A poem praising London's diversity, a Conservative career that suddenly collapsed, and pledge to stop-and-search women in burkhas: We profile the woman who wants to be London's next leader.
‘Divorced dad’ is the last remaining move of the geriatric millennial mind, a kind of verbal vape cloud deployed whenever an actual argument looks too strenuous. Like ‘incel’, it once meant something precise and now just means ‘person who annoys me and won’t clap on cue’.
The jury's out on whether she's a good politician, but...Laila Cunningham’s ‘arc’ isn’t mysterious, she's a glamourous well-off metropolitan, London lifer, has watched the city decay in real time and started saying so out loud. You don’t need a therapist’s couch to decode that.
P.S. Also remarkable how the same norwooding millennials went from ‘crime is real and it’s all austerity’s fault’ to ‘crime doesn’t actually exist, you’re just consuming the wrong media'.
It’s hard to believe she’s the same person from a decade ago, once a feminist and open-minded, now she seems fuelled by bitterness after her marriage ended. She’s followed the predictable path from Tory to Reform grifter: failed businesses, Bitcoin schemes, and Liz Truss selfies.
Much like Zia, she’s a 'disgraced' Muslim who has turned on her own community. Despite her Egyptian heritage, she attacks migrant families just like the one she came from. It’s a transparent play for power; she’s weaponising fake news and people's insecurities to line her pockets and boost her status. She won’t win, but the fact that she might come in second is a wake-up call. I really hope Labour puts forward a stronger candidate. Sadiq Khan has done some good stuff but it's time for a change.
It's because it's the kind of person that creates a personna and then believes the personna, and that personna is absolutely malleable depending on the circumstances. The goal is power, does not matter how.
> she’s a 'disgraced' Muslim who has turned on her own community.
Her own Community? Do you really think 2.2billion people of various races, ethnicities and cultures are of the same “community” and share the same feelings or views of the world as each other like sheep?
Furthermore, what has her heritage got to do with anything? She’s as British as the next person. That’s the only line which you should judge her at.
All of this is the same dumb mentality as Reforms; taking part in identity politics, culture wars just to get one ups on each other. Pathetic group of people you are living in your own worlds.
Strange to mention and repeat her claims about ‘rising violent crime’ earlier in the article and mention her focus on crime rates at the end without providing the context around crime in the borough, my understanding was that those are actually going down overall.
She sounds like an opportunistic attention seeker. That family hotel business? If it's in Sussex Gdns then the clientele around there are very transient, backpackers, sketchy people with hard to pin down backgrounds. I lived in Westbourne Grove for 40 years, I recognise her type. What a hypocrite! She's learned how to fit in the circles she frequents. Another rich cosmopolitan stoking the resentment of struggling Londoners. Pretty despicable, she will go low in her mayoral campaign I warrant.
I have the feeling that is the kind of London candidate for people outside of London. The goal is not as much as winning votes in London than convince everybody who thinks that London is hell on earth (who never visit the city) that they are right.
Wasn’t it Reform who declared that people from non-white backgrounds (such as the children of immigrants, as Cunningham is) weren’t really British, even if they’d been born here?
I think it was implied, not explicit. Hard to source the actual wording when I tried to check and not sure if it’s formal “policy” or only what one Reform person said (hence my comment as a question). There are always convenient exceptions for people like Kruger anyway, of course.
Actually I now see that it was Matthew Goodwin, of GB News, who was reported as saying “It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody British”, a propos people from minority ethnic backgrounds; but as he’s now the Reform candidate in the Gorton & Denton byelection, I think my broad point stands (I did say I’d had trouble sourcing the quote when I posted). As far as I know, Reform have not disowned their candidate’s remark.
London has always had its share of people born here and from ethnic minority backgrounds, sometimes living in discrete communities, such as Little Italy, Chinatown, the Irish around Kilburn, those of Caribbean background in N Kensington, etc, etc. It’s one of the things that’s made the city as varied and lively as it is. As I understand it, Goodwin was claiming that some people born in the UK — and who are thus British Citizens — aren’t “really” British in his view, just because of their heritage; nothing to do with assimilation or integration.
As a Londoner I find it so exhausting that candidates like these keep trying to say they “represent us” and they’re “standing up for the people of London”. Please stop we are fine
Nigel Farage is thinking that London's Muslims will be easily tricked. His offer to London's hard of critical thinking is, "Look, I've got an alternative Muslim for you!"
Yep. Just like he assumed Gorton+Denton’s Muslims would never vote for a woman or a gay Jew… since they did, he’s resorted to saying they cheated.
