Dawn Butler: I'll stand to be next Labour Mayor of London

Telegraph

a day ago

Dawn Butler has announced that she will stand to become the next Labour Mayor of London.
The MP for Brent East said she would 'pop my hat in the ring' as soon as Sir Sadiq Khan stood down.
Sir Sadiq won an unprecedented third term in City Hall last year but is not currently expected to stand at a fourth mayoral election.
Ms Butler is on the Left of the party and served in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet as the shadow equalities secretary from 2017 to 2020.
She has been no stranger to controversy since returning to the back benches, and Sir Keir Starmer faced calls to suspend her last year over a social media post she shared about Kemi Badenoch.
In an episode of The Mirror's web series Party Games, in which politicians take part in a number of light-hearted games, Ms Butler was asked if she would rather be prime minister or mayor of London
She replied: 'London mayor, to represent London. I'm a Londoner through and through, born in east London.
'Just having London the way I have experienced it and seen it and just making London wonderful for everyone and everyone being proud of London and being a Londoner… Yeah, I'd love to be a mayor of London.'
When pressed to confirm that she would run in the next mayoral election, Ms Butler said: 'Once there's a vacancy, I will pop my hat in the ring.'
There has been speculation that Idris Elba, the actor and knife crime campaigner, and Deborah Meaden, the entrepreneur and star of Dragon's Den, are also interested in becoming Labour's next mayoral hopeful.
Sir Sadiq was comfortably re-elected last year after seeing off Susan Hall, his Conservative challenger, with 43.9 per cent of the vote to Ms Hall's 32.7 per cent.
The election was the first to use the first past the post system, meaning Londoners can only vote for one mayoral candidate and the candidate who gets the most votes is declared the winner.
In November, Sir Keir refused to remove the whip from Ms Butler after she shared a social media post accusing Kemi Badenoch of representing ' white supremacy in blackface '.
Ms Butler had reposted comments on X, which she would go on to remove, that also referred to Mrs Badenoch's election as the Conservative Party leader as a 'victory for racism'.
The post shared by Ms Butler was written by Nels Abbey, a Nigerian journalist, and offered 'tips for surviving the immediate surge of Badenochism (i.e. white supremacy in blackface)'.
'Abhorrent'
Labour sources noted the post had quickly been taken down and pointed to Sir Keir's remarks that Mrs Badenoch becoming the first black leader of a British party was 'a proud moment for our country'.
The Prime Minister later said Ms Butler 'shouldn't have said what she did' as he faced demands to strip her of the whip over the 'abhorrent' remarks.
The row came months after Ms Butler had agreed with the actor David Tennant that Mrs Badenoch should 'shut up' because of her views on women's rights.
Mrs Badenoch has been a key voice in the trans debate, asserting the importance of biological sex and insisting that biological males should not be allowed to access female spaces.
In a speech at the British LGBT Awards, Tennant said: 'Until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn't exist any more – I don't wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up – whilst we do live in this world, I am honoured to receive this [award].'
At the height of a backlash to Tennant's remarks, Ms Butler said: 'Not all black women think the same. I agree with David Tennant. That's it, that's the tweet.'
In April 2024, she admitted that she 'may have misled' the House of Commons by quoting a briefing issued by Stonewall in response to the Cass Review.
Ms Butler claimed in a debate that 'over 100 studies' were excluded from the landmark report into gender identity services by Dr Hilary Cass, a paediatric consultant.
But Dr Cass clarified that researchers examined a total of 103 papers, which eventually included the 60 datasets that were deemed to be high or medium quality.