The Conservatives are on the hunt for their candidate for the London mayor elections in 2028. Mauricio Alencar spoke to one Sir James Cleverly’s challengers, Festus Akinbusoye.

Festus Akinbusoye imagines what a London under his leadership would look like: outdoor cinemas set up by London’s beauty spots,  thousands more police officers on the streets, celebrities travelling in to make appearances at events, X Games at Trafalgar Square, cranes spotted around the capital building homes, and business booming. 

It’s a warm vision for a Tory councillor who was only elected into office in May this year. Akinbusoye would have to overcome multiple obstacles in order to make that dream come true. He has just a matter of weeks to convince Tory members in the capital to back him over the political heavyweight, and party favourite, Sir James Cleverly, to run for London mayor. Should he become the Tory candidate, Akinbusoye would then have to get his profile out to Londoners and beat the incumbent Sir Sadiq Khan, or a well-known Labour successor candidate such as David Lammy, Steve Reed or Dawn Butler. 

Still, Akinbusoye is unfazed. Speaking in early October, he says he is “authentically me”. He is not a conventional politician unlike his competitors he has “lived a lot of life”. Akinbusoye came to London when he was 13 and was Bedfordshire’s police and crime commissioner for three years, holding an equivalent role that the London mayor has for the capital through the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). He says he has experience as an entrepreneur, starting a company at the age of 16. And, he stresses at multiple times in a half-hour discussion, he is the “most fun, without question”. 

“Just based on the feedback that I’m getting from members, there is no doubt in my mind that there is a very, very sizeable number of members who want something different, who want a fresh face, who want a break from the past in the sense that Kemi [Badenoch] is talking a lot more now about a new Conservative Party, a changed Conservative party, renewal.”

Akinbusoye does not spare his superlatives. He will be “most pro-house building mayor London has ever had”, the “most pro-policing”, the “most pro-business”, the “most pro-fun”, the candidate with a “boundless optimism for this great city”. So far, he has published a mini manifesto under the banner “A London Yes Plan” that looks to use government levers to grant housing starts across the capital. 

The title of being the “most pro-fun” candidate is not easily tagged onto sitting Westminster councillors. The local authority has come under significant pressure over its proposed rules on “vertical drinking”, out-of-touch legalese for standing up while having a pint, in Soho following reporting in The Guardian, and multiple other newspapers. The draft policy states that venues which provide seated dining spots will get priority in obtaining new licences, on the grounds that it could reduce drunkenness. Critics of the proposal also hit out at the ‘cumulative impact zone’, which extends across a busier part of central London, and forces businesses to abide by stricter licensing rules. 

Akinbusoye said it was up to Parliament to change rules on licensing objectives. He also argued that “nothing much has changed” and added that most applications that got to a licensing committee, on which he sat, were approved. Many new venues carve out areas for dining with table service. Khan has accused councillors in Westminster of being “arrogant”, to which Akinbusoye says: “The irony is that we’d had a Labour run council up until 2024 in Westminster. He has never raised that issue.”

Later on, Akinbusoye makes sure to show he drinks while standing up, and that he fully approves of “vertical drinking”. Tory councillors have posted themselves drinking at pubs while standing up on social media – even if the current rules do discourage business owners from allocating more space to standing boozers. 

He then says that the main problem facing businesses in London is not licensing rules, but rather costs. 

“I am a very pro-growth, pro-investment, pro-infrastructure person,” he says after speaking about high energy costs, business rates and employment costs. 

When asked what power the mayor has to reduce costs for businesses, Akinbusoye reflects that they have “convening powers” and “lobbying powers”. He puts this above the powers that mayor has over City Hall’s budget and “soft power” in representing London. If Khan has got one thing right, Akinbusoye suggests, it’s his campaign to get the government to consider re-introducing relief on VAT shopping for tourists. 

“Probably, that’s a good use of that power,” he says. “But I still go back to where I started, that the biggest concern and the biggest burden that the hospitality industry faces right now is hardly licensing in Westminster.”

Festus’ vision for leveraging devolution

Akinbusoye bucks a trend among many mayoral candidates in suggesting he would not want to take all the funding provided by Andy Burnham under prospective devolution plans. The Labour government is expected to announce plans on how a share of income tax generated locally will be kept by metro mayors across the country. Akinbusoye said he wanted at least 50 per cent of those receipts to be used by local authorities so that councillors could deal with “local priorities”. 

“You would have thought that somebody who wants to be the mayor of London, I want to have all the money and all the power to myself so I can do more. But when we start to extract benefits of wealth from the local people that they create, it’s going to cause a problem in the long run. It doesn’t make sense.”

Devolution is one issue that Akinbusoye looks ready to take a more unorthodox approach on. Others, such as the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street, he will leave to the past. 

“There would be absolutely no point in really digging into that now. It’s gonna happen,” he says as he bats away questions about whether he supports the plan. 

“There’s really no point. It’s like saying ‘what about Brexit’, right? Okay. It’s happened. The thing is, we need to see the data, and the Mayor is transparent about it.”

The Conservatives in London are edging closer to a decision on who could take on Labour and Reform UK for London. London party members will decide on their preferred candidate by late November. The third candidate is Sara Gezdari.

At the Tory conference, the likes of Cleverly and Akinbusoye looked to woo activists and relevant members with speeches and engagements. While Akinbusoye may yet surprise Cleverly, he appears to be building a political career backed by younger party members and some former MPs.

The Tories may still struggle to win London back by 2028. He believes the party needs a candidate that “is going to have the lowest level of voter resistance”.