Laila has a chance with London’s middle class Muslims though, the types who hate being associated with the poor ethnic minorities. And she’s the type to tell a Bengali the problem is the Pakistanis and tell the Pakistanis the problem is the Indians etc etc…
she will blow away the opposition in terms of appeal.
There are many munafik Muslims in London and a great deal of them have originated from families who were middle class in their countries of origin , from sylhet to Algeria, Baku to Nairobi , escaping from crooked jurisdictions and redistributive practises, to the safety of the UK. Smarter than the locals, an over class.
Natural conservatives , and Nigel has out manoeuvred the middle managers once again to dictate terms to London’s ‘established’ political thinkers. Which, I can read in this article the writer appears to be one of.
Spot on. It really matters who the oppositions pick. It will have to be a stellar candidate. Laila’s such a sloppy talker that it’s easy to see how her campaign rhetoric could be countered… but it has to be the right candidate.
Even if it was only implicit, they still have the problem of explaining why it’s ethnicity based. Not sure how many black members they have, but Asians might begin to feel worried. Suella Braverman is a target under either definition
Lumping all people with similar heritage is highly problematic, as is this weird notion that non-white people can't be racist. It's racist to think non-whites can't be racist! Also what is missing from the story here is class. As a British Egyptian, I can tell you that the class and cultural gulf between someone of her background and that of a poor immigrant from Egypt or elsewhere from the muslim-majority world, is huge.
She is white, do you not see the colour of her skin? White people can be ethnically non European, are you aware of that? FYI, Many from the Levant & North Africa are legally white in North America. She’s a cunt, but let’s not get into race/culture war nonsense please.
“She was eighth on the Conservatives’ list for the Greater London Assembly.”
It’s Greater London Authority not Assembly. The London Assembly is part of the Greater London Authority . No one seems to get that right. (I accept it’s a small hill to die on. 😁 )
TBF, he's a pretty canny operator. She probably won't win, but she'll have more appeal than Ant Middleton (brushed aside for a more electable Londoner) or the use white make middle managers they usually field
Tall, wealthy Muslim woman in a skirt with an Angelina Jolie resemblance, personally impacted by crime… she can relentlessly attack Muslims every which way she wants and media will let it slide.
Why wouldn’t she want to comment on public Diwali celebrations 🤔 This is Muslim demonisation as official election strategy.
👇
‘“Cunningham also thinks there should not be Eid celebrations in Trafalgar Square, which have been running since 2006. “We’re not a Muslim city,” she tells me. When I ask if she would also like to cancel public Diwali celebrations, she responds that she would not say that right now.”’ [—Unherd]
‘"I just think, listen, celebrate whatever you want in private, but the civic culture of a city has to be British," she says. Cunningham does not pray or fast over Ramadan but does celebrate Eid at home with family.
"I think that it's not a Muslim city. And I think that I would like to see Judeo-Christian culture and British culture celebrated more in London."
How?
"I didn't see any Easter celebrations in central London, you know. I'd like to see, like, a... city wide Egg Hunt!" her eyes light up.
"Love that, my kids would love that, you know, where all of London, we all get in teams, and we do an egg hunt." She also wants the Union flag ("a beautiful sight") to be "everywhere"' [—The Times]
Right, so she’s effectively the weirdo divorced Dad archetype but as a middle aged woman.
Like Badenoch she has the problem that the people most like to agree with her positions are the people most likely to object to her existence.
I sort of feel sorry for her.
‘Divorced dad’ is the last remaining move of the geriatric millennial mind, a kind of verbal vape cloud deployed whenever an actual argument looks too strenuous. Like ‘incel’, it once meant something precise and now just means ‘person who annoys me and won’t clap on cue’.
The jury's out on whether she's a good politician, but...Laila Cunningham’s ‘arc’ isn’t mysterious, she's a glamourous well-off metropolitan, London lifer, has watched the city decay in real time and started saying so out loud. You don’t need a therapist’s couch to decode that.
P.S. Also remarkable how the same norwooding millennials went from ‘crime is real and it’s all austerity’s fault’ to ‘crime doesn’t actually exist, you’re just consuming the wrong media'.
"decay in real time" 🤔
Try some different YouTube channels maybe.
“Gen X, a bit sweary, trying to make sense of the world - opinions my own”
PARKLIFE!
Given how much money she obviously has, I wouldn’t! She’ll be fine whatever happens in the election.
It’s hard to believe she’s the same person from a decade ago, once a feminist and open-minded, now she seems fuelled by bitterness after her marriage ended. She’s followed the predictable path from Tory to Reform grifter: failed businesses, Bitcoin schemes, and Liz Truss selfies.
