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As London goes to the polls, what does the Mayoral Election mean for businesses?

After months of fierce campaigning, Londoners finally had their opportunity yesterday (Thursday 5 May) to choose their new Mayor, deciding who gets to replace current incumbent Boris Johnson for the capital’s top job in the fourth-ever Mayoral Election.

For the two leading candidates, Labour’s Sadiq Khan and Conservative Zac Goldsmith, it’s a campaign that has been marred by unedifying accusations of ‘dog-whistle’ racism and the backwash of the Labour Party’s anti-semitism rift.

A campaign heavy on base political posturing and scare-mongering, and light on actual detail.

But what might the new Mayor mean for business? And how will their priorities differ?

Onwards and upwards for Boris

An equal parts popular and divisive figure, Boris Johnson’s time at the helm has coincided with dramatic changes to London’s built environment and social fabric over his eight year reign.

A suitably relaxed demeanour when it comes to planning permission and favourable relationships with developers has unleashed an army of 20-storey plus skyscrapers that loom over the capital, over 400 now stand defiantly as London’s skyline has been changed forever.

The trust funds and commodified penthouses, many sitting empty, that fill vast swathes of these new, pristine metal slabs are a symptom of the equal forces of gentrification and international investment that have pushed up living costs and are unleashing real social change right across London.

Housing, gentrification, the environment and planning: these are pressing issues that the new mayor will have to grapple with from day one.

However, on the business-front, bumbling Boris has given credence to the oft-repeated cliche that ‘London is a great place to do business’.

The City is booming, rebounding after the financial crash and the crisis of confidence it unleashed, meanwhile London has become a world leader in tech and the capital’s healthy network of accelerators, shared workspaces and angel investors has made it a fertile environment for startups of all shapes and sizes.

For many (but, crucially, not all) Londoners, Johnson leaves the capital in a better state than he found it. And his continued popularity in opinion polls, along with his opportunist political posturing, may yet see him trading City Hall for 10 Downing Street.

Sadiq Khan

The current favourite going into opinion polls before the big vote, raised on a council estate and the son of a bus driver, Khan has positioned himself as the everyman Londoner who, thanks to his faith, also appeals to the city’s multiculturalism.

With a promise to be ‘a Mayor for all Londoners’, if successful, Khan may face a bigger challenge in convincing business owners that he is ‘a Mayor for all of London’s businesses’.

Rightly or wrongly, as the Labour candidate, Khan has had to strategically distance himself from the party apparatus, primarily due to the continued perception that the Labour Party is anti-business. A perception the Tories have been all too keen to jump on.

However, donations from prominent property developers, including a £19,900 donation from Croydon developer Dr Anwar Ansari, suggest that the path followed by the Labour hopeful may not be so drastically different to his Tory rival.

Manifesto-wise, Khan has made promises to create a Business Advisory Board, which will see companies included in the policy-making process, with a particular focus on female business leaders.

Meanwhile, skills and startups have been another central focus of his campaign, with a pledge to work closely with schools, universities and businesses to better tackle the capital’s skills shortages, and gun for more devolved powers on skills priorities.

Zac Goldsmith

As the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith can make credible claims that, as Mayor, he will be much better positioned to work in tandem with his Tory peers in government, while his green credentials should have given him cross-over appeal with the capital’s left-leaning residents.

However, all too often, the detail has been lost as his campaign, which has been a visible source of discomfort for Goldsmith, has devolved into smears and mud-slinging against his main Labour rival.

Despite this, there is still a noticeably pro-business thread running through Goldsmith’s manifesto, with many of his promises to the business community seeing him position himself as the continuity candidate.

The first is his manifesto pledge to continue the work set out by Johnson to implement a 24-hour London Underground service, plans the current Mayor found difficult to get through but which would represent a boon to the capital’s night-time economy.

Coupled with this, a key pivot of his business agenda is his pledge to use the 560km of TfL railway routes to rapidly deliver superfast broadband and keep London at the forefront of the worldwide tech boom.

Continuing the tech theme, Goldsmith has promised to continue the work carried out by Johnson in fostering and growing the capital’s world-leading tech sector through the creation of a £1m Mayor’s Tech Challenge, and the creation of a Chief Digital Officer at City Hall to oversee tech policy.

London’s role in a changing world

Whether it’s Khan or Goldsmith who comes out on top in today’s Mayoral Election, the new Mayor will inherit a rapidly changing London with its own unique mix of problems and challenges.

The impending EU referendum in June, the continued rifts in London’s social fabric, the challenge both globally, from tech rivals San Francisco and financial rivals New York, and at home from increasingly devolved ‘Northern Powerhouses’, will mean the new incumbent has their work cut out in nurturing the city’s role as the UK’s economic dynamo.

Balancing the needs and wants of the people, with the desires and drives of the business and development community will always be tricky. But in London, with its divisive vanity projects and petrodollar apartment complexes, shouldering up against multicultural communities and an increasingly marginalised working class, the problem is more pronounced than anywhere else.

Perhaps a defining moment in the new Mayor’s tenure will come very early on, with the decision over the controversial £800m Bishopsgate Goodyard development in Shoreditch.

Despised by the local community, but feted by property developers, the tower was set to become the capital’s biggest skyscraper until Boris fudged the issue and delayed City Hall’s decision until after the Mayoral Election.

Giving the plans the nod sends out an early pro-business and pro-development message, but one that is deaf to the protests and opposition of the community. Knock the plans back, and many in the business community will start to get very uncomfortable indeed about the priorities of the new Mayor.

Business owners and London’s residents (or at least the 32% who are predicted to actually turn out and vote) will certainly be looking on with interest.

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