2022 London local elections

The previous borough council elections in May 2018 saw the London Labour Party achieve their best result in over 45 years, winning 44% of the vote, 1,128 councillors and control of 21 councils. This represented the party's second-best result in a London local election, only surpassed slightly by its 1971 total. The London Conservatives, lost 92 seats to finish with 508 councillors, its lowest-ever tally of seats in a London local election. The London Liberal Democrats won two councils from the Conservatives, the London Green Party won a total of 11 council seats and support for the UK Independence Party collapsed, with the party losing all of its seats.[2][3][4] In the 2019 general election, there was no net change in the number of seats for each party, although several seats changed hands. The biggest changes in vote share were for Labour, who received 48% of the vote across the city but saw a fall of 6.5 percentage points, and the Liberal Democrats, who were up 6.1 percentage points compared to the previous 2017 general election.

Newham and Tower Hamlets held local referendums in May 2021 on whether to abolish their mayoral positions and return to a leader and cabinet system.[5][6][7] Both resulted in voters choosing to retain the mayoral model.[8] In the same month, the Labour candidate Sadiq Khan was re-elected as the mayor of London, and the 2021 London Assembly election resulted in small gains for the Conservatives, Green Party and Liberal Democrats at the expense of Labour and the UK Independence Party. Croydon Council held a referendum on 7 October 2021 on whether to adopt a mayor position.[9][7] The result was to change to the mayoral system, with the first mayor being due to be elected alongside the council election in 2022.[10]

Twenty-five of the thirty-two boroughs will be electing councillors under new ward boundaries following reviews by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England.[11]

In January 2022, the Conservative peer Robert Hayward said that in the wake of the Westminster lockdown parties controversy, his party risked losing control of Wandsworth, Westminster, Barnet and Hillingdon London Borough Councils.[12] Polls of London in January and March 2022 showed Labour with a large lead over the Conservatives. Dave Hill in OnLondon wrote that the poll results would make Labour more confident of making gains in Barnet, Wandsworth, Hillingdon and Westminster, and of winning the new directly-elected mayoralty of Croydon despite financial issues in the borough. He also wrote that the Conservatives were aiming to make gains in Harrow.[13] Nick Bowes, the chief executive of the Centre for London, wrote that Labour gaining control of Barnet and Wandsworth councils would "be a good night for the party in London".[14] The academics Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher wrote that Labour's strong result in the 2018 election meant "it may be hard for Labour to make much headway or for the Conservatives to fall much further".[15]

A poll by Survation on what issues would affect how people voted showed Council Tax, the Westminster lockdown parties controversy, and social care quality as the main issues, with far fewer voters ranking Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes as one of the issues that would most affect how they vote.[16]

The Liberal Democrats launched their local election campaign on 6 April. The party were targeting seats on Merton Council.[17] Labour launched their London local election campaign on 9 April, with the national party leader Keir Starmer and the mayor of London saying that the Conservative government had "abandoned" London and were not concerned about the rising cost of living.[18]

The journalist Ben Walker, writing in the New Statesman, modelled what the election results would look like according to the voteshares in an April poll by Opinium. His model showed Labour gaining control of Wandsworth and Barnet, with 1,157 to 1,188 seats across the city, while the Conservatives would win between 428 and 452 seats, the Liberal Democrats would win between 149 and 179 seats, and the Green Party would win between 11 and 22 seats.[19]

• 2022 City of London Corporation election