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People are stripped of freedom when they live in fear of attack and Londoners are fleeing their city because they dread crime, according to Reform UK’s mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham. There is just over two years to go before Londoners elect a new mayor but a Reform victory would give Nigel Farage’s party a surge of momentum ahead of the general election expected in 2029. In a city often seen as a Labour bastion, Ms Cunningham is already a bookies’ favourite.

This daughter of Egyptian parents once dreamed of being a star basketball player and was a devoted fan of Michael Jordan. Now she brings the intensity of the game to politics and is determined to end Labour’s reign in London.

Describing how the threat of crime drains joy from life, she says: “When you don’t feel safe, it’s very difficult to feel happy. You’re not really free when you don’t feel safe.”

She talks of a city where shoplifting is so rife it is seen as a “form of shopping” and where you are “always guarding your phone”, tracking where your kids are and avoiding walking alone at night.

Ms Cunningham once fought crime within the Crown Prosecution Service and she wants to restore the liberty which comes with an assurance of safety.

“When I walk down the street I’m acutely aware that someone could sexually assault me [or] my teenage girls, and again that removes a certain freedom,” she says.

She believes her message will resonate across the tribal lines of London politics because “whether you’re Labour, Tory, Green, whatever, you still want safe streets”.

If she wins, she will be the first woman to hold the post, but she has no time for identity politics.

When asked whether she experienced anti-Muslim prejudice when growing up in the London district of Kilburn, she says: “I don’t think people even knew I was Muslim. Not because I was hiding it, it was just nobody cared.’

She does not want a London in which people are put in a demographic “prison” and has a clear message about Reform’s vision for this diverse city: “We’re not here to divide you.”

“We don’t really care who you pray to, where you’re from, who you choose to love,” she says. “It just comes to a fundamental value of loving this country and defending it.”

Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan has divided the rich from the poor with his ULEZ charges for cars that don’t meet low emissions requirements, she says, accusing him of presiding over a “two-tier London”.

“We have those that can afford to drive and park and pay the ULEZ… And you have those that can’t.”

Blasting the high cost of travel on the Underground, she says: “The Tube’s very expensive. I have seven kids – if I took the kids on the Tube just even in zone one it would be a fortune.”

Raising a family has brought home the destructive impact of crime on young lives. She talks of how a thug robbed one of her children of a mobile phone with the warning: “If you snitch I’ll kill you.”

When she was growing up, she says, cocaine was something “some rich banker” would take. But she describes how one of her children was in school uniform in central London when a man in a Covid mask handed over a card with a phone number, stating: ‘I have everything you need: Ketamine, coke, just call this number.’

London today, she claims, is a city that “works for politicians” but not for people who are worried about crime and cannot get on the housing ladder, despite working furiously hard..

“We want to give London back,” she says. “We don’t want to take it for ourselves, we want to give it back to Londoners.”

Ms Cunningham is a councillor in the City of Westminster’s Lancaster Gate ward and she made headlines last year when she announced she was “tired of defending failure” and defected from the Tories to Reform.

Her disillusionment with the Conservatives “really set in” during the Coivd pandemic.

She remembers: “I couldn’t see my sister in hospital. She had stage four cancer. They used to try and make her sign a ‘do not resuscitate’ and she’d go, ‘No, I want to live.’ “

She was “upset that the NHS that I’ve paid all my life into, that a lot of my family have dedicated their lives to, wasn’t there for my sister”.

Later, she was outraged when she heard Conservatives calling for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.

“Hang on,” she thought. “They could have done that, and they didn’t. This happened all on their watch.”

The tipping point on her journey to Reform came when a friend wanted to defect and was about to meet Mr Farage.

She remembers: “He’s like, ‘Do you think I should?’ I’m like, ‘You definitely should.’”

Describing the appeal the Reform leader, she says: “Nigel is the only leader who’s always fought for our sovereignty, you know, and people recognise that. They want someone to stand up for them. He’s not here to be part of the establishment and he never was.”

Being in the Conservative party, she explains, can be like being in a bad marriage.

“You know, you stay in a long marriage that you hate, and then you’re like, ‘You know what, I’m just going to do it. I’ve had enough.’”

Conservative friends want to defect, she claims, but are worried about the backlash.

“Some have said they can’t join now because their kids are going either to university or applying to jobs and they’re worried that they’ll be disadvantaged if they join Reform publicly.”

But she believes the defection of former Tory Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick to Reform ranks is momentous.

“I think it’s been a game changer because it signifies that the Conservatives are dead.”

She is confident Londoners, in the privacy of the polling booth, will vote to give Reform a chance to change their city.

“They might not be fully on board,” she says. “They might have heard rumours or lies about us, but they’ll be like: ‘I’ve given the Conservatives or Labour a chance. How much worse can it be?’”

She has a clear message to these voters: “Listen, if we don’t do what we say we’re going to do, don’t vote for us again.”

Stepping into the spotlight as Reform’s mayoral candidate instantly made her one of the highest profile politicians on the British Right, and the scrutiny will intensify as the 2028 polling day nears. Her home remains an oasis of normality

“My kids are like, ‘Mom, when’s dinner? Can you give me some money to go out tonight?”

She talks with delight about her children, saying they’ve ended up being the people whose company she enjoys the most.

“I’ve raised people that I love to hang out with,” he says.

This is no accident.

“I was always very focused on them spending time together,” she says. “So I avoided excessive playdates, activities – my aim was that we all do things together, all the time.”

As a child, she used to sleep with her basketball beneath pictures of Michael Jordan and his fellow Chicago Bulls. She is now in the political arena with a shot at making history and she is determined not to miss.