'I WOULD NEVER BE PART OF A RACIST PARTY'

Laila Cunningham is in the bathroom of Reform HQ, trying to decide which blazer to wear.

- By Claudia Cockerell

One is a chic brown number from Zara, the other is cornflower blue (you get the sense that this is as close as she will go to Reform turquoise) with a slightly fussy tie around the neck. She whips the brown one off over her head and stands unselfconsciously in her bra, considering the blue. Minutes ago she had shaken my hand with barely a smile, but women’s bathrooms have a way of breaking the ice. I tell her that the brown seems more her style, but the blue is more politician-y. She concludes that in this case, politician-y is the point.

Cunningham, 48, was a little-known councillor for Westminster when she defected from the Conservatives to Reform in June last year. Since then, her star has been rising. She makes for good TV and has become a favoured guest on GB News. Not only does she have Jemima Khan-ish looks, with an angular face and long, blow dried chestnut hair, but she is also up for a scrap. Numerous clips have gone viral of her sparring with Labour MPs, stabbing a finger as she talks over them. “Laila, respectful debate means not constantly interrupting somebody,” pleads one.

Last week, Nigel Farage announced Cunningham as Reform’s mayoral candidate for London in 2028. The party's last candidate in the 2024 election was Howard Cox, a stock image of an old white man who ended up receiving just over three per cent of the vote. At the time, the party had only one MP in parliament (Tory defector Lee Anderson) and was still seen as fringe and a bit loony.

Now, Reform leads the opinion polls and is a slicker and more serious operation. As well as having five elected MPs, it has become a rescue home for dozens of stray Tories looking to regain their seat. The most recent defector is former Conservative party chairman Nadhim Zahawi, who once said he would be “frightened” to live in a country run by Farage. In their Millbank Tower offices between Parliament and Pimlico, each newspaper is open to the page with the news of Zahawi’s move.