The May 2026 London council elections will mark 20 years from what could be considered the high point for the Conservative Party in London in the 21st Century. The 2006 contests, which took place with Labour, as now, in national power, saw the Tories receive more votes than Labour overall in the capital, get more councillors elected, and win outright control of 14 of the city’s 32 boroughs. Those including Ealing and Redbridge. Today in those two places, the party has just four and five councillors respectively.
This collapse at a municipal level has been replicated in terms of parliamentary seats, with the Tories now reduced to nine London MPs out of 75, all of them representing constituencies on the outskirts of London. There are no Conservative MPs in travel zones 1 or 2. For many seasoned election observers, the fact that Chelsea & Fulham now has a Labour MP and Westminster City Council is Labour-controlled further highlights the scale of Conservative decline in inner London.
At a mayoral level, the Conservatives have struggled to find an electorally viable challenger to Boris Johnson’s successor, Labour’s Sir Sadiq Khan, even though he has been eminently beatable. Despite he lacklustre performance of Shaun Bailey in 2021 and the uninspired populism of Susan Hall last year, it is worth remembering that both candidates still managed to win the support of over 30 per cent of voters in London, over 800,000 of them.
This demonstrates that there remains a viable Conservative base in the capital. Or at least there was until rise of Reform UK, which is now attracting around 15 per cent of voters in London according to recent polling and two weeks ago gained a council seat from the Tories in traditionally true blue Bromley.
Many London Conservatives will undoubtedly argue that the rise of Reform means the party needs to move further to the populist Right and double down on tough immigration and culture war rhetoric, yet there is scant electoral evidence to suggest that such a strategy will win a sufficient number of hearts, minds and votes in London to facilitate a Tory renaissance.
Indeed, it is no accident that the strong Conservative performance in 2006 and Boris Johnson’s ensuing mayoral victories in 2008 and 2012 came at a time when the party’s national leadership was presenting a more moderate, socially liberal face to the electorate.
Again, some will insist that in the post-Brexit age of Trumpian populism, politics has irrevocably changed and that there is no market for moderation on the centre-Right. However, this ignores the fact that the collapse in Conservative support in London has followed the party’s reinvention of itself as a supporter of a “hard Brexit” at the expense of the traditional Conservative pro-enterprise narrative.
Furthermore, the more recent embrace of the divisive culture war agenda has undoubtedly alienated a strand of largely middle-class professional, traditionally Conservative voters who combined fiscally conservative and socially liberal outlooks.
Indeed, throughout the last Parliament it frequently felt as if the Conservatives at national level were quite relaxed about losing the support of people in Fulham and Wimbledon if those voters could be traded for Brexit-supporters in “red wall” seats.
This perception was reinforced by the sneering rhetoric deployed by figures in the party hierarchy, who frequently derided Sir Keir Starmer for being a member of a north London elite holding dinner parties in his north London townhouse.
Rather than learning the lessons of recent defeats, there is minimal evidence thus far that the Conservatives, now led former London Assembly member Kemi Badenoch, is looking to appeal to the sort of London voters who backed the party under David Cameron but have abandoned it in recent years. Given her dwindling poll ratings and the persistent rumours of a challenge to her leadership, Badenoch can ill afford another electoral drubbing in London next May.
With that in mind, I suggest six ways in which the Tories in London may wish to consider repositioning themselves ahead of next May.
One: End the anti-London rhetoric
London remains the UK’s primary economic engine and contains millions of private sector employees who should be natural supporters for a pro-enterprise centre-Right party. However, if your messaging is at best lukewarm and at worst antagonistic towards London’s wealth creators, don’t be surprised if they don’t vote for you.
Jeering about London lawyers (some of whom vote Conservative) and north London dinner parties should be dropped by the Conservatives, as they are both electorally damaging and at odds with the instincts of a party which should champion aspiration and social mobility.
Two: Offer a positive, forward-looking vision
In recent years, we have seen some senior London Conservatives aligning with those increasingly strident online voices who portray London as a city in irreversible decline. Yes, London has enormous challenges and the performance of the current Mayor on issues such as the delivery of affordable housing and tackling knife crime has been lamentable.
But an unrelenting doom-laden narrative is not the basis for a political resurrection. Leading London Tories need to demonstrate that they have a positive, realistic and forward-looking vision for the capital, not a sepia-tinted nostalgia for a London of the distant past.
Three: Have an amnesty on Brexit
As we know, Brexit was not popular in London in 2016 and is even less popular in 2025. However, many Conservatives still cling to it as a central feature of their party’s policy platform, seeking to use the return of Trump in the White House as an opportunity to relitigate the virtues of our decision to leave the European Union.
However, a simple fact remains, namely that the pronounced decline of the Conservatives in London has broadly coincided with the party adopting a pro-Brexit position. Unless it is willing to put Brexit firmly behind it and have an amnesty for those who were not enthusiastic cheerleaders for it, then it will struggle to win back former supporters who deserted the party over this issue, many of whom live in London.
Four: Have a coherent pan-London position on housing
Despite their pro-housing rhetoric, both Mayor Khan and the Labour government are significantly under-shooting their targets for housing delivery. However, they have been largely let off the hook by a Conservative Party which abolished mandatory housing targets when in government and whose London MPs routinely campaigned against additional housing in their constituencies during the last Parliament. With the average age of Conservative voters now 63, the party has fallen into a comfort zone of instinctively opposing the new homes required to solve London’s housing crisis for younger generations.
Conservatives in inner London have campaigned against taller buildings, whilst their colleagues in outer London have typically opposed Green Belt development. If the Tories are to have any chance of appealing to a younger audience, such an obstructive approach to housing delivery in the capital has to end. The party needs to have a rethink about the sort of housing it thinks acceptable and where it should be provided. Bland and meaningless platitudes about supporting good development no longer cut it.
Five: Talk about law and order more responsibly
That London has a serious crime problem is not in doubt. However, too frequently Conservatives in London (and elsewhere) focus not on specific incidents and policing issues arising from them but seek to draw broader conclusions, often focused on a culture wars narrative they believe will be to their political advantage. This often causes problems around community cohesion and does little to address the very valid public safety concerns which result from the initial criminal activity.
London Conservatives should rightly put addressing crime (especially knife crime) at the forefront of their campaigns, but they should do so responsibly, in a way which does not exacerbate community divisions unnecessarily.
Six: Embrace creativity and soft power
From Wimbledon and the O2 to Wembley and the West End, London is a world-leading creative and sporting epicentre, capable of attracting huge “soft power” investment. With London’s night time economy struggling under Mayor Khan, there is an opportunity for the Conservatives to be much more overtly supportive of it and to consider which policy levers can be used to increase tourism.
The London 2012 Olympics took place under a Conservative Prime Minister and a Conservative Mayor. It is high time the party reexamined its approach to soft power and the important role of London’s cultural and creative sectors more specifically.
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Such is the parlous position of the Conservative Party both nationally and in London, these ideas will not in themselves guarantee its revival in the capital. However, the first challenge for London’s Tories is to stay relevant, attract new supporters and create the conditions under which a recovery will take place in the event that the national picture improves.
Central to this will be ensuring that when the selection of the next Conservative mayoral candidate comes around, high calibre individuals with serious track records of achievement, not just in the political arena, will be persuaded to seek the nomination. Ultimately, this will be the best barometer for assessing whether the Conservatives have a viable future as an electoral force in London in the medium term.
Duncan Flynn is a Senior Director at Cratus Group. He served as a Conservative councillor in Hillingdon from 2014-22, including as chief whip in 2020-22. He has since left the party. Follow Duncan on X/Twitter.
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