London mayoral election, 2012

The London mayoral election of 2012 was an election held on Thursday 3 May 2012, to elect the Mayor of London. It was won by the incumbent mayor Boris Johnson of the Conservative Party. The election was held on the same day as the London Assembly election.

Incumbent Conservative Boris Johnson was seeking re-election for a second term as Mayor. Ken Livingstone, who was Mayor between 2000 and 2008, was seeking a third, non-consecutive term as the Labour candidate.

Background

At the 2008 mayoral election, Boris Johnson defeated incumbent mayor Ken Livingstone. Livingstone's defeat had been attributed to a loss of support amongst swing voters and voters in London's outer suburbs. The contest was also one of the 2008 local elections, which generally demonstrated poor results for Labour.

Candidates and their selection processes

Conservative Party

Media reports alleged tension between Johnson and the national Conservative leadership as well as the Conservative-controlled central government. This might have led Johnson to seek a parliamentary seat to challenge these two entities rather than seek a second term as mayor. However, on 10 September 2010, he announced his intention to stand for a second term. At a re-selection meeting on 14 October 2010, he faced a period of questioning, before being unanimously adopted as the Conservatives' candidate.

London mayoral election, 2008

The London mayoral election, 2008 for the office of Mayor of London was held on 1 May 2008 and was won by Conservative Party candidate Boris Johnson. It was the third London mayoral election, the previous elections being the first election in May 2000 and the second election in June 2004. The election saw a large 8.8% swing (total votes) from the Labour candidate to the Conservative candidate since the 2004 election, which remains the largest swing between the two major parties in a London mayoral election.

Boris Johnson became the second Mayor of London and the first Conservative to hold the office since its creation in 2000. This became the first London Mayoral election in which the incumbent mayor was defeated by a challenger. The popular vote achieved by Boris Johnson remains the largest ever polled by winning mayoral candidate.

Results

Candidate selection process

London mayoral election, 2000

The first election to the office of Mayor of London took place on 4 May 2000. The election was won by Independent candidate, Ken Livingstone, who solidly defeated the Conservative candidate Steven Norris in what remains the largest margin of victory for a mayoral candidate.

This remains the last election which was not won by a candidate representing the Labour Party or Conservative Party. The percentage of the popular vote which was won by Ken Livingstone remains the largest ever achieved by a winning candidate for mayor.

Results

Candidates

Banks (singer)

Jillian Rose Banks (born June 16, 1988), known simply as Banks (often stylized as BANKS), is an American singer and songwriter from Orange County, California. She releases music under Harvest Records, Good Years Recordings and IAMSOUND Records imprints of the major label Universal Music Group.

She has toured internationally with The Weeknd and was also nominated for the Sound of 2014 award by the BBC and an MTV Brand New Nominee in 2014. On May 3, 2014, Banks was dubbed as an "Artist to Watch" by FoxWeekly.

Early life

Jillian Rose Banks was born in Orange County, California. Banks started writing songs at the age of fifteen. She taught herself piano when she received a keyboard from a friend to help her through her parents' divorce. She says she "felt very alone and helpless. I didn't know how to express what I was feeling or who to talk to."

Career

2013–present: Breakthrough and Goddess

Banks used the audio distribution website SoundCloud to put out her music before securing a record deal. Her friend Lily Collins used her contacts to pass along her music to people in the industry; specifically Katy Perry's DJ Yung Skeeter, and she began working with the label Good Years Recordings. Her first official single, called "Before I Ever Met You" was released in February 2013. The song which had been on a private SoundCloud page ended up being played by BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe. Banks released her first EP Fall Over by IAMSOUND Records and Good Years Recordings.Billboard called her a "magnetic writer with songs to obsess over." Banks released her second EP called London by Harvest Records and Good Years Recordings in 2013 to positive reviews from music critics, receiving a 78 from Metacritic. Her song "Waiting Game" from the EP was featured in the 2013 Victoria's Secret holiday commercial.

London, Ontario

London is a Canadian city located in Southwestern Ontario along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city has a population of 366,151 according to the 2011 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the non-navigable Thames River, approximately halfway between Toronto, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan. The City of London is a separated municipality, politically separate from Middlesex County, though it remains the county seat.

London and the Thames were named in 1793 by Lord Simcoe, who proposed the site for the capital of Upper Canada. The first European settlement was between 1801 and 1804 by Peter Hagerman. The village was founded in 1826 and incorporated in 1855. Since then, London has grown to be the largest Southwestern Ontario municipality and Canada's 11th largest municipality, having annexed many of the smaller communities that surrounded it.

London is a regional centre of health care and education, being home to the University of Western Ontario, Fanshawe College, and several hospitals. The city hosts a number of musical and artistic exhibits and festivals, which contribute to its tourism industry, but its economic activity is centred on education, medical research, insurance, and information technology. London's university and hospitals are among its top ten employers. London lies at the junction of Highway 401 and 402, connecting it to Toronto, Windsor, and Sarnia. It also has an international airport, train and bus station.

Dickens' London

Charles Dickens' works are especially associated with London which is the setting for many of his novels. These works do not just use London as a backdrop but are about the city and its character.

Dickens described London as a Magic lantern, a popular entertainment of the Victorian era, which projected images from slides. Of all Dickens' characters 'none played as important a role in his work as that of London itself', it fired his imagination and made him write. In a letter to John Forster, in 1846, Dickens wrote 'a day in London sets me up and starts me', but outside of the city, 'the toil and labour of writing, day after day, without that magic lantern is IMMENSE!!'

However, of the identifiable London locations that Dickens used in his work, scholar Clare Pettitt notes that many no longer exist, and, while 'you can track Dickens' London, and see where things were, but they aren't necessarily still there'.

In addition to his later novels and short stories, Dickens' descriptions of London, published in various newspapers in the 1830s, were released as a collected edition Sketches by Boz in 1836.