Labour MP Dawn Butler Says She Is Thinking of Running for London Mayor

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system

Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Labour MP Dawn Butler has told the Byline Festival that she is thinking about running for Mayor of London, as she declared that figures within her party need to start understanding that socialism “isn’t a dirty word”.

Speaking at the festival at Keele University, on Saturday, Butler was asked by Byline Times founding editor Peter Jukes whether she would consider running to succeed Sadiq Khan as London Mayor, and replied “yes, I would.”

Sadiq Khan has yet to declare whether he will run for a fourth time to be London Mayor at the next scheduled elections in 2028.

However, it has long been rumoured that he is preparing to step aside, with Butler’s name repeatedly mooted by senior figures inside City Hall as a potential anointed successor.

Butler was a former minister in Gordon Brown’s Government and served in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet, but was not reappointed by Keir Starmer when he became leader.

Keir Starmer’s Government Says Elon Musk’s X AI Chatbot Endorsing Hitler Is a ‘Matter for the Company’

The Prime Minister’s spokesman dismisses calls to leave the social media platform, despite its official ‘Grok’ bot posting a series of antisemitic comments

Adam Bienkov

Asked about what she thought of the Government’s performance so far, she replied that while she’d “rather be in Government than in opposition” she had been dismayed by its recent difficulties.

“I think government is difficult, but it doesn’t have to be this hard” she told a panel discussion on women in politics.

In an apparent criticism of the current leadership, she added that, “I think there are too many people at the moment in the Labour Party that don’t understand the Labour Party.

“They don’t understand that we were born from the trade union movement. They don’t understand that we are a Socialist Party, and that’s not a dirty word, and they don’t f***ing understand.”

Butler was among 47 Labour MPs to vote against the Government’s revised welfare plans last week, after Starmer was forced to abandon previous plans to make a series of cuts to disability benefits.

An outspoken figure on the left of the Labour party, Butler was famously thrown out of the House of Commons chamber in 2021 for refusing to retract her comments accusing Boris Johnson of being a liar.

Johnson was later suspended from the Commons for 90 days for deliberately lying to Parliament.

The 2028 London mayoral elections are set to be held again under the more proportional supplementary vote electoral system, following an announcement this week that Starmer’s Government will reverse changes made by the last Conservative Government to change the system to first past the post.