The Conservative Party has formally opened the contest to become its standard-bearer in the 2028 London mayoral election, with four declared candidates pitching radically different visions for a capital the party has not controlled since Boris Johnson left City Hall nine years ago. Applications closed this week, setting the stage for a selection process that senior figures acknowledge must produce a credible winner — not merely a “paper candidate” — if the Tories are to unseat Sir Sadiq Khan, who secured a historic third term in May 2024 and has since entered the House of Lords.
Gareth Bacon, the shadow minister for London, laid down the gauntlet at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. He accused his own party of treating the past two mayoral contests as afterthoughts, cutting the 2024 candidate Susan Hall adrift and failing to mount a serious challenge to a mayor he described as “toxic and divisive.” The message was unambiguous: 2028 must be different.
A shifted landscape
The political terrain has moved since Khan’s last victory. May’s local elections delivered a psychological boost: the Conservatives reclaimed Westminster and Wandsworth councils, traditional strongholds lost to Labour in 2022. Those wins, coupled with Reform UK’s early selection of Leila Cunningham and a crowded Liberal Democrat field featuring Sarah Olney and 2024 candidate Rob Blackie, have convinced Tory strategists that a path exists — provided they choose wisely.
The election is more than 18 months away, yet the race is already defined by a tension between experience and disruption. The shortlist is expected in November, with the final two candidates likely unveiled on 20 November — a date moved from Friday the 13th after superstitious murmurs within the party.
The contenders
Festus Akinbusoye brings an outsider’s energy. The former Bedfordshire police and crime commissioner, elected to Westminster City Council in May, arrived in Canning Town from Nigeria at 13. His pitch is unapologetically aspirational: “We do not have to accept that this is the best we can get.” He frames himself as the most “pro-policing, pro-house building, pro-business, pro-family, pro-growth mayor London has ever had,” arguing that the city’s unaffordability is a choice, not an inevitability.
Andrew Boff, by contrast, is the Assembly’s institutional memory. Chair of the London Assembly and a member since 2008, he is a fixture of City Hall politics — so much so that colleagues joke a selection contest would feel incomplete without him. His platform is granular: family-sized homes, self-build plots with land costs waived, and a pledge to reverse the outward expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone. “I’ve got a very ambitious programme of not telling people how much I love London,” he said, “but specifically what I’m going to do.”
Alex Challoner, a public affairs veteran who has called London home for 35 years, positions himself as the bold policy entrepreneur. His “Fare Watch” plan would deploy British Transport Police and retrained TfL staff to crack down on fare evasion, backed by a reporting tool in the TfL Go app. He also proposes a “London Plan you can read in an afternoon” and VAT cuts for gyms and breweries. “We have a choice between winning and losing for a fourth consecutive time,” he warned. “If we’re serious about winning we have to have some of the boldest policies that will appeal to Londoners.”
The frontrunner’s shadow
Looming over the field is Sir James Cleverly. The Braintree MP, former home secretary and foreign secretary, once served on the London Assembly and chaired the London Fire Authority. He is widely regarded as the establishment favourite — the “shoe-in,” in the parlance of conference corridors. His conference circuit schedule has been relentless.
Cleverly frames his candidacy as a mission rather than a promotion. “I hope to be a real champion for London, not just an administrator,” he said. “Someone with a real plan to make London a city we can be proud of again.” Yet baggage accompanies the CV: his Brexit hardliner credentials alienate swathes of the capital’s electorate, and his tenure at the Fire Authority — marked by significant cuts — will be scrutinised by unions and safety campaigners alike.
He insists party labels matter less than delivery. “Party political affiliations are less important than someone with a real plan,” he argued. Whether London members agree will be tested in the weeks ahead.
Why it Matters
The Conservative mayoral nomination is more than a personnel decision; it is a referendum on the party’s relevance in a city that has drifted steadily away from it. A credible candidate could force Labour to defend a record on housing, crime and transport that has left many Londoners frustrated — but a weak one risks cementing the perception that the Tories have surrendered the capital to a fourth Khan term, or worse, to a fragmented opposition where Reform and the Lib Dems siphon the anti-Labour vote. The choice made in November will signal whether the party intends to compete for London’s future or merely manage its decline.
