As if the Labour party hasn’t inflicted enough damage on London, Dawn Butler, the staggeringly inept MP for Brent East, is considering a future mayoral bid. God help us. Even by the appallingly low standards of London Labour – the party that gave us Ken Livingstone and Sadiq Khan – the prospect of a Dawn Butler mayoralty is enough to make me start planning my escape beyond the M25.
You would hope that Butler’s track record would disqualify her from serious consideration for her party’s candidacy. And yet, this being London Labour, her distinctive brand of hard left bile might actually work in her favour
For those fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with Butler, let’s consider some of her greatest hits. In 2019, she was forced to apologise after claiming there were 3,000 people sleeping rough in her constituency. The real number was 248. The year before, while serving as Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow equalities secretary, she spoke approvingly about the far-left Militant tendency in Liverpool, claiming that when it came to austerity it was ‘better to break the law than break the poor.’
In 2024, she said she agreed with the actor David Tenant’s disgraceful statement that Kemi Badenoch shouldn’t exist. She also shared a post accusing the Tory leader of ‘white supremacy in blackface’ and of being ‘the most prominent member of white supremacy’s black collaborator class.’ Seemingly of the view that black women who reject identity politics are race traitors, she once posted a bizarre video online in which she rapped that her ‘beautiful mahogany brown’ skin makes her ‘the chosen one’. If only there was a word for people who believe their skin colour bestows superiority.
The notion that after three terms of Sadiq Khan what London really needs is even more identity politics is so absurd as to be offensive. At the same time Khan busied himself with virtue-signalling vanity projects like a Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, crime in the capital soared. When it comes to crimes reported to the Metropolitan Police, theft from the person has increased 140 per cent since his election in 2016. Sexual offences are up 55 per cent, drug offences by 34 per cent, and violence against the person by 27 per cent (although these figures do not take into account population growth in the capital). But perhaps it would help if the next mayor of London wasn’t someone who has previously accused the Met of racially profiling her, as Butler did when her car was pulled over by police in 2020.
You would hope that Butler’s track record would disqualify her from serious consideration for her party’s candidacy. And yet, this being London Labour, her distinctive brand of hard left bile might actually work in her favour. As Khan continues to vacillate on whether to run for a fourth term, Butler has said that ‘there is no vacancy at present’ for the job, but she will be ‘absolutely’ putting her name forward when the time comes. Other rumoured candidates include the New Labour nepo-baby Georgia Gould, who was inexplicably catapulted into ministerial office after her election as an MP in 2024. Gould is believed to be Downing Street’s preferred candidate, although I can’t imagine her lifelong friendship with Peter Mandelson will stand her in good stead during the selection process.
With rivals like these, the alarming prospect of a Dawn Butler mayoralty suddenly becomes more realistic. Which makes it all the more important that the Tories finally nominate a credible heavy-hitter again. The capital may lean towards Labour, but with Londoners increasingly desperate for change after a decade of Khan, and with the Greens likely to split the left-wing vote, there is a viable route to victory for the Conservatives. The shadow housing secretary James Cleverly said last year he ‘would be stupid’ not to consider a run. Or perhaps Seb Coe can finally be persuaded to throw his hat into the ring? Whoever it is, the Tories must nominate someone of a calibre one of the world’s great cities deserves.
No doubt many will be placing their hopes on Laila Cunningham, the impressive former Westminster councillor who has already been chosen as the Reform candidate. But let’s be honest, Nigel Farage’s party is simply not going to win sufficient support from the capital’s most important swing voters: the middle-classes in the outer London commuter belt. Reform may have taken control of Havering in the recent local elections, but they significantly underperformed elsewhere in the city, for example through their failure to win Bromley or Bexley from the Tories.
So for those who profess the need to ‘unite the right’, in London the choice is clear. Only a high-profile Conservative can effectively loosen Labour’s grip on the mayoralty. And motivating right-leaning voters shouldn’t be a problem, because if 12 years of Sadiq Khan isn’t enough to turn them out, then the prospect of him being succeeded by Dawn Butler certainly should be.
