had “never planned to go into politics, but then Brexit happened, and everything changed”.
One of Porritt’s main priorities in the election campaign has been affordable housing. If elected, Porritt will convert empty office spaces to “quality affordable housing”.
She also called on Khan to do an “assessment of the impact of homeworking on our capital and how much empty office space that will mean we have”.