Thursday will be a pivotal moment for our borough and city, as Londoners choose between two very different visions for our city.
The choice could not be starker. You can vote for a Mayor of London who has backed our community or one who wants to talk London down.
A vote for the Labour candidate Sadiq Khan will be a vote for a Mayor who will fund free healthy school meals for our children, build 40,000 new council homes, freeze TfL fares, fund 250,000 positive opportunities for young Londoners, create 150,000 good jobs and put more neighbourhood police on our streets.
The alternative is the hard-right Tory candidate Susan Hall, who would raise Londoners’ travel fares, cancel universal free school meals and cancel new council homes. She has no plans to support young people, tackle the causes of crime or create jobs. Instead she supported the Liz Truss mini budget that crashed our economy and made bills, rents and mortgage payments shoot up, and she has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump and Enoch Powell too.
There are of course other candidates but this election will be a close two-horse race between the Labour and Tory candidates. That’s in part because the Conservative Party has changed the voting system for this election to make it easier for them to win. You no longer get to put your preferences for Mayor in order. Instead, you get to choose just one candidate. So your choice is to vote for the Labour candidate, Sadiq Khan, or a vote for any other candidate will help the Tory candidate to win.
Sadiq’s support for our community is not new. He is a regular visitor to Southwark and I’ve spent time recently with him in both Rotherhithe and Peckham, meeting local people and talking about the issues our community faces and how he can help us overcome them. He really does get it and his support has made a big difference.
In Southwark we are now building more new council homes than at any time since the 1970s, more than any other council in the country. The vast majority of these new council homes are part funded by Sadiq.
This school year we extend our free healthy school meals in Southwark so they are not just for all primary school children but for hundreds more secondary school children whose families are on low incomes too. Again this was made possible by extra funding from Sadiq.
Last month we had the brilliant news that Sadiq will be investing another £850,000 in positive activities for young people in our borough. Money we have matched with £1 million of council funding through our Positive Futures Fund too.
Sadiq has also backed our campaign to extend the Bakerloo Line, from Elephant to Lewisham and beyond. Work is already underway to build the new station at Elephant and Castle jointly funded by Sadiq and the council. In the meantime, Sadiq has also announced that if he is re-elected he will deliver a new ‘Bakerloop’ express bus down the Old Kent Road to speed up journey times while the new line is delivered.
It would be easy to take all of these things as for granted. But the Tories have made clear they would cancel many of them. Wrecking our city in the same way Liz Truss wrecked our national economy when she had just a few weeks in charge. We must not let them do the same to London.
I sometimes hear people say politicians are all the same and it makes no difference which way you vote. Well in this election that could not be further from the truth.
So if you care about children not going hungry, low TfL fares, new council homes and opportunities for young people then I encourage you to vote for Sadiq.
And don’t forget the Conservatives also introduced Voter ID as another way to make it easier for them to win, so remember to take your photo ID with you when you go to vote.