Reform thinks Laila Cunningham is your next mayor. Are they right?

It was a balmy day in late June 2025 and for the small band of Reform politicians massing outside the ornate, neo-classical building by Marylebone station, the mood was jubilant. They had come from all over London — from Barnet to Redbridge —  to Westminster Council House to celebrate one person: Laila Cunningham, the party’s newest defector from the Tories.

That evening would be Cunningham's first Reform all-council meeting and, to mark the occasion, the grandees of the party's London branch had shown up. These included Alex Wilson, at the time Reform’s sole member of the London Assembly and, as a result, the party’s most senior politician in the capital. It was unprecedented. No other defecting councillor had received a similar welcome committee, and its existence was perhaps the first indicator of the influence, and platform, that Cunningham was about to have.

What has followed in the months since can only be described as a media frenzy. Dozens of glowing profiles and headlines — including multiple branding her the main challenger to mayor Sadiq Khan — and a near-constant presence on everything from Newsnight to GB News have solidified Cunningham as the rising star of Reform. It isn’t hard to see why. With her glossy look and Hollywood-ready smile, the Muslim mother of seven undoubtedly stands out next to most other prominent Reform politicians.

A former CPS prosecutor, Cunningham first appeared on our radar back in September, in the aftermath of our expose on Reform's first London councillor Mark Shooter (who was one of the attendees at Cunningham’s welcome committee). For those who missed it, we revealed Shooter was a rogue landlord who owns a 33-person bedsit in Kilburn and was once sued by an ex-tenant — who turned out to be none other than Green party leader Zack Polanski.

Reform’s first London councillor is a “rogue landlord” with a 33-person HMO

Mark Shooter has been fined thousands of pounds for illegally renting out crammed bedsits in Camden. One of his former tenants just became Green Party leader.

The LondonerAndrew Kersley

But earlier this month, it was announced in a slick press conference held by Reform leader Nigel Farage that Cunningham was set to be the party’s candidate for the 2028 London mayoral election. Farage said that in her time with the party, she had proven to be “articulate, to be passionate, a mother, somebody who herself has had to… act as a police officer”. The two politicians embraced for the cameras, Cunningham wearing a 1980s-inspired tomato-red skirt suit that called to mind her hero Margaret Thatcher. 

We thought the time was now ripe to go a little deeper. That’s why we’ve spent the last week talking to fellow councillors, her constituents and former employers, visiting shady budget hotels in Bayswater and trawling through social media posts and financial accounts to try and work out who the potential future mayor is.