Who gives a damn about Laila Cunningham’s faith?

One of the rising stars of the Reform UK revolution, Laila Cunningham, has been unveiled as the party’s candidate to take on Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan in the next London mayoral election, scheduled for 2028.

Cunningham, like other prominent figures in Reform, is a defector from the Tories. She was elected to the Westminster City Council in 2022 as a member of the Conservative Party, before joining Reform last year. A practising Muslim with Egyptian parents, the London-born Cunningham was a prosecutor in the Crown Prosecution Service, and is known for her tough positions on law and order. Aptly, she kicked off her London mayoral campaign on Wednesday by declaring that there is ‘a new sheriff in town’. She vowed to launch an ‘all-out war on crime’ if elected as London’s new mayor.

Cunningham has developed a reputation for being a conservative firebrand through her regular appearances on television, particularly GB News. In past interviews, she has declared that mass immigration has resulted in Britain ‘losing its tradition’, and insisted that it is not racist to say so. She has said that poor English skills among migrants has diminished communities and been a barrier to integration. And she has criticised the fact that foreign nationals are sometimes prioritised for social housing. Last year, during an appearance on BBC Newsnight, Cunningham spoke passionately about the threat of illegal, unvetted immigration to the safety of women and girls.

Surely everyone on the right would be pleased, if not delighted, with Laila Cunningham – a fiery conservative with a no-nonsense image – being Reform UK’s mayoral candidate for London? Here, surely, was living proof that Reform is not racist, or misogynistic, nor inherently hostile to Muslims. Proof that mass immigration, crime and an elite hostility to patriotism negatively impacts all British citizens, irrespective of background and religion. Well, apparently not.

Instead, Cunningham’s candidacy has exposed a fracture on the British right. Some influencers have said they will not vote for a second Muslim mayor of London (Khan is also Muslim). They say that, despite her explicit opposition to Islamism, terrorism and rape gangs, her faith means she will not take these threats seriously.

Fortunately, the wider conservative movement has not fallen prey to this outbreak of right-wing identity politics. Responding to the invective directed against Cunningham, Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley said she reinforced his view that ‘Britain is most likely to be dragged back to social-conservative sanity by immigrants and the children of immigrants’. Former Sky and GB News presenter Colin Brazier called her views ‘thought-through, coherent and firmly of the right’. Brazier, a Christian social conservative, went on to say that he fails to see why her faith ‘puts her beyond the pale for some parts of the conservative movement’. Broadcaster Albie Amankona attacked a ‘small, loud and terminally online fringe on the right’, which is ‘doing Reform a favour by exposing itself’.

These reactions have exposed the new fault lines on the British political right. There are civic nationalists whose belief in nationhood is rooted in shared democratic values, mutual obligations and a sense of common purpose. Whereas many online rightists subscribe to an ethno-religious understanding of ‘Britishness’, one that is focussed on ancestry and skin colour, as opposed to common values and culture. They also have a particular hostility towards Muslims, irrespective of their politics.

What all this shows is that not all people on the right sing from the same hymn sheet. In fact, there is an ideological civil war gathering pace within Britain’s conservative movement. Fortunately, the candidacy and popularity of Laila Cunningham shows the saner side is winning.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.