London's Conservatives have lost their minds

An email to supporters from their defeated mayoral candidate underlines how far adrift from the city's voters the Tories have become

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An extraordinary email has been sent out by the Conservatives in London to their supporters in advance of May’s borough elections. It is signed by Susan Hall, the party’s soundly defeated candidate for Mayor of London in 2024 and current leader of the Tory group on the London Assembly. Alarmingly, it seems to show that London’s Tories are out of touch, out of ideas and possibly out of their minds.

Much of it is just numbingly predictable. Its main target is Sir Sadiq Khan, who isn’t even running for election. In this, as in so many other ways, the Tories are just echoing the far-Right populists Reform UK. “Crime is through the roof” it declares, another Reform attack line, and one we will get back to.

Then it just gets weird. Next sentence: “The cost of driving has surged thanks to ULEZ.” I don’t know if Hall was actually the principal author of the email, but this sounds a lot like her. Opposing the expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone to the whole of Greater London was the centrepiece of her mayoral campaign, yet the change was only ever going to adversely affect a pretty small minority of London households.

Nearly half of them don’t even have a motor vehicle and most of those that did at the time of the second and latest expansion (Hall changed her mind about opposing the first one) owned cars or vans that complied with ULEZ standards. There was a reasonable cost-of-living case to be made against the policy, but as a campaign spearhead it failed the most elementary electoral maths. And that was two years ago. Astonishing.

Next sentence: “And our green spaces have been concreted over with ugly tower blocks.” What? Where? Been to Kensington Gardens, lately, Susan? Been to any of the many parks and open spaces in the London Borough of Harrow, where you live and are a councillor? Are you quite certain they’re now full of skyscrapers? All of them…? Bizarre.

Next sentence: “London’s gone backward.” I think she means “backwards.”

After that, there’s an invitation to sign a petition against Khan being given a peerage. This is presented as a done deal, an upcoming event, a true fact. The reality, of course, is that a newspaper – fair play, a good one, the Financial Times – reported that Sir Keir Starmer has been considering elevating Khan to the House of Lords at some point. But neither Number 10 nor City Hall have confirmed this. There is no date in the public diary. The petition is a stunt designed to mobilise Tory supporters by revving up their dislike of the Labour Mayor. Is that really the best they can do?

As for crime in London, the Conservatives nationally as well as in the capital have been making exaggerated and sometimes ludicrous claims about it for the best part of three years. Remember that zany general election effort describing Mayor Khan as having “seized power”, claiming that Londoners cower in fear in their homes and featuring a scene of panicked flight from gunfire in an underground station in…New York?

On London has carried plenty of coverage of London crime rates, how they are measured and the various reasons why they might change over time. There is no doubt that certain kinds of street crime have increased, particularly in parts of the capital where the pickings are rich. But similar patterns have been seen in the rest of the country and, meanwhile, recent Met stats have shown some trends in the right direction.

Were the Conservatives to propose intelligent, constructive and plausible alternative approaches to reducing street crime, they would merit a proper hearing. It would be nice if they came up with some. But the best the Hall email can do is complain about the closure of police stations, a pitch that would carry more weight if Boris Johnson when Mayor hadn’t overseen the closure of a lot more.

The email is depressing for those of us who, despite having centre-Left proclivities, recognise the need for a considered and well-argued centre-Right analysis of how London can be made a better place for Londoners and others. But there is no sign of it – still no sign – in the words distributed to Conservative supporters under Hall’s name. When will they ever get themselves in tune with the mainstream of London voters? When will they even start acknowledging that, at the moment, they are not?