Will there ever be another Conservative mayor of London?

Even in these strange political times, it looks very difficult for a Conservative politician to become Mayor of London. In the 20 years since the advent of the mayoralty and the introduction of the London Assembly, only Boris – as we all know, an unusual politician – has managed to beat Labour, with successive terms in 2008 and 2012. He succeeded in this by being more popular than the Conservative party in London; a politician, even then, with an independent brand. In contrast, Ken Livingstone was less popular than the Labour party at the time.

These favourable winds are unlikely to blow again. On the contrary, the political ructions of the last five years, culminating in the Conservative party’s successful assault on the ‘red wall’, mean that London looks ever more like a city state with a political sensibility entirely detached from the rest of the UK (this perhaps explains the London-based media’s collective shock at the size and nature of Johnson’s General Election victory).