For most parties, having a former prime minister labelled a liar and exiting the Commons amid furious internal rows would be the biggest political disaster in years. But if you ask some Conservatives, it wasn’t even the worst this month.
Even the most optimistic Tories in London are politely baffled, it is fair to say, by the decision of party officials to unveil a shortlist of candidates for mayor comprising Daniel Korski, Susan Hall and Mozammel Hossain.
Others are openly furious, arguing that the move to exclude what they saw as the only two candidates who could have seriously challenged Sadiq Khan has in effect handed the city to Labour for another four years.
The first of those was Paul Scully, the minister for London and MP for Sutton and Cheam, who has years of experience on the London beat and had the backing of heavyweights including Kit Malthouse, the former cabinet minister and deputy mayor of London.
Many London Tories felt he was the obvious choice, having put in the hard yards, and were shocked that he didn’t make the shortlist. “He was by far the best equipped to take on Sadiq,” said one ally. “He was loyal to everyone.”
But by being loyal to “everyone”, no camp felt that Scully was particularly loyal to them. While he has not spoken publicly about his failure to make the shortlist, allies believe he was punished by Downing Street for loyalty to Boris Johnson.
Although Scully is not overly partisan, the MP was not among the mass of ministers who resigned in the final days of Johnson’s administration. However, his decision to continue serving in Rishi Sunak’s administration ruffled feathers with Team Johnson.
There is also controversy over the failure of another candidate seen as a potential frontrunner, Samuel Kasumu, to make even the initial longlist of eight, who were then brought in for interviews.
Kasumu, a former adviser on race issues to Johnson’s Downing Street, was seen as someone who could challenge Scully for the nomination, with a campaign based on housing and living costs intended to reach out to a potentially wider – and younger – pool of voters.
Allies of Kasumu, who resigned from No 10 amid worries about its direction on culture war issues, believe he was intentionally kept off the longlist because his policy priorities could have clashed with Sunak’s programme.
“You get the sense that some people around Sunak have decided they’re not likely to win in London anyway, and rather than have someone who might rock the boat they’ll write it off and think about the general election,” one said.
Korski, a former No 10 policy adviser under David Cameron, is seen as the favourite and has the backing of Michael Gove and the Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen. At a fundraising event of party donors this month, Gove claimed Korski would “light up” the race.
Yet Korski has already arguably demonstrated his political inexperience with a campaign based on ideas that create media coverage but are entirely unrealistic, such as switching off traffic lights overnight and restricting low-traffic neighbourhoods, neither of which are in the power of the mayor.
While Hall is a more seasoned politician – she has been a Tory member of the London assembly since 2017, and led the group for four years – she is also prone to saying curious things.
In 2021, she was reprimanded by the party for arguing that the deadly storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump was the equivalent of UK politicians who opposed Brexit. Yet Team Johnson put its weight behind her, although the former prime minister has not yet formally endorsed her.
The final candidate on the shortlist, Hossain, is a defence barrister with no political experience. Tory insiders say he is Downing Street’s pick and he has the backing of the property developer and Tory donor Nick Candy. Hossain has been nicknamed “Mysterious Moz” due to his virtually nonexistent public profile.
All three candidates have said they will campaign against Khan’s expansion of the ultra-low emission zone to all London boroughs in August. It may well win them some votes, especially in the outer London boroughs where the Tories have historically done well. However, by the time of the mayoral election next May the expansion will already be in place and removing it is a trickier prospect.
Amid the unfolding chaos and recrimination over the shortlist, Labour sources will say only that they are surprised Scully missed out and that he was the candidate the party had long assumed Khan would face next May.
Amid the surprise there is obvious, if unspoken, glee at the prospect of taking on one of three such politically low-wattage candidates, two of whom have no direct experience of frontline politics.
The Conservatives’ internal polling is said to show it is almost impossible for them to win in the capital.
Nonetheless, there is still extreme caution among Khan’s team about how and if he can win an unprecedented third term, with particular focus on the changed electoral system.
Previous elections were held using supplementary vote, in which voters had a first and second choice. In practice, this meant many Liberal Democrat and Green supporters would put their candidate top, with the second vote going to Labour when other candidates were eliminated.
Last year’s Elections Act changed this to first past the post, in a seemingly open attempt to give the Conservatives a better chance. In the last mayoral race, the Tory candidate, Shaun Bailey, came just five percentage points behind Khan in the first round. Labour officials are particularly worried that with no public information campaign about the change, many London voters will be unaware.
Tony Travers, a professor of local government at LSE, suggested that a “really high-octane” Tory candidate could get closer to Khan under the new system. He predicted that while a general election on the same day would benefit Labour, the long-term growth in its vote in the capital – and the long-term Tory decline – had levelled off.
“If the Conservatives can separate out their image in London from the country as a whole and come up with a separate offer as they have done in Scotland, there’s still scope for them to win back votes,” Travers said.
However, with the three remaining candidates lacking political heft, and little appetite in Downing Street for granting them freedom to strike out on their own, many London Tories fear the party is already consigned to yet another defeat.
