Former home secretary James Cleverly has too much baggage to win back London for the Tories because of his association with Liz Truss, the underdog for the Tory mayoral nomination has said.
Festus Akinbusoye, 48, the former Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner and now London councillor, told The i Paper that the Conservatives need a “fresh face” in the capital “without links to the past” to end the party’s losing streak in London.
The Tories – who have lost three consecutive mayoral elections to Labour’s Sadiq Khan – are currently in the process of deciding who will be their candidate for the 2028 race.
Brits pick greatest ‘driving anthems’ of all time
British motorists have voted to decide on the best driving anthem of all time.
Here are the results…
New research
Drivers vote
A new poll of 2,000 UK drivers, commissioned by Isuzu UK, has unveiled British motorists’ favourite driving anthem.
The tunes
Bruce Springsteen, Miley Cyrus and Bon Jovi were among the artists attributed with providing the best highway tracks. But did they come out on top?
Top five driving anthems
- 1Hotel California – The Eagles. The 70s hit saw 27 per cent of those surveyed name the 1977 classic rock song as the ultimate driving anthem.
- 2Born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen. The 1984 hit just missed top spot, with 24 per cent.
- 3. The 2023 hit from the American pop star came in third with 22 per cent.
- 4Boys of Summer – Don Henley. Another from 1984, the song placed fourth with 21 per cent.
- 5Livin’ on a Prayer – Bon Jovi. The 1986 power ballad took 18 per cent of the votes.
What else are drivers saying?
Meanwhile, 40 per cent of drivers polled admitted to singing along to tunes in the car around seven times a week, despite a third (33 per cent) admitting they have startled passengers with their “enthusiastic” vocals.
Three in 10 (31 per cent) agreed that certain songs bring back fond childhood memories of family holidays and day trips.
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Who was ex-MP and ‘master storyteller’ Jeffrey Archer?
The bestselling author and former politician has died at the age of 86.
But who was Jeffrey Archer?
Archer passes away ‘suddenly’
Jeffrey Archer, renowned novelist and former Conservative politician, died “suddenly and peacefully at home between writing sessions” on Monday, his publisher HarperCollins said in a statement.
Alongside his political career, Archer was a wildly successful novelist, during his five-decade career and being made a in 1992.
Early life
Archer was born an only child in Weston-super-mare on 15 April 1940. After completing his education at Wellington School in Somerset, Archer attended Oxford in October 1963.
He went for a one-year course, the Diploma in Education, but ended up staying for three years, just as though he were a typical undergraduate.
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Political career
- Archer was first elected MP for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth in 1969.
- In 1985, Margarat Thacher appointed him deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
- The same year, Archer also set up his own PR firm, Archer Enterprises, and in 1992 was created a life peer.
- At the turn of the century, he was the Tory candidate to be Mayor of London; then scandal struck.
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Time in jail
- Archer’s political career was paused in 2001 when he was jailed for four years for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
- A jury found he lied in libel action he had brought against newspaper, in which he was awarded £500,000 in damages.
- Archer was released early in 2003 and returned to the House of Lords until he retired in 2024.
Archer the novelist
- Archer wrote his first novel, Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less, in 1974, after almost going bankrupt.
- An instant best seller, it sparked a prolific career as an author which ultimately made him a millionaire.
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It has been one of the great privileges of my publishing life to have been Jeffrey Archer’s editor. He was the master storyteller and an editor’s dream – phenomenally hard-working, utterly committed to completing draft after draft to get every word as perfect as possible, and a true champion of the ‘team’ nature of great publishing.
kate elton, harpercollins uk chief executive
Final act
Everybody would like to run their last 100m at the Olympics and win the gold medal, but there’s always a time. I think the clever thing in life is when to get out.
Archer declared in an interview just last week that he “shall not be retiring”. His final novel, a Second World War-era historical fiction was published Tuesday, hours after his death was announced.
Badenoch pays tribute
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said she was “incredibly saddened” to hear of Archer’s passing. “He had sent me a lovely message just this morning and was always a great source of encouragement to me personally,” she added.
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UK POLITICS
Tories pledge ‘Britannia Shield’ – how would it work?
The Conservatives have pledged to invest £10bn in a British missile defence system which has drawn comparisons to Israel’s elaborate “Iron Dome”.
Here’s how it could work, and how much the experts think it might really cost.
What is the ‘Britannia Shield’?
Air defence system
The Tories have promised to build a new UK air defence system if voted into power.
How will it work?
The “Britannia Shield” would provide systems to detect and stop incoming threats using interceptor missiles.
British ‘Iron Dome’?
But Kemi Badenoch has pushed back on comparisons to Israel’s Iron Dome system.
We are not building the Iron Dome. We are doing what other European countries are doing: Greece, Benelux countries, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and Germany. We are designing something specific for the kind of threat that we face here.
conservative party leader kemi badenoch
How much will it cost?
The Conservatives have estimated the system will cost £10bn to set up, but previous estimates place the cost at £80bn.
The programme, the Tories say, would be funded through the party’s plans to increase defence spending to three per cent of GDP by 2030 by slashing Britain’s welfare bill.
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Current levels of protection
- The UK has some existing protection in the form of RAF Typhoons which could shoot down hostile drones, but the jets cannot track or intercept ballistic missiles.
- The Royal Navy’s Type 45 Destroyers, equipped with Sea Viper air-defence systems, can intercept missiles, but must be in UK waters to be fully effective.
- Britain could rely on its Nato allies, to some extent, in the event of a strike by Russia, but military experts have long warned the country needs a full Iron Dome-style missile-defence shield.
Expert opinion
This is a well over-due commitment to fill the void in defending Britain as global security deteriorates.
