Nigel Farage vowed to unseat Sir Sadiq Khan today as he unveiled Reform’s candidate to be the mayor of London.
Mr Farage insisted Reform could kick out the three-term winning Labour leader as he confirmed Laila Cunningham, a former CPS prosecutor, mother of seven and ex-Tory councillor in Westminster.
Signalling that the 2028 election will be fought around law and order in the capital Mr Farage accused Sir Sadiq of standing by in the face of ‘a crimewave run by foreign criminal gangs, many of whom have come to this country illegally.’
Ms Cunningham, who joined Reform from the Conservatives last year, said that she would be ‘a new sheriff in town’ and also vowed to end Sir Sadiq’s ‘war on motorists’, including the expansion of the Ulez tax on cars.
The lawyer is the Muslim daughter of Egyptian immigrants who arrived in Britain in the 1960s.
Ms Cunningham took aim at Labour Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan’s record on crime, and said she had a ‘different message’ for Londoners.
Mr Farage said: ‘Laila Cunningham has already proven in her time with us as a party to be articulate, to be passionate, a mother, somebody who actually herself has had to effectively in the absence of the police, act as a police officer herself in defence of her children.
‘She, from this moment on, will be the head of Reform UK London, our candidate for the mayor next year and the face of our campaign as we fight a strong, vigorous campaign in all 32 London boroughs in the run up to May 7.’
The Reform leader described May’s local and devolved elections as ‘the single most significant set of electoral tests in this country between now and the general election’.
Mr Farage insisted Reform could kick out the three-term winning Labour leader as he confirmed Laila Cunningham, a former CPS prosecutor and ex-Tory councillor in Westminster
Ms Cunningham said local elections in London boroughs in May are the ‘first step’ to ‘reclaiming’ the city in the 2028 London mayoral elections.
‘There will be a new sheriff in town, and I’ll be launching an all-out war on crime,’ Ms Cunningham said.
She added: ‘I will set clear, high-level priorities for the Met to focus on tackling knife crime, drugs, robbery, shoplifting, rape.’
She also said she would task the police with ‘targeting, hunting and prosecuting rape gangs in London’.
Ms Cunningham said local elections in London boroughs in May are the ‘first step’ to ‘reclaiming’ the city in the 2028 London mayoral elections.
The Westminster councillor told a press conference: ‘Now I know that we’re still two and a half years away, but the election on May 7 is the first step.
‘It’s the first step to reclaiming our city. Now, these local elections, I tell everyone, will be a referendum on Sadiq Khan, on Labour’s broken London.
‘It’s London’s chance to vote out every councillor who’s propped him up and stayed silent while he’s let our city down.’
Mr Farage also said he would announce the leader of Reform UK Scotland at an upcoming press conference in Edinburgh next week.
