\u201cThat is a classically Conservative vision, and it will run in parallel to and supportive of Kemi\u2019s plans for the country as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
If he wins his party\u2019s nomination, Cleverly is expected to run a more moderate campaign than the last Tory candidate, Susan Hall. She drew criticism<\/a> for claiming there was a \u201cproblem with crime\u201d in the black community and was forced to apologise for liking a tweet in 2020 that had a picture of Enoch Powell captioned: \u201cIt\u2019s never too late to get London<\/a> back.\u201d Hall lost to Labour\u2019s Sadiq Khan in 2024, who won with 43.8% of the vote.<\/p>\n Cleverly, who lost the Conservative leadership race to Badenoch, is considered a more moderate voice in a party that has moved to the right as support for Nigel Farage\u2019s rightwing Reform UK has grown.<\/p>\n Giles Dilnot, the editor of Conservative Home, who has worked closely with Cleverly in the past, denied a rift and said he thought it unlikely the MP for Braintree was using his attempt to become mayor as a route to become the next Conservative leader. \u201cThere is not a hidden side order of \u2018what\u2019s next\u2019 here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Asked if Cleverly was likely to seek to put distance between himself and the Tory leader to attract more centre-left voters in the capital, he pointed to Cleverly\u2019s 2024 speech<\/a> during the Conservative leadership contest in which he called for his party to be \u201cmore normal\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMayoral campaigns are often focused on the person \u2013 the personality is that extra 10% rather than just the rosette,\u201d Dilnot said. \u201cJames is gloriously normal and I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if he\u2019s selling what he is: a normal Londoner who wants the city to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n Sadiq Khan (centre) stacks shelves in a Sainsbury\u2019s in London with Andy Burnham, the prime minister, and Pat McFadden, work and pensions secretary. Photograph: WPA\/Getty<\/p>\n Prof Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, said the restoration of the supplementary vote system in the 2028 London mayoral election \u2013 where voters have a preferred first and second choice, with the second choice counted if no one wins more than 50% of the vote \u2013 meant Cleverly had to win over voters whose first choice was the Liberal Democrats.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last thing Cleverly would want to do is put off Liberal Democrats, whose party has been the main beneficiaries of the Conservatives\u2019 shift to the right in the south of England,\u201d Travers said. \u201cI think we are likely to see him adopt a pre-Brexit traditional, centrist Conservative position.\u201d<\/p>\n
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