Sir James Slim has had a busy few weeks.
Since announcing he was stepping down as Shadow Housing Secretary and running as the next Conservative Mayor of the United States London in May 2028 we heard how the former Braintree minister and MP will ‘wage war’ with the incumbent Sadiq Khan above motorists.
How he will stop the Prime Minister Andy Burnham of ‘squeezing London dry, like a cash cow’. How he will put our capital back on the world map and make Americans stop asking: ‘Is it safe, is it okay?’
We also heard how former Sun editor and political commentator David Yelland blasted him in a post on X about Cleverly’s plans Kwasi Kwarteng and described him as ‘Liz Truss‘S Brexit chancellor’.
“The first thing I did was laugh,” says Cleverly, “because that’s what I did Minister of Foreign Affairs for over a year and then Minister of the Interior.’
His response to Yelland was quick and succinct: “David, I’m the other black guy.”
As we talk in his office at Portcullis House, Cleverly is optimistic.
“It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last time,” he says. ‘I was once in a taxi with Kwasi to go to a meeting and talk about politics. When we got out the driver looked at Kwasi and said, ‘I recognize you! That’s you David Lammy!” It happens.’
Sir James Cleverly has told Tory leader Kemi Badenoch he will resign as MP – and now he plans to run for Mayor of London
Sadiq Khan has been Mayor of London for more than ten years as of May 2016
Of Yelland, he says, “I don’t think it was racist, just sloppy and lazy.”
So now that all of that has been cleared up, we turn to Cleverly’s deep love for London – ‘I’m unashamedly proud of it’. He thinks he is the person who can turn our traditionally Labour-dominated capital blue. And the countless things that any future mayor could sink his or her teeth into.
Because two years after Khan’s fourth premiership, it appears that there is quite a lot. Rising crime rates, knife crime, murders, robberies. Rolex gangs terrorize wealthy shoppers in Mayfair. Tent camps pop up every now and then in Park Lane. And falling real estate prices.
In addition, Transport for London has been plagued by strikes and many residents claim Khan’s controversial Ulez expansion is stifling their livelihoods. And members of London’s Jewish community say they are feeling increasingly anxious and vulnerable.
That’s a lot of trouble, but Cleverly, 57, is relentlessly optimistic, calling London “brilliant, fantastic and amazing” and pointing out that crime statistics there are much lower than other major world cities. He also loves the residents – whom he describes as “polite, elegant and wonderful hustlers” – and says he wants to look ahead. To defend London.
‘When I see videos of London, I want to see positive things. I want to make sure London is vibrant, safe and clean. And I will,” he says, sitting at 6-foot-4 in his chair.
Perhaps he has learned some useful lessons from Susan Hall, the Tory London Assembly member whose bid two years ago was a success – largely because of running such a negative campaign.
Or maybe it’s because, as he tells me, one of his great political heroes was Ronald Reagan, the fortieth president of the United States. “His philosophy was that you don’t have to demonize anyone or be negative, divisive or angry to get things done.”
But what about the Jewish community? What about the recent stabbing in leafy Shepherd’s Bush, which prompted Reform mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham to declare that nowhere in London was safe?
“Everyone has the right to safety, everyone,” he says. “There is political cowardice in some quarters where people cannot say that behavior is unacceptable.”
Cleverly’s inner Reagan clearly doesn’t seem to apply to the incumbent mayor, as he talks about how he has “vastly underperformed, is not nearly as energetic or passionate as he should have been and is asleep at the wheel when it comes to crime.”
Homeless people are found lying in Covent Garden, one of London’s busiest tourist hotspots
A murder scene has been depicted where a 52-year-old woman was murdered in Shepherd’s Bush, west London
But what really irritates him is Khan’s ridiculous fight with Donald Trump. “It is completely counterproductive and reinforces the unfair and inaccurate criticism of London around the world.”
He is also candid about Andy Burnham. ‘He buys into lazy anti-London stereotypes – he thinks everyone here is rich, that London has more than its fair share, and forgets how much we contribute.’
