Laila Cunningham: Who is Reform's candidate to be mayor?

Nine years ago a woman attempted to get the attention of Sadiq Khan in an unusual way — by sending him a poem on Twitter celebrating London’s cultural diversity.

In the wake of the Westminster Bridge terror attack, “Dupuy Laila” posted the verse listing areas, nationalities, pronouns, religions, and sexualities that are represented in the capital. It concluded: “I am love / I am strength / I am acceptance / I am resistance / I am diverse / I AM LONDON”.

Laila Dupuy is the former married name of Laila Cunningham, who has just been appointed as Reform UK’s candidate in the 2028 mayoral election, becoming the de facto local leader of the party that’s polling second in the capital.

Cunningham’s spokesperson offered no comment when asked by London Centric whether she wrote the poem herself, which doesn’t appear elsewhere online, but did not dispute that she was the Twitter user sending it to Khan.

Almost a decade later, Cunningham has now declared war on the mayor, intent on portraying the next few years as a battle of “Khan vs Cunningham”, between two British Muslims with very different views on what London should look like.

These days she’s unlikely to be writing any poetry to the mayor celebrating the different characteristics present in the capital, demanding: “No more splitting us into boxes – black, brown, gay, straight. We are all Londoners in one box.”

This week Cunningham has doubled-down on a pledge to expand her policy of introducing an automatic stop-and-search policy for anyone wearing a face covering to include women wearing a niqab or burkha.

“It has to be assumed that if you're hiding your face, you're hiding it for a criminal reason,” she told the Standard.

Her other policy pledges include repealing the ultra-low emission zone charge for drivers, introducing a priority for British people to receive social housing, and an all-out focus on what she considers an unstoppable wave of crime — fuelled by the personal experience of her son being mugged near the family home.

Her version of London in permanent decline will be familiar to anyone who spends a substantial amount of time on Elon Musk’s X, where the most viral takes on London suggest the streets are too unsafe to walk down and residents are too scared to step outside. As for her stop-and-search for face coverings policy, her office told London Centric that