SADIQ KHAN won re-election as mayor of London with the smallest mandate since the post was created 24 years ago, analysis by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) shows.

Mr Khan received 43.8 per cent of Thursday's vote, securing him a third term in office.

Last week’s local elections in England and Wales were the first time that first past the post (FPP), rather than the supplementary vote (SV) system, had been used in many mayoral contests.

According to the ERS, the results mean that Mr Khan is returning to City Hall with the lowest level of support among Londoners who voted, compared with results under the previous system.

The switch to FPP has also seen police and crime commissioners (PCCs) win election on just over a third of the vote.

ERS chief executive Darren Hughes said: “What we are seeing at these elections is the bar being lowered for politicians while being raised for voters.  

“[Voters] now have mayors and PCCs the majority didn’t vote for. It is bad for elected politicians, who have to do their jobs with less backing for their policies, and it is bad for trust in democracy.

“We know that voter ID has already prevented at least 14,000 people from voting at last year’s local elections and this year we have again heard of voters, including a decorated ex-serviceman, being barred from exercising their fundamental democratic right due to not having an accepted form of ID.

“Our politics is headed in the wrong direction when we are making it harder for people to vote but easier for politicians to get elected by reducing voter choice at the ballot box.”

Mr Hughes called for the scrapping of the new requirement to show photographic proof of identification and an improvement in access to voting, as well as a move to “proportional and preferential voting systems that better represent how people voted.”