Cleverly himself has contributed a lot in his eleven-year career at Westminster. And not just in politics. He is an Army Reserve officer. He also founded and ran his own publishing company and later worked in the London Assembly as Mayor of London’s Youth Ambassador. And of course he’s a lifelong Londoner.
Born in Lewisham, Cleverly is the only child of James, a white surveyor from Wiltshire, and Evelyn, from a wealthy family in Sierra Leone. She had trained as a nurse in the Swinging Sixties, met James, gotten pregnant and had a baby out of wedlock, which was a huge deal at the time.
“Her father was extremely furious, but she refused to go home and later they married secretly,” he says. Inevitably there was racism – “even the TV shows were racist then, it was a different time” – although he insists he had a very happy childhood.
As a teenager, he mainly played Dungeons & Dragons or modeled Warhammer figures. ‘I love Warhammer! I was quite nerdy, even though I played rugby.”
The seeds of his political consciousness were sown in the Winter of Discontent in 1978. “The power would go out and that would be the end of Doctor Who,” he says. ‘The bins were overfull. Public sector strikes. My mother cried a lot. She was happy with her family, but this was not the London she signed up for.”
But it took a long time before he entered politics.
First, he joined the military, which, he says, made him very organized and structured.
His office is full of military photos and memorabilia, and I have never seen such a crisp white shirt or such vibrantly striped suspenders in Westminster, which he removes for fear that they are ‘too Gordon Gekko’ for our photos. But he leaves his two watches behind: an Apple on one side (for communication) and a big Breitling on the other.
This was followed by a degree in hospitality management at what is now the University of West London in Ealing. It was in Ealing that he met Susie – his wife and mother of their two sons – at the student union bar.
Slim says Badenoch (who he is pictured with in January) ‘was great about it’ when he told her he was quitting her shadow cabinet last month
The politician met his wife Susie (pictured together in 2024) in a university bar when he was 24 and she was 20. They have been married for 26 years.
‘She was very stylish and I said to her, “You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen in my life” – and they were kind of amber and light blue and green. And I said, “I just think you’re beautiful.” And that was that. She was 20, he 24.
He gets all soft and fuzzy when he talks about Susie. About how they share the same birthday, how all his career decisions are made together with her. And the terrible times when she battled breast cancer while their son was doing his A-levels and he became embroiled in the tumultuous end of Boris Johnson’s government.
‘It was so stressful. I needed decompression.” So he picked up Warhammer again – quietly, in the garden shed. Paint small fantasy figures in silence. ‘It engages your brain on a level like yoga. So it lowers the heart rate and reduces stress levels.”
Maybe the barn will become his refuge again, this time after a mayoral battle that promises to be a blockbuster.
He has thrown his hat into the ring alarmingly early, announcing he will not defend his Braintree constituency at the next general election. His boss Kemi Badenoch “was great about it” (though he says he was less keen on giving up his role two years after the vote).
Although campaigning suits Cleverly, a smooth media player, he sometimes has a blunder up his sleeve. In 2010 he called Lib Dem Simon Hughes ‘ad**k’ on Twitter. And in 2023 he described a Labor constituency (Stockton North) as a ‘s***-hole’. (Although he later insisted he was talking about MP Alex Cunningham, not his constituency).
Then there was the joke at a Downing Street reception about sedating his wife with ‘a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night’ so that she would ‘never realize that better men exist’.
Considering he was Home Secretary at the time and his department had just announced a crackdown on date rape drugs, things weren’t looking good.
But he quickly apologized. And as he says about Yelland’s mess: “We all make mistakes. Of course we do. But own them. Say sorry and move on.”
So back to his mayoral hopes. What if the party doesn’t go for him? He has not yet been anointed as an official candidate. And what if they do and he loses?
“Well, I’ve burned all my boats then, haven’t I?” he says simply. ‘I have made a very big and public commitment to this job. I can’t go back to Braintree with my tail between my legs. So I have to throw everything at it. There is no parachute. No safety net. No plan B. I’m all in.’
That’s quite a gamble. But rather it feels that if anyone can do it for the Tories, it might be Slim.
