Voters in Waltham Forest have handed a comfortable victory to Labour’s Jennette Arnold in the London Assembly elections. Jennette won 134,307 votes (59 […]By Waltham Forest Echo

Jennette Arnold, who has held her North East London seat on the London Assembly at the 2016 London election

Voters in Waltham Forest have handed a comfortable victory to Labour’s Jennette Arnold in the London Assembly elections.

Jennette won 134,307 votes (59 percent) in the North East London constituency, which serves residents of Waltham Forest as well as the neighbouring boroughs of Hackney and Islington.

She finished more than 100,000 votes clear of the Conservative candidate Sam Malik, who won 32,565 votes (14 percent). Samir Jeraj, of the Green Party, came third with 29,401 votes (13 percent), and the Liberal Democrats’ Terry Stacey was fourth with 14,312 (six percent). UKIP’s Freddy Vachha came fifth, ahead of candidates from Respect, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and the Communist League.

It means Jennette Arnold is set to serve North East London for another four years, but unlike the previous eight years, she will now be joined at City Hall by a Labour mayor. Sadiq Khan triumphed to take over control of the Greater London Authority from the outgoing Conservative mayor Boris Johnson.

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Jennette was quick to congratulate Sadiq on Twitter. She said: “Congratulations Sadiq Khan. Can’t wait to see you deliver your Labour manifesto for London.”

On her own success, she added: “Thanks to all the voters in Waltham Forest, it is a great privilege to be elected to serve you for four more years on the London Assembly.”

Jennette was first elected to the London Assembly in 2000 and has represented the North East London constituency since 2004. In the lead-up to this year’s election she raised concerns about the local impact of cuts to police numbers and the fire service.

Sadiq, the MP for Tooting in south London, beat his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith, the MP for Richmond Park. After a bad-tempered campaign, Sadiq won a total of 1,310,143 votes (56.4 percent) compared to Zac’s 994,614 (43.2 percent), after both first and second preferences were counted.

Khan put pledges on more housing and affordable transport for London at the centre of his campaign and said in his victory speech: “I want to say thank you to every single Londoner, for making the impossible, possible.

“I promise to be a mayor for all Londoners and to make life better for everyone, regardless of their background, and ensure they get the same opportunities that were given to me.”

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