Former Tory defence minister Tobias Ellwood said: “It’s only a matter of time before a military base or a corner of our critical national infrastructure is targeted and currently, we have no air defence.
So far, the declared contenders are Cleverly, Akinbusoye and Alex Challoner, a former Tory adviser who founded a public affairs firm.
The party plans to create a shortlist of up to three names to be voted on by London members, with a candidate expected to be in place by the end of the year.
As a former home and foreign secretary and MP of 11-years standing, Cleverly is the clear favourite for the nomination.
Cleverly ‘tarnished by his association with Truss’
However, in an interview with The i Paper, Akinbusoye suggested that the Braintree MP was tarnished by his association with Truss.
When The i Paper put to Akinbusoye that Cleverly had occupied two great offices of state, he replied: “To which prime ministers?”
Cleverly was appointed foreign secretary by Truss – whom he backed to be prime minister in the 2022 Tory leadership contest – but then retained in the post by Rishi Sunak when he took over after the disastrous mini-budget.
Akinbusoye said: “I am unencumbered by the past 14 years. I don’t have that bag to carry.”
Arguing that Cleverly – whom he referred to as “the other guy” – would be held back by his record in government, he said: “Look, ultimately the Conservative Party’s got to decide: do we want a candidate for the Conservative Party? Or do we want a candidate for London?
“Do [we] want a candidate that speaks to London, that speaks to the breadth of support we need to get both in and out of London, or one that just speaks to Conservative Party members?
“I know which one I would go.”
He also claimed he could follow other former Tory underdogs in pulling off an upset. “So was David Cameron [the underdog]… so was Margaret Thatcher,” he said.
“I could even go across the Atlantic and say so was [New York City mayor Zohran] Mamdani, right, even though I do not agree with his politics at all.”
Akinbusoye, who was born in Nigeria and moved to the UK at the age of 13, served as Britain’s first Black police and crime commissioner from 2021 to 2024.
He was the Conservative candidate in the 2023 Mid Bedfordshire by-election sparked by Nadine Dorries’ resignation as an MP, but was beaten by Labour’s Alistair Strathern. In this year’s local elections he was elected to Westminster City Council, helping the Tories to wrest back control of the flagship council from Labour.
Akinbusoye: ‘I would be more in touch with Londoners’
Akinbusoye suggested that compared to Cleverly he would be more in touch with the lives of ordinary Londoners dealing with issues such as cost of living pressures and unaffordable housing.
“I’m still very much in the world where these guys live, as opposed to the worlds of those who’ve been in politics for decades,” he said.
Growing up in London, he had “felt the pain and the pressures that many Londoners face”, including moving “from one temporary accommodation to another” during his teens. Later, he set up a security business for cinemas from his father’s council flat, but still ended up being priced out of the capital altogether by his early twenties.
“When I moved out of my house, my dad’s council flat in Canning Town, I had about four employees in my business. I could not afford a place to rent let alone buy,” he said.
Promising to “get homes built in London” if he becomes mayor, he said: “Who better to fix it than someone who’s lived it?”
As someone who was born abroad, Akinbusoye hit out at Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf for recent comments implying that British citizens born in other countries were suspect when running for elected office.
Yusuf, Restore’s home affairs spokesman, caused a storm last month when he posted on X about Labour’s candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, Sagal Abdi-Wali, a former child refugee from Somalia. Yusuf had said: “The frontrunner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former prime minister Keir Starmer in our parliament was born in Somalia. Do you understand what’s happening?”
Akinbusoye said it was “extraordinary” that Yusuf made the remarks given he is the son of Sri Lankan immigrants to Britain.
“If he had his way. I will never hold a public office in Britain,” he said. “I don’t believe the vast majority of British people think that way, believe that way, or support that kind of thinking. If you are willing to uphold British values, if you’re willing to support and lift Britain, and if you want what is best for Britain, I think the vast majority of British people will be on your side.”
He also accused Reform and the party’s mayoral candidate, Laila Cunningham, of talking down the capital with past comments comparing it to crime-riddled American cities like Chicago. “I find it extraordinary that people who want to represent a place spend so much of their time talking down the place they want to represent,” he said.
As a contender for the Tory mayoral nomination, Akinbusoye is evidently trying to strike a balance of criticising Labour’s stewardship of London without “talking down” the city.
“If you go to any part of London, you see people just getting on with their lives, having fun, you know, having a good time,” he said. “I think London is doing well despite the failures of City Hall, and what I want to do is just move things in the right direction.”
Law and order at the centre of Akinbusoye’s pitch
Given his background, it is no surprise that law and order is at the centre of his pitch.
Akinbusoye said he had experienced the full gamut of policing, from being stopped and searched “several times” by the Metropolitan Police while growing up, to overseeing the Bedfordshire force as police and crime commissioner.
He vowed to reverse a decline in Met numbers by boosting retention. “You can’t police effectively a growing city with a shrinking police force,” he said. “It does not make sense.”
As home secretary in 2023, Cleverly was forced to apologise for making an “ironic joke” about spiking his wife’s drink.
Asked about the controversy, Akinbusoye said: “He’s made his public statements about that, and it would be unfair of me to go further into his particular statements. But the issue of violence against women and girls is something that I take very seriously. I used a lot of the funding that was available to me as Politic and Crime Commissioner to invest in support for survivors and victims.”
He added: “It’s something I take very, very seriously, and it’s not a laughing matter.”
Akinbusoye said that if the Conservatives did manage to win London in 2028, it would boost the party at national level and act as a springboard for the next general election – assuming Andy Burnham sticks to his word and calls one in 2029.
“The mayoral election is not just about the mayoral election, it’s also about the general election,” he said.