Sir James Cleverly has had a busy couple of weeks.

Ever since he announced he was stepping down as shadow housing secretary and would be running as the next Conservative mayor of London in May 2028, we've been hearing how the former Cabinet minister and MP for Braintree will 'go to war' with incumbent Sadiq Khan over motorists. 

How he'll stop Prime Minister Andy Burnham from 'squeezing London dry, like a cash cow'. How he'll put our capital back on the global map and stop Americans asking: 'Is it safe, is it OK?'

We've also heard how former Sun editor and political commentator David Yelland, in a post on X about Cleverly's plans, muddled him with Kwasi Kwarteng and described him as 'Liz Truss's Brexit chancellor'. 

'The first thing I did was laugh,' Cleverly says, 'because I was Foreign Secretary for well over a year and then Home Secretary.'

His reply to Yelland was swift and pithy: 'David, I'm the other black one.'

As we chat in his office in Portcullis House, Cleverly is sanguine.

'It's not the first time and it won't be the last time,' he says. 'I was once in a taxi with Kwasi going to a meeting and talking about politics. When we got out the driver looked at Kwasi and said, "I recognise you! You're that David Lammy!" It happens.'

 On Yelland, he says: 'I don't think it was racist – just sloppy and lazy.'

So with that all cleared up, we turn to Cleverly's deep love for London – 'I am unapologetically proud of it'. How he thinks he is the person to turn our traditionally Labour-dominated capital blue. And the myriad of things any prospective mayor could get his or her teeth into.

Because two years into Khan's fourth premiership, it turns out there's quite a lot. Spiralling crime rates, knife crime, murders, muggings. Rolex gangs terrorising rich shoppers in Mayfair. Tent encampments popping up every so often on Park Lane. And plunging property prices.

On top of that, Transport for London has been beset with strikes and many residents claim Khan's controversial Ulez extension is strangling their livelihoods. And members of London's Jewish community say they feel increasingly anxious and vulnerable.

Which is quite a tally of trouble, but Cleverly, 57, is relentlessly upbeat and calls London 'brilliant, fantastic and amazing' and points out that it has far lower crime statistics than other big global cities. He also adores its residents – whom he describes as 'courteous, elegant and fantastic hustlers' – and says he wants to look forward. To champion London.

'When I see videos of London, I want to see positive stuff. I want to make sure that London is buzzing and safe and clean. And I will,' he says as all 6ft 2in of him lounges in his chair.

Perhaps he's learned some useful lessons from Susan Hall, the Tory London Assembly member whose bid for mayor two years ago came a cropper – largely for running such a negative campaign.

Or maybe it's because, as he tells me, one of his great political heroes was Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. 'His philosophy was that you don't have to demonise anyone or be negative and divisive or angry to get things done.'

But what about the Jewish community? What about the stabbing the other week in leafy Shepherd's Bush that prompted Reform's mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham to declare that nowhere in London was safe? 

'Everyone has a right to be safe – everyone,' he says. 'There has been political cowardice in some quarters where people are unable to say that behaviour is unacceptable.'

Cleverly's inner Reagan clearly does not appear to apply to the incumbent mayor as he lets rip about how he's been 'massively underperforming, nowhere near as energetic or passionate as he should have been and asleep at the wheel when it comes to crime'.

But what really gets his goat is Khan's ridiculous battle with Donald Trump. 'It's totally counterproductive and amplifying unfair and inaccurate criticism of London around the world'.

He is similarly outspoken about Andy Burnham. 'He buys into lazy anti-London stereotypes – he thinks everyone here is rich, that London has more than its fair share, and forgets how much we contribute.'

Cleverly himself has contributed plenty in his 11-year Westminster career. And not just in politics. He's an Army Reserves officer. He also set up and ran his own publishing company and later worked in the London Assembly as the Mayor of London's Youth Ambassador. And, of course, he's a lifelong Londoner.

Born in Lewisham, Cleverly is an only child to James, a white surveyor from Wiltshire, and Evelyn, from a wealthy family in Sierra Leone. She'd come to train as a nurse in the Swinging Sixties, met James, got pregnant and had the baby out of wedlock, which was a very big deal back then.

'Her father was beyond furious, but she refused to go home and later they secretly got married,' he says. Inevitably, there was racism – 'even the TV programmes were racist back then, it was a different time' – although he insists his was a very happy childhood.

As a teenager, he was mostly playing Dungeons & Dragons or modelling Warhammer figures. 'I love Warhammer! I was quite nerdy, though I played rugby.'

The seeds of his political awareness were sown in the Winter of Discontent in 1978. 'The power would go off and that would be the end of Doctor Who,' he says. 'The bins were overflowing. Public sector strikes. My mum was sobbing a lot. She was happy with her family, but this wasn't the London she'd signed up for.'

But it was a long time before he entered politics.

First came a stint in the Army which, he says, made him very organised and structured.

His office is awash with military photos and memorabilia and I've never seen such a crisp white shirt in Westminster or such vivid striped braces, which he removes for fear they are 'too Gordon Gekko' for our pictures. But he leaves on his two watches – an Apple on one hand (for comms), a chunky Breitling on the other.

Next came a degree in hospitality management at what is now the University of West London in Ealing. It was in Ealing that he met Susie – his wife and mother of their two sons – at the student union bar. 

'She was very stylish and I said to her, "You have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen in my life" – and they were, sort of amber and pale blue and green. And I said, "I just think you're stunning." And that was that. She was 20, he was 24.

He goes all soft and fuzzy when he talks about Susie. About how they share the same birthday, how all his career decisions are made with her. And the terrible times when she was battling breast cancer as their son was taking his A-levels and he was embroiled in the tumultuous end of Boris Johnson's government.

'It was so stressful. I needed decompression.' So he took up Warhammer again – quietly, in the garden shed. Painting teeny fantasy figures in silence. 'It engages your brain at a level, like yoga. So it reduces the heart rate, reduces stress levels.'

Perhaps the shed will become his respite again, this time from a mayoral battle that promises to be blockbuster.

He's thrown his hat into the ring alarmingly early, announcing he won't defend his Braintree constituency at the next general election. His boss Kemi Badenoch 'was great about it' (though he says rather less keen on him giving up his post two years out from the vote).

While campaigning suits Cleverly, a smooth media performer, he does have the odd gaffe up his sleeve. In 2010, he called Lib Dem Simon Hughes 'a d**k' on Twitter. And in 2023, he described a Labour constituency (Stockton North) as a 's***-hole'. (Though he later insisted he'd been talking about its MP Alex Cunningham, not his constituency).

Then there was the joke at a Downing Street reception about sedating his wife with 'a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night' so she'd 'never realise there are better men out there'.

Given that he was Home Secretary at the time, and his department had just announced a crackdown on date rape drugs, it was not a great look.

But he was quick to apologise. And, as he says about Yelland's mess-up: 'We all make mistakes. Of course we do. But own them. Say sorry and move on.'

So, back to his mayoral hopes. What if the party doesn't go for him? He hasn't yet been anointed as the official candidate. And what if they do and he loses?

'Well then I've burned all my boats, haven't I?' he says simply. 'I've made a very big and public commitment to this job. I can't go back to Braintree with my tail between my legs. So I've got to throw everything at it. There is no parachute. No safety net. No Plan B. I am all in.'

Which is quite the gamble. But it does rather feel that, if anyone can do it for the Tories, it might just be Cleverly.