Reform UK announce Muslim daughter of Egyptian immigrants Laila Cunningham as London mayor candidate

Reform UK has announced that Laila Cunningham will stand as their candidate in the 2028 London mayoral election. Cunnigham, who joined Reform after leaving the Tories, is a Muslim and the daughter of Egyptian immigrants.

Cunningham described her parents, who immigrated to the UK from Egypt in the 1960s, as "staunch" Conservatives, telling The I Paper trade unionist Arthur Scargill, "was the baddie in my bedtime story."

Cunnigham has discussed receiving Islamophobic and sexist abuse in the past, but said she would not report such abuse to the police, unless she felt threatened. 

But in 2025, she bizarrely also told The I, "I don't blame people for feeling the way they do about Muslims."

In the same interview, she opposed Labour plans to introduce a legal definition of Islamophobia, saying, "There are countries where you can have sharia law [Sic], and you can have Islamophobia laws. This is not one of those."

To Muslims who disagree, she said, "Please, you can move [to another country]."

Cunningham is currently a member of Westminster City Council, for which she stood as a Conservative before defecting to Reform in 2025.

She had been dissatisfied with the Tories due to what she described as rising taxes with little in return. The breaking point for her came when Kemi Badenoch called for an inquiry into grooming gangs, with Cunningham saying the Conservatives "did nothing" about the issue while in power.

She met Nigel Farage around this time, which confirmed her decision to join Reform.

Cunnigham, who has previously worked as a lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service, has pointed to crime as a key issue in London.

She told The I, "there are no safe parts" of London, despite the Crime Survey for England and Wales finding that most forms of violent crime in the capital have reduced over the past two decades. When presented with these statistics, Cunningham said, "It's insulting to me."

The far right has often portrayed the multicultural British capital as a crime-ridden city with alleged no-go zones.

The next London mayoral elections are scheduled for May 2028. No other candidates have yet been announced.

The current mayor Sadiq Khan, a Labour politician and the city's first ever Muslim mayor.