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James Cleverly has pledged to run a “classically Conservative” campaign to become the mayor of London, insisting that his victory in the capital would be a stepping stone for Kemi Badenoch to become prime minister.
The former home and foreign secretary denied he had resigned from the shadow cabinet to run for mayor following a shift to the right under Badenoch’s leadership.
However, in a series of interviews on Sunday he avoided speaking about culture wars issues, which have been a focus for the Conservative leader.
“I am going to put forward a classic Conservative case to be the mayor of London, and it’s about enterprise, it’s about opportunity,” Cleverly told Times Radio.
“That is a classically Conservative vision, and it will run in parallel to and supportive of Kemi’s plans for the country as a whole.”
If he wins his party’s nomination, Cleverly is expected to run a more moderate campaign than the last Tory candidate, Susan Hall. She drew criticism for claiming there was a “problem with crime” in the black community and was forced to apologise for liking a tweet in 2020 that had a picture of Enoch Powell captioned: “It’s never too late to get London back.” Hall lost to Labour’s Sadiq Khan in 2024, who won with 43.8% of the vote.
Cleverly, who lost his the Conservative leadership race to Badenoch, is considered a more moderate voice in a party that has moved to the right as support for Nigel Farage’s rightwing Reform UK has grown.
Giles Dilnot, the editor of Conservative Home, who has worked closely with Cleverly in the past, denied a rift and said he thought it unlikely the MP for Braintree was using his attempt to become mayor as a route to become the next Conservative leader. “There is not a hidden side order of ‘what’s next’ here,” he said.
Asked if Cleverly was likely to seek to put distance between himself and the Tory leader to attract more centre-left voters in the capital, he pointed to Cleverly’s 2024 speech during the Conservative leadership contest in which he called for his party to be “more normal”.
“Mayoral campaigns are often focused on the person – the personality is that extra 10% rather than just the rosette,” Dilnot said. “James is gloriously normal and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s selling what he is: a normal Londoner who wants the city to succeed.”
Prof Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, said the restoration of the supplementary vote system in the 2028 London mayoral election – where voters have a preferred first and second choice, with the second choice counted if no one wins more than 50% of the vote – meant Cleverly had to win over voters whose first choice was the Liberal Democrats.
“The last thing Cleverly would want to do is put off Liberal Democrats, whose party has been the main beneficiaries of the Conservatives’ shift to the right in the south of England,” Travers said. “I think we are likely to see him adopt a pre-Brexit traditional, centrist Conservative position.”
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The entrance of a Conservative big-hitter into the May 2028 contest will raise further questions about whether Khan, who was first elected in 2016, will run for a fourth term, a question he has thus far avoided.
A YouGov survey this month found that 56% of Londoners thought he should step down and allow a different Labour candidate to stand.
A recent poll for the Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London, found that Khan would win a fourth term if he stood despite a surge in support for the Greens. The Savanta survey put Labour on 33%, Reform on 20%, the Conservatives on 18%, the Greens on 14% and the Liberal Democrats on 10%.
If Khan steps out of the running, Dawn Butler, Labour MP for Brent East, is expected to stand, while other potential candidates in the Labour ranks include Rosena Allin-Khan and David Lammy, the former justice secretary.
Cleverly told LBC he thought Khan had “really lost passion for the job”, adding that as a Londoner he wanted to stand against “very anti-London” Andy Burnham.
“Andy Burnham just doesn’t get it,” he said. “He’s got a war with London, and London needs someone to fight its corner.”
