Tag Archives: greater london authority

Every four years Londoners elect the Greater London Authority in the form of the Mayor of London and the 25 members of the London Assembly. As it happens the elections due in 2020 were postponed a year, so when the elections take place in May 2024 the current incumbents will have been in place for just three years.

The main focus is on the election of the Mayor of London, which for the first time will be chosen using First Past the Post. In the past there has been a supplementary vote, so voters could express a second preference. That changed with the Elections Act 2022, most remembered for the introduction of voter ID. But there were some other nuggets buried in the Act, including this regressive move away from the supplementary vote for elections for Mayors and Police Commissioners – itself a rudimentary type of PR – to First Past the Post.

The London Assembly holds the Mayor to account, and its 25 members are selected using the Additional Member system.  London is divided into 14 largish constituencies, each of which elects one member to the London Assembly, using First Past the Post.

The 14 constituency members are then topped up with 11 members from the party lists. Voters select one party list – they have no choice about the candidates on each list or the order in which they appear, which will have been determined by the parties themselves using their own internal selection methods.