Next May Sadiq Khan will stand for an unprecedented third term as Mayor of London, that's a given, but we don't yet know what his opposition looks like. We know the Green Party candidate will be Zoë Garbett and the Reform Party candidate will be Howard Cox because they were announced last year, but we don't yet know who the other big parties will select nor which egomaniac independents will step forward.
What we do now have is a shortlist of three for the Conservative nomination, announced yesterday. None are household names, but one of them will be next month after party members have had their say in the selection process, and whoever's victorious will be the only practical opposition to gifting Sadiq four more years at City Hall.
Here's the Tory Mayoral shortlist:
• Susan Hall (Assembly Member, former leader of the GLA Tories)
• Daniel Korski (political adviser and businessperson)
• Mozammel Hossain (Bangladeshi-born barrister)
One is vocally anti-Khan, one embraces all things technological and one doesn't even have a social media profile, so they're quite a triptych. I already suspect I know which one will win the nomination and I also know which one I wouldn't dream of voting for, and they may in fact be the same person.
Susan Hall
Susan entered London politics in 2006 as a councillor for Hatch End. By 2013 she was Leader of Harrow council, but only for eight months during a phase of minority rule. In 2016 she just failed to be elected to the London Assembly, because 4th place on the shortlist gets you nothing, but the following year this meant she inherited Kemi Badenoch's vacated seat. Since 2019 she's been the leader of the Conservatives on the London Assembly, so she's well used to holding Sadiq to account across the chamber, and it would be true to say she's very much not a fan.
Susan's has three priories: "fix policing, scrap ULEZ on day 1 and build more family homes".
Crime is number 1, indeed her campaign slogan is Safer With Susan. She claims "burglars, muggers and thieves are running rampant because they do not fear the police anymore. I will hunt them down and lock them up, by creating a team within the Met specially trained to find and catch these criminals." She also wants to tackle knife crime and wouldn't be afraid to use the latest artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology to do so.
Just as Boris came to power pledging to scrap the western extension of the Congestion Charge zone, and did, Susan wants an end to ULEZ expansion. That makes sense, it's by far Sadiq's least popular policy and for many drivers the upcoming Mayoral election will be a one-issue referendum. In its place she promises "a common sense environment plan", a populist pledge which means whatever you think it does. She also says "LTN’s are disastrous for neighbourhoods - they should be removed!" and wants to make life easier for cabbies. As yet she has very little to say about cycling and public transport but reckons TfL should be "looked at as a business" and she'd attempt to introduce organisational reforms.
As for housing, when she says she wants to "build a lot more homes in the right places" she means family-sized homes, not endless stacks of flats. She says she'd "re-instate the Public Land Commission to tell us what disused public land can be used to build more homes" and would "adjust the London Plan to allow developers to provide more parking spaces on site." It all comes across as an Outer London approach to the Mayoralty, suggesting that's where her battleground would be, and which may not be good news for Inner London if she wins.
Daniel is a former political adviser and current business enabler. He was born in Denmark, studied at LSE and between 2013 and 2016 worked for David Cameron as deputy head of the Number 10 Policy Unit. He's also a vice-president of the Jewish Leadership Council and hasn't been elected to anything since he was a student council president. He represents a very different Conservatism to Susan, less abrasive, more entrepreneurial and more likely to pop up on a human rights march than on GB News.
His big campaign idea is to restore the London Dream - "a city where vision, passion, and hard work are rewarded, regardless of your background". That's a rock solid Tory philosophy. But rather than being divisive he wants to bring everyone together in a new mission, embracing technology and (cough) AI to unlock the full potential of the capital. Uplifting buzzwords ahoy.
His website is light on detail, but the key policies scrolling across the top of the page are Make London Safe · Scrap ULEZ Expansion · Build More Houses · Win On Tech · Scrap London Business Rates (plus one more idea that never quite makes it all the way onscreen). So it's crime/ULEZ/housing again, just like Susan, but also breaks for entrepreneurs and a forward-looking digital approach.
Daniel wants more police on the streets and would be willing to introduce "a levy that charges tourists 1 or 2 pounds per night for hotel stays". He also wants more homes and would "focus on building on unused TfL and DfT land", assuming his predecessors have left him any.
He says he wants to cancel the extension of the ULEZ because "in outer London, people really need their cars", but he's also not averse to road-charging or some other kind of pollution tax so drivers might not get a free ride. His key pollution focus instead appears to be the tube where air pollution "is 15x worse than on any road in London" and where he thinks the solution could be more platform screen doors like they have in Seoul.
If his Twitter feed is anything to go by, Daniel likes looking at environmental solutions implemented around the world and querying why they can't be tried here. Ideas mooted intweets include "It must be possible to build beautifully over rail tracks like this" and "why not sell space on the outside of Tube carriages like in Las Vegas" and "could all billboards along London’s main polluting roads be made to use photocatalytic nanotechnology to help address the city’s pollution?". Daniel's also got plans for rephasing traffic lights overnight, maybe even switching them to flashing amber, but we'll probably only hear more about that brainwave if he wins through.
And here's the unexpected wildcard on the shortlist. City Hall watchers were expecting to see Paul Scully, Minister for London, or maybe Andrew Boff, the eternal Mayor-trier, but instead here's someone who didn't even announce publicly they were standing. Mozammel is a barrister, the first Bangladeshi-born criminal barrister ever to be appointed Queen’s Counsel, and is employed in chambers at 187 Fleet Street.
On their website we learn he is “A very fine courtroom performer", "hugely charismatic and an indomitable fighter", "has a very fine legal brain." and "a rarity at the current Bar; someone with an inimitable style, good humour and charm." These are all fine attributes for a Mayor of London. But of his political views I can find nothing online other than that he went out last month campaigning with East Ham Conservatives, so he has an absolute mountain to climb to impress the membership in five weeks flat.
» Mozammel's website
» Mozammel's Twitter account
» Mozammel's interview with anybody at all
It's plainly a two-horse race, that's Susan versus Daniel, and two very different horses at that. Susan's more your red wall Tory, Daniel more blue. Susan's very Leave, Daniel unapologetically Remain. Susan's more Daily Mail, Daniel more Financial Times. Susan reminds me more of previous Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey, who she greatly admires, while Daniel's much more of a Zac Goldsmith. It'll all come down to which of the pair Conservative members prefer and, just as when Liz Truss faced off against Rishi Sunak, I suspect they'll plump for passion over vision, for heart over head.
Susan Hall's pitch to Londoners begins with the statement "We all know what needs to be done to repair the damage Sadiq Khan has caused to this city". This is plainly a false empty over-generalisation but one which millions of Londoners will nod along to. I'd say she's the Tories' best chance of taking the Mayoralty, if only because she'll bash the We Need Change drum relentlessly, although I doubt that her change would be for the better. Always beware Mayoral candidates who claim their ideas are common sense - I thought we'd learned that from Boris.
