‘All Out War on Crime’: Farage’s Reform Announces Top Prosecutor Laila Cunningham For London Mayoral Run

“Don’t mess with vigilante mum”, warned Nigel Farage as he announced London prosecutor Laila Cunningham as Reform UK’s mayoral pick, promising a Rudy Giuliani broken windows-style crackdown on crime if elected against Labour’s Sadiq Khan.

Brexit pioneer Nigel Farage is laying the groundwork for his Reform UK party to potentially triumph in forthcoming national elections with a roadmap taking in countrywide local elections in 2026, and the London Mayoral elections in 2027. Announcing the new leader of Reform UK London and its Mayoral candidate on Wednesday morning, Mr Farage hailed Laila Cunningham, a “senior Crown Prosecutor” who resigned from her role to campaign politically with the party.

Cunningham, once called “vigilante mum” in British media for confronting a masked gang robbing locals she claimed police had failed to tackle, said the forthcoming elections would be a “referendum” on the failures of Mayor Sadiq Khan. She called on Londoners to “vote for the freedom that safety brings”.

She said on Wednesday:

I’m raising my seven children here, and that’s seven reasons why I want to do this… crime for me is not hypothetical like some of the journalists who say I’m scaremongering. My family has experienced it many times.

In fact one time my kids were targeted by gangs in balaclavas, who people say don’t exist, day after day in broad daylight. We were all terrified. I turned to the police, naturally, and was told there were not enough resources, so I gathered the evidence myself. In fact I’d just had a baby, I put him in the carrier. I followed the gangs, I took photos… I protected my family when the state couldn’t. The press called me ‘vigilante mum’ but I should never have been put in that position.

Both Cunningham and Farage made clear that if Reform UK won the London contest, it would usher in a new era of confidence, freedom, and safety in London with a massive crackdown on crime and antisocial elements. Cunningham said this would mean “visible policing, zero, I mean zero tolerance for crime, real consequences”. She asserted she would be a “new sheriff in town” and that she’d be “launching an all-out war on crime”.

Mr Farage pointed to the transformative ‘broken windows’ policies of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s and said:

…for those who don’t think this can actually happen, throughout the 1980s and 1990s I worked for American companies, New York-based, Chicago-based. And I do remember going to New York as a young businessman, and you wouldn’t dare leave a restaurant until you saw the car ready on the side of the road and you ran across as quickly as you could because New York had become the most dangerous city in America.

And eight years later after two terms of Rudi Giuliani New York had become one of the safest cities in America. All done by one man’s drive and determination, and the NYPD cooperating — and when they didn’t, being sacked — and the right people with the right priorities coming in.

Both poured scorn on the policies of incumbent mayor Sadiq Khan, who this year will mark ten years leading the city. Farage noted how London’s stock globally was tumbling, with “this once admired, historic, astonishing and extraordinary place is now being talked about around the world in increasingly disparaging terms.” This fish rots from the head down, he said, emphasising the need to eject Khan from office.

Cunningham also blasted “the London that Sadiq Khan has created”, noting the immense innate potential the city has to again rise to a place of greatness. She also took aim at thin-skinned Khan’s retreat to allegation when challenged on his record. Cunningham, who is a Muslim of Egyptian heritage, said of Khan: “…he ludicrously says that criticism of his record is because he’s Muslim and we’re all Islamophobic. Frankly, it’s an insult to victims and to Londoners”.

Also prominent in her remarks were references to the long-discussed but never proven possibility that child rape grooming gangs, found all over England, also operate in London. As previously reported, it is something Mayor Khan has long been defensive over, but which now appears to be on the verge of a breakthrough. Cunningham, for her part, promised to direct police to “hunt” down abusers in the capital.

She said: “I will set clear high-level priorities for the Met to focus on tackling knife crime, drugs, robbery, shoplifting, rape. And I will task the Met Police with targeting, hunting, and prosecuting rape gangs in London. There will be nowhere for them to hide”. On London’s present chief of police, she added: “I was really disappointed when Mark Rowley said there were no grooming gangs in London. Then turned round and said ‘we’re reviewing 9,000 cases’. How the hell do you get 9,000 cases wrong? I think he has to go. On my watch, you don’t get 9,000 grooming cases wrong, you get it right first time.”