Overview
- Nigel Farage unveiled Westminster councillor Laila Cunningham at a London press conference and appointed her to lead Reform’s citywide operation across all 32 boroughs.
- Cunningham pledged an “all‑out war on crime,” saying she would rewrite the police and crime plan to prioritise knife crime, drugs, robbery, shoplifting and rape, and to pursue so‑called rape gangs.
- She said she would scrap the Ultra Low Emission Zone and end what she called a “war on motorists,” while declining to commit on the congestion charge and floating Tube automation to curb strikes.
- Cunningham, a former CPS prosecutor and ex-Conservative councillor who defected to Reform in June 2025, also criticised Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, saying he should be removed.
- Reform is pitching the May 7 local elections as a first test of its London strategy, though recent polling cited in coverage shows the party trailing Labour and the Conservatives in the capital.