2016 London mayoral election in the context of "Boris Johnson"

The 2008 London mayoral election for the office of Mayor of London, England, was held on 1 May 2008. Conservative candidate Boris Johnson defeated incumbent Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone. It was the third London mayoral election, the previous elections being the first election in May 2000 and the second election in June 2004.

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 Johnson remained the largest polled by winning mayoral candidate until Labour candidate Sadiq Khan received 1,148,716 first-preference votes in 2016. The result was the first time that the Conservatives had won control of London-wide government since 1977.

The 2016 London Assembly election was an election held on 5 May 2016 to elect the members of the London Assembly. It took place on the same day as the London mayoral election and the United Kingdom local elections. Four parties had AMs in the previous Assembly: London Labour led by Len Duvall, London Conservatives led by Gareth Bacon, London Greens led by Siân Berry, and the London Liberal Democrats led by Caroline Pidgeon.

Labour received the largest number of votes ever cast for a party in a London Assembly election, becoming the first party to poll over 1 million votes. Although they gained Merton and Wandsworth from the Conservatives, their regional vote share declined by 0.8%, and they finished with 12 AMs, the same as in 2012. The Conservative Party won just 8 Assembly seats, its worst-ever performance in a London Assembly election. The Green Party retained its 2 Assembly members, although its 8.0% share of the regional vote represented its worst-ever result, and UKIP returned to the London Assembly for the first time since the election of 2004. The Liberal Democrats elected just 1 AM, their worst-ever result.

Frank Zacharias Robin Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith of Richmond Park (born 20 January 1975) is a British politician, life peer and journalist who served as Minister of State for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment from September 2022 to June 2023. A member of the Conservative Party, he was its candidate at the 2016 London mayoral election and was Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond Park from 2010 to 2016 and 2017 to 2019. Ideologically characterised as having liberal and libertarian views, he is known for his support for environmentalism and localism.

Born in London into the Goldschmidt family, the son of billionaire businessman and financier Sir James Goldsmith, he was privately educated at both Eton College and the Cambridge Centre for Sixth-form Studies. In 1998, his uncle Edward Goldsmith made him editor of The Ecologist, a position he retained until 2007. Goldsmith was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Quality of Life Policy Group in 2005, co-authoring its report published in 2007. Goldsmith was placed on the Conservative A-List of potential candidates in 2006 and, in March 2007, was selected through an open primary to contest the constituency of Richmond Park against incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Susan Kramer. At the 2010 general election, he was elected to Parliament winning the seat with a majority of 4,091 votes.