Conservative members are voting on who they want to represent the party at the London mayor elections in 2028. Maurício Alencar spoke to Sara Gezdari, who is hoping to beat Sir James Cleverly and Festus Akinbusoye to the nomination.

Sara Gezdari says she wants to give back to Britain what it gave to her following a childhood of “constant fear” in Albania. And as a committed Tory, she hopes to offer to the Conservative Party what Margaret Thatcher stood for. 

After losing as a candidate in the 2024 General Election for the Liberal Democrat-stronghold of Richmond Park, she now hopes to pip Sir James Cleverly and Festus Akinbusoye to the nomination for the Conservatives’ candidate for the London mayor elections in 2028. 

Thatcher is an unlikely candidate to inspire a London mayoral bid. Britain’s first female prime minister abolished the capital’s former regional administrative body, the Greater London Council, in the 1980s following a fierce feud with its left-wing leader Ken Livingstone – only for it to reappear, and Livingstone as leader, in a new guise under New Labour in the nineties.

But Gezdari makes clear her motivation. Growing up in communist Albania through the late 1980s, she queued up with her family for bread and milk rations. She was accompanied by a guard in the streets to stop her from being kidnapped and sold for prostitution or organ trafficking. To her, it is clear that her childhood experiences were shaped by socialism – “this mediocrity ideology where you barely survive”. 

After fleeing to Italy in her teenage years, Gezdari went on to study politics at university. It became clear to her that Thatcher championed all the values that she held. The trailblazing leader was “somebody who would speak about free markets, free enterprise, the rule of law, a woman being a prime minister”. 

“That’s the reason why I came to London,” Gezdari said in an interview with . 

“I’d always had people asking me questions like ‘are you going to pursue a political career in Italy?’. And that didn’t seem right.”

The ‘wildcard’ pick

Gezdari, who works at an investment advisory firm, has been a Tory campaigner in south west London for years. Party members are in the midst of voting for their London mayor candidate. She argues that she is not so much of an “underdog” as a “wildcard” pick. While she describes Cleverly and Akinbusoye “beautiful personalities”, she would put leader-centric politics aside, instead looking to build trust with voters and back Kemi Badenoch’s “greater good”. 

During a half-hour conversation, Gezdari is strikingly more critical of Sir Sadiq Khan than her peers. She blames Khan for taking the “best side” of the gig by appearing on red carpets and posing beside celebrities, but for failing to “feel accountable for his failures”. She lists his stance on grooming gangs, the recent unlawful speeding fines and opposition to Palantir’s contract with the Metropolitan Police as examples of his leadership failures. 

Then there is wasteful spending. The night tsar, Amy Lamé, who served between 2016 and 2024, was “absolutely useless” and his appointment of several deputy mayors has been “irresponsible”. Gezdari is also prepared to argue that the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street was the wrong priority at a time when several of London’s bridges are in need of repair and some are closed. 

Gezdari wants Hammersmith Bridge back open

In clips online, Gezdari has hit out at the £144m cost of making Oxford Street traffic-free, and directly linked it to the £300m cost of repairing Hammersmith Bridge. Khan has suggested that funding for Hammersmith Bridge is a matter for local councils. While the heavy bill for Oxford Street’s pedestrianisation has faced intense scrutiny, the plan is set to be paid for mainly through borrowing and using commercial income and events to get returns. It may be difficult for Hammersmith Bridge’s repair to be financed in the same way as Oxford Street. Nevertheless, Gezdari, who says she is “pro-finance”, raises the prospect of using sponsors on the bridge and private investment around local land to get the key crossing open to motorists again. A problem like Hammersmith Bridge is why the London mayor has to be a “champion for new business ideas”. 

The next London mayor is set to have access to more cash than any of their predecessors. Andy Burnham’s devolution drive will allow local leaders to retain a greater portion of income taxes generated locally, as well as receipts from business rates. The Prime Minister hopes that further revenue could boost investment in infrastructure, such as transport links. 

Khan has already said he would use new powers to extend the Bakerloo Line. While Gezdari backs the project, she refrained from linking tax powers to public investment. She said she would support using any business tax income to offer firms relief on business rates and she ruled out introducing an overnight stay levy in London to increase investment in infrastructure. The matter of income tax receipt retention was a “bit more tricky”, adding that she would wait for further details to be revealed.  

One infrastructure project that Khan has strongly opposed is Heathrow Airport’s third runway on net zero grounds. Badenoch and shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith have pledged their support for the runway. As an activist in west London, Gezdari has long contested the expansion. She told she was not going to her “change [her] view on this” despite seeing the pro-business case for Heathrow. 

“I think I am very uncomfortable with Heathrow. I need to see what the new plans look like, I haven’t been talking to them and I know that there is a third runway that will go ahead now, [where] they will try and reduce the acoustic pollution and environmental impact on that,” she said, before adding that planning and parliamentary process would mean the expansion would not be delivered for some time yet. 

“You need a mayor who has got very strong guardrails on what’s going to happen next.”

Gezdari wants to front up to major decisions and be sat around the table when things may go awry. That possibility is about 18 months away and she still faces a number of hurdles to be on the ballot sheet, starting with votes taking place this month in the Conservative Party. 

But Gezdari is relishing the opportunity to even be considered as a possible candidate. “It’s the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” she said. 

“I would say whoever will be the candidate for the Conservative Party, it will be a great thing for London and for Londoners, and we will all rally behind him or her, and work together because we want to do the right thing.”