James Cleverly has resigned from Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet in order to seek selection as the Conservative Party’s candidate for London Mayor in 2028.
Labour’s Sadiq Khan, now Lord Khan of Tooting, has been Mayor of London since 2016. It is not yet know whether Mayor Khan will seek an unprecedented fourth term in two years.
Born to run: James Cleverly has resigned from the shadow cabinet
Since the Greater London Authority was founded in 2000, the Tories have only held the capital’s mayoralty for eight years, through Boris Johnson between 2008 and 2016.
Polling conducted this month placed the Tories in third place in London, with Labour on a commanding (by recent standards) 33%, with Reform Ltd on 20%, the Conservatives on 18%, the Greens on 14% and LibDems 10%.
Only the Farage party has selected a candidate for London Mayor in 2028. Mother of seven and former Westminster Tory councillor, Laila Cunningham, has already been plastered over billboards in south London and was prominent in the grifters’ party’s local election campaigning in May, even though she was not a candidate.
No expense spared: Reform spent £5m on May’s local elections, featuring full-page newspaper ads that featured two people who were not candidates
The same public opinion survey this month (by Savanta for the Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London) reported 42% of Londoners saying that they think Khan has done a good job as London’s Mayor.
All of which puts Cleverly’s early move in the category of “brave, but potentially futile” gesture politics.
It is likely, however, that Cleverly will perform better with Londonders than the Tories’ 2024 joke candidate, Harrow hairdresser Susan Hall.
Hall lost the Conservatives almost 3% points from the 2021 London elections, when witless Shaun Bailey was the poorly performing Tory.
In 2024, Khan won an historic third term with 43.8% of the vote.
Cleverly, 56, a former Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, is known to be somewhat bored with his current shadow portfolio – housing, communities and local government – and he may have chosen his moment because Badenoch is mapping out a reshuffle ahead of shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho taking maternity leave.
Today, Cleverly announced: “I am putting myself forward to be the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, because our capital needs more than an administrator.
“I must be free to speak about every aspect of London’s future and concentrate fully on winning this race.”
He said he wanted to restore London’s standing in the world. “We must rebuild its reputation and make it, once again, the best place in the world to live, work, invest and build a business.”
Cleverly was knighted in 2025 for services to something or other, and has the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Royal Artillery reserves.
Born in Lewisham, Cleverly was the Tories’ London Assembly Member at City Hall for Bromley and Bexley in the “Boris years” 2008 to 2016. He was elected as the Conservative MP for Braintree, Essex, in 2015.
Affable: the then Foreign Secretary agreed to a picture with one Croydon pub-goer. But he blanked iC’s Editor…
Cleverly topped the poll in the third round of the 2024 Conservative Party leadership contest, but ended up third after some shenanigans in the final round by “Honest Bob” Jenrick managed to scupper both campaigns, leaving the way clear for Badenoch’s victory.
Badenoch’s office, or possibly Badenoch herself, was today briefing that Cleverly “is a formidable politician and will out-campaign Khan”. They indicated that Badenoch “really didn’t want James to leave shadow cabinet”, but believed “he will be a big asset in London”.
Cleverly today accused Prime Minister Andy Burnham of treating London as a “cash cow: somewhere to tax, regulate, raid and blame”.
He said: “Londoners need homes they can afford to buy or rent. Entrepreneurs need to be able to start and grow businesses without being strangled by cost and regulation.”
Cleverly is known to be affable, gaffe-prone (he has issued apologies more than once for his choice of language and crass rohypnol jokes) as well as loyal. That includes turning up for a birthday party thrown by erstwhile Sutton and Cheam MP Paul Scully at The Oval Tavern in early 2024, when the then Cabinet minister was accompanied by a couple of burly Special Branch minders.
Cleverly’s not that affable, however: he refused to pose for a selfie with the Editor of Inside Croydon.
Read more: Tories plump for Trump-supporting hairdresser to run London
Read more: Scully gets serious in race to be London Mayor candidate
Read more: Tory Bailey considers scrapping Freedom Pass for under-75s
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