Labour Croydon and Sutton GLA candidate Marina Ahmad admitted she is sceptical about running in the 2020 London Elections after failing to gain a seat today.
Ms Ahmad came second to Conservative incumbent Stephen O’Connell despite votes for Labour increasing from 50,734 in 2012 to 58,542 in 2016.
Despite the positive gains in her campaign, the former Crown Prosecution Service barrister said the first thing she is going to do is focus on her family.
She said: “What is next for me is that I have a family birthday, it was my daughter’s birthday yesterday when it was polling day and still needs to be celebrated. I haven’t seen her actually.
“Let’s just have a bit of a rest a rethink and then think about what lies in store for the future.”
Despite seeing his lead increase, Mr O’Connell complimented Ms Ahmad on a hard fought campaign and the Labour candidate hopes this will have a positive effect for Croydon and Sutton.
She said: “We put issues on the table that were not basically considered before and I think that is something Steve O’Connell will take into consideration when he is making his decisions.
“The other issue of course that really needs this considered is that the Sutton Lib Dem vote has completely collapsed so that is something I think we need to be working on in Sutton.”
Ms Ahmad isn’t happy with the way Mr Goldsmith has acted during his campaign.
“Steve O’Connell is a decent bloke. I would have liked it if he would distance himself from what we feel as a quite disgusting and quite disgraceful campaign run by Zac Goldsmith,” she said.
“We don’t want someone like Zac Goldsmith as Mayor of London and basically London does not want him clearly.
“As I said Steve is a decent bloke and I wish he stood back and said ‘No what Zac is doing is actually nasty, it’s not right and too divisive.’”
