A 'Cleverly' Headache

Festus Akinbusoye has entered the Conservative race for London Mayor, setting up a contest with Sir James Cleverly for the party’s 2028 nomination. 

The former Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner announced the move on GB News and in interviews published on 1 September 2026. Guido Fawkes flagged it the same morning with the headline “Cleverly’s Challenger.” Akinbusoye, now a Westminster City councillor, is pitching himself as the outsider the Tories need after more than a decade of losing City Hall.

The next mayoral election is scheduled for May 2028. Sadiq Khan remains in office and has not confirmed whether he will seek a fourth term. Reform UK has already selected former Conservative councillor Laila Cunningham. The Conservative selection process has not formally opened.

Who is Festus Akinbusoye?

Akinbusoye arrived in London from Nigeria at 13. He started a facilities management business from an East London council flat with a Prince’s Trust loan and grew it from four to 70 staff. He later served as a special constable, then became Bedfordshire’s PCC in 2021 — the first Black Briton to hold the role. In that job he oversaw record officer numbers, a sharp drop in residential burglary, and an “outstanding” inspection rating for offender management. He lost the PCC seat in 2024 and the Mid Bedfordshire by-election in 2023. In May 2026 he won a Westminster council seat in Abbey Road ward.

He lives with his family, is a single father, and is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His public writing and interviews focus on visible policing, housing affordability, and the idea that London should still be a place where ordinary people can stay and raise a family.

His core pitch is simple: he is not a former minister. He argues Londoners are more likely to listen to someone with lived experience of being priced out of the city, a business background, and direct experience running a police force. He has pointed to polling his exploratory campaign commissioned that tested candidate profiles rather than named individuals. It suggested voters were cooler on a former Conservative minister and warmer on someone with policing and private-sector credentials.

On the Metropolitan Police he is blunt. Officer numbers have fallen from a recent peak above 34,500 to just over 31,000. He says officers view the current Mayor as “against the police” and that he would champion the force. He also talks about reforming the London Plan so more homes actually get built, tackling TfL fare evasion (officially around £190–200 million a year, possibly higher), and making the city feel affordable again after hundreds of thousands of people left for other parts of the UK in a single year.

“I’m a fresh face,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service. “I’ve not been part of a government in the past… I come with lived experience of the issues many people in London face around homelessness and the cost of living.” He added that the campaign is personal: he was priced out to Milton Keynes and now sees the same problem as “20 times worse” for young people.

The contest with James Cleverly

Cleverly resigned as shadow housing secretary on 29 August to run. The former Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Conservative Party chairman is a born-and-raised Londoner who served on the London Assembly, chaired the fire authority, and sat on the Metropolitan Police Authority. He has name recognition, a long record in the capital’s institutions, and early endorsements from a chunk of London Conservative councillors and MPs. His message is that London needs a champion, not another administrator, and that he will fight what he calls Andy Burnham’s “war on London” and Khan’s record on crime, housing and the ULEZ.

The two men represent different theories of how the Conservatives win London. Cleverly offers experience, familiarity and the ability to campaign at scale. Akinbusoye offers distance from the last Conservative government and a tighter focus on street-level safety and affordability. Some Conservatives see Akinbusoye’s earlier polling as a pre-emptive shot at Cleverly and have said attacking a fellow Tory is a poor way to start. Others argue a genuine contest is healthy and that the last three Conservative candidates — Zac Goldsmith, Shaun Bailey and Susan Hall — all failed to unseat Khan.

Akinbusoye has said he will not spend the campaign talking about Khan. “Whether he stands or not, I don’t really care. I only care about making sure Londoners get to know who I am.”The wider 2028 field

Recent polling of first-preference votes has Labour ahead, Reform second and the Conservatives third. One Savanta survey put Labour on 33 percent, Reform on 20 percent and the Conservatives on 18 percent. That is a different landscape from the two-horse races of the past. Reform’s Laila Cunningham, who defected from the Conservatives, has already been campaigning on crime, ULEZ and housing. She has described a potential Cleverly-Khan contest as two career politicians against an outsider.

Khan’s decision will matter. A fourth term would give opponents a long record to attack. A new Labour candidate would change the race again. Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s relationship with the capital is already a live issue; Cleverly has accused him of treating London as a cash cow.

The Conservative Party has said only that it will select a candidate “in due course.” The process is expected to involve local members. Other names, including Lord Sebastian Coe, have been mentioned in passing but have not declared.

Akinbusoye’s announcement does not make him the favourite for the nomination. Cleverly starts with greater profile and organisation. What it does is turn a likely coronation into a proper argument about what kind of Conservative can actually win London — and whether “fresh” or “experienced” is the better bet after years of defeat. The selection will tell us which story the party believes. The 2028 election will test whether either of them can change the result.