Tired of London

The Conservatives' political abandonment of the Capital is the clearest sign yet of a governing party on its way out

The current favourite to be the Conservative candidate to take on Sadiq Khan

The resignation of the frontrunner in the Conservative Party’s London mayoral race is the latest sign of a party in apparently terminal decline in the capital.

Daniel Korski’s resignation, which followed allegations of sexual harassment, leaves Sadiq Khan as the almost insurmountable favourite to win a record third term as London mayor.

It comes as Labour looks set to seize the previously safe outer London Conservative seat of Uxbridge in the upcoming by-election, and as polls suggest Rishi Sunak’s party is as much as 40 points behind in the city overall.

For a party that just ten years ago held the London mayoralty and which seven years before that actually won the popular vote in the city by seven points, it is a quite spectacular decline.

Yet rather than seek to stop, or even reverse this decline, the Conservative party seems almost determined to exacerbate it. Whether it’s the Prime Minister and his MPs attacking Keir Starmer for being a “London lawyer” (the horror) or the almost pathological obsession among its politicians and activists of othering the city’s mayor, the Conservative party not only appears to have given up on the capital, but now seems in almost active opposition to it.

But while there may be a small audience for this sort of Londonphobic politics outside of the city, the collapse of the Conservative party within the city is the clearest sign we have yet that this is a party and a Government on its way out.

Here’s why.