The metropolitan bohemian Withnail, played by Richard E Grant in the film Withnail & I, is so appalled by life away from inner London that he declares: ‘We’ve gone on holiday by mistake.’
Among the metropolitan bohemians who run the Tory party in the capital, the selection of Susan Hall as mayoral candidate was regarded with similar abject horror. Only in their case the sentiment was: ‘We’ve chosen a real Conservative by mistake.’
One of their usual more-liberal-than-the-liberals types was supposed to have glided to the nomination. But Dan (Daniel Korski) and Moz (Mozammel Hossain), called up from the open-necked shirt brigade of smooth talkers, both self-immolated during the campaign. The last person standing was Hall, a woman in late middle-age from Middlesex, that outer-London land of white vans and light industrial estates.
London Labour MPs are now reduced to crossing their fingers
Worse still, she was an out-and-out right-winger who spoke up for people accused by Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan of being from the ‘Far Right when the campaign against his Ulez extension was gathering momentum in the Spring.
A longstanding friend of Hall’s tells me: ‘All this Far Right stuff is just nonsense. Susan is no further to the right than the likes of Lee Anderson or Suella Braverman.’ That formulation will hardly assuage the kind of Zone One Tories who continue to believe there is a Rory Stewart-shaped hole in the political life of the capital. But it does mean that Hall, former leader of the Conservative group at City Hall and an expert at getting under Khan’s skin, is a good fit for the politics of the moment.
Because outer London is in full-scale rebellion against Khan. The uprising is not only focused on the Ulez expansion – though that was at the core of the Tories surprising victory at the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election a few weeks ago. There is a more general rejection of his mayoralty in full swing. His failure to get a grip on law and order in the capital also looms large, as does his predilection for a remorseless identity politics focused on stoking grievance among minority groups. There is a widespread feeling that whoever it was in his office who recently captioned a photo of a white nuclear family ‘does not represent real Londoners’ just said the quiet part out loud.
As the veteran actor Nigel Havers recently put it: ‘Sadiq Khan is the worst possible thing that could happen to London. I don’t think he should be allowed to have a third term.’
Given that the Government has dumped proportional representation for the mayoral election and restored first-past-the-post, Hall is the one person standing in his way. With the Lib Dem and Green candidates bound to score at least a ten per cent vote share between them, even amid a campaign squeeze from the big parties, Hall could win with a 45 per cent vote share. Should Jeremy Corbyn throw his leftist cap into the ring, as is rumoured, that winning post would come even further within reach.
Khan has, meanwhile, resisted all pressure from within Labour ranks to postpone his Ulez extension and many London Labour MPs are now reduced to crossing their fingers that the political blowback will abate in time for the mayoral election in early May.
Theoretically, people will have had time to sell their old diesel cars and vans and learned to love their clean and shiny new vehicles. But the financial pain of doing so is likely to linger, as is the high-handed approach of a mayor who has all but accused them of choking infants to death.
In Hall, the daughter of a garage mechanic from Harrow, the residents of the outer boroughs – who after all outnumber those of the inner ones covered by the old Ulez – have one of their own to vote for. Out in travel zone four and beyond, social attitudes tend to be conservative. For instance, in Barking & Dagenham, Bexley, Havering, Hillingdon and Sutton many voters backed Leave in the 2016 referendum – as did Hall – and several other outer boroughs came very close to doing so.
Were mass migration-sceptic, pro tax-cutting, lock ‘em up Hall to prevent Khan from winning a third term in London just six months out from a general election, it would surely be a game-changing moment for Rishi Sunak. Authentic Conservatism, of a type that would be recognised by a time traveller from the 1980s, would have prevailed again. And it would all have happened by mistake.
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