Sadiq Khan must accept that Reform is no longer a bad joke

Unveiled by Nigel Farage as the Reform candidate for London mayor, Laila Cunningham is... an interesting choice. To run a female Muslim candidate against Sadiq Khan makes it harder for Labour to exploit the charge that Reform stokes xenophobia and Islamophobia. Cunningham, whose parents moved to London from Egypt in the sixties, describes herself as a “moderate Muslim”.

This gives her a top-level biography, which is all that most voters will take in, that could work well: moderate Muslim, former crown prosecutor, mother of seven (including two stepchildren). At her launch, she came across as articulate, tough on crime, and assimilationist on immigration. She has previously said that her parents “came with the sole aim of being British and to assimilate — if England’s playing Egypt in a World Cup, my mum would support England”. She is too “London hellhole” for my taste, but I have learnt that it is no use telling people that London, like the rest of Britain, is safer than it used to be. Khan tried to take credit for the reduction in knife attacks and murders in London the other day, and was simply howled down. The voters of London do not want to hear it: they want someone like Cunningham telling them what a terrible place they live and work in.

In other words, Cunningham is just what the spin doctor ordered, if Reform is serious about exploiting its historic opportunity to break open the British political system. The next mayoral election is still two and a half years away, in May 2028 (or “next year”, as Farage seemed to think), but it makes sense for Reform to launch what seems to be a strong candidate now. That gives time to develop a credible programme, and for any skeletons in her cupboard — always a higher risk with Reform candidates — to be shaken out.

We do not yet know whether Khan will run for a fourth term. He did say in September that that was his “intention” — although he immediately rephrased it as “I’ve given no indication that I’m not” — so he wasn’t sure, he said, why people were drawing the conclusion that this would be his last term.

Both Reform and the Conservatives say that they think Khan is beatable. I mean, they would, wouldn’t they? But his record is not so stellar that he can rely on London’s being a left-wing city to carry him against a strong candidate with sufficient cross-party appeal. Boris Johnson showed it could be done, and although Reform is a tougher proposition to sell to undecided voters, you can see how a candidate such as Cunningham could win. There is another unknown — apart from whether Khan will be the Labour candidate — that might complicate the picture, which is that we don’t yet know what the voting system will be next time. Labour has pledged to return to the supplementary vote system, allowing people to record a second preference, after the Tories switched to “first past the post”.

It may be harder for Reform to pick up second-preference votes, whereas Labour would benefit from Green and Lib Dem second preferences, provided its candidate is in the top two on first preferences. But any Labour candidate would be beatable if the Labour government is still as unpopular in 2028 as it is now. This is the other significance of Farage’s choice of Cunningham. Winning London a year before the likely date of the next general election would be a huge boost, at precisely the right time.

It is part of a strategy that could slot into place, and one that Labour in particular ought to take even more seriously than Keir Starmer, with his framing of the next election as a fight between Labour and Reform, already is. So far, it has been easy to dismiss Reform policies as an unworkable joke, and its personnel as the natural successors to the “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”, as David Cameron described Ukip, Farage’s previous party. Reform’s plan for mass indefinite detention of Channel migrants is unconvincing.