Much like Zia, she’s a 'disgraced' Muslim who has turned on her own community. Despite her Egyptian heritage, she attacks migrant families just like the one she came from. It’s a transparent play for power; she’s weaponising fake news and people's insecurities to line her pockets and boost her status. She won’t win, but the fact that she might come in second is a wake-up call. I really hope Labour puts forward a stronger candidate. Sadiq Khan has done some good stuff but it's time for a change.
It's because it's the kind of person that creates a personna and then believes the personna, and that personna is absolutely malleable depending on the circumstances. The goal is power, does not matter how.
> she’s a 'disgraced' Muslim who has turned on her own community.
Her own Community? Do you really think 2.2billion people of various races, ethnicities and cultures are of the same “community” and share the same feelings or views of the world as each other like sheep?
Furthermore, what has her heritage got to do with anything? She’s as British as the next person. That’s the only line which you should judge her at.
All of this is the same dumb mentality as Reforms; taking part in identity politics, culture wars just to get one ups on each other. Pathetic group of people you are living in your own worlds.
Strange to mention and repeat her claims about ‘rising violent crime’ earlier in the article and mention her focus on crime rates at the end without providing the context around crime in the borough, my understanding was that those are actually going down overall.
She sounds like an opportunistic attention seeker. That family hotel business? If it's in Sussex Gdns then the clientele around there are very transient, backpackers, sketchy people with hard to pin down backgrounds. I lived in Westbourne Grove for 40 years, I recognise her type. What a hypocrite! She's learned how to fit in the circles she frequents. Another rich cosmopolitan stoking the resentment of struggling Londoners. Pretty despicable, she will go low in her mayoral campaign I warrant.
I have the feeling that is the kind of London candidate for people outside of London. The goal is not as much as winning votes in London than convince everybody who thinks that London is hell on earth (who never visit the city) that they are right.
The careers of both her and her current husband feel like they are running at grift level twelveteen. Mumpreneurs, crypto, AI etc etc.
Wasn’t it Reform who declared that people from non-white backgrounds (such as the children of immigrants, as Cunningham is) weren’t really British, even if they’d been born here?
Unless they are wealthy and support Farage....
Did Reform actually include the non-white background or just imply it?
Because Reform MP Danny Krueger is the son of two native-born white South Africans and otherwise meets the expulsion criteria.
I think it was implied, not explicit. Hard to source the actual wording when I tried to check and not sure if it’s formal “policy” or only what one Reform person said (hence my comment as a question). There are always convenient exceptions for people like Kruger anyway, of course.
Actually I now see that it was Matthew Goodwin, of GB News, who was reported as saying “It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody British”, a propos people from minority ethnic backgrounds; but as he’s now the Reform candidate in the Gorton & Denton byelection, I think my broad point stands (I did say I’d had trouble sourcing the quote when I posted). As far as I know, Reform have not disowned their candidate’s remark.
London has always had its share of people born here and from ethnic minority backgrounds, sometimes living in discrete communities, such as Little Italy, Chinatown, the Irish around Kilburn, those of Caribbean background in N Kensington, etc, etc. It’s one of the things that’s made the city as varied and lively as it is. As I understand it, Goodwin was claiming that some people born in the UK — and who are thus British Citizens — aren’t “really” British in his view, just because of their heritage; nothing to do with assimilation or integration.
As a Londoner I find it so exhausting that candidates like these keep trying to say they “represent us” and they’re “standing up for the people of London”. Please stop we are fine
"Unaccountable" when the article is a preview of a forthcoming election? "Disgraceful little oik"?? I assume you'd prefer someone like Rees-Mogg?
Nigel Farage is thinking that London's Muslims will be easily tricked. His offer to London's hard of critical thinking is, "Look, I've got an alternative Muslim for you!"
Yep. Just like he assumed Gorton+Denton’s Muslims would never vote for a woman or a gay Jew… since they did, he’s resorted to saying they cheated.
Laila has a chance with London’s middle class Muslims though, the types who hate being associated with the poor ethnic minorities. And she’s the type to tell a Bengali the problem is the Pakistanis and tell the Pakistanis the problem is the Indians etc etc…
she will blow away the opposition in terms of appeal.
There are many munafik Muslims in London and a great deal of them have originated from families who were middle class in their countries of origin , from sylhet to Algeria, Baku to Nairobi , escaping from crooked jurisdictions and redistributive practises, to the safety of the UK. Smarter than the locals, an over class.
Natural conservatives , and Nigel has out manoeuvred the middle managers once again to dictate terms to London’s ‘established’ political thinkers. Which, I can read in this article the writer appears to be one of.
Spot on. It really matters who the oppositions pick. It will have to be a stellar candidate. Laila’s such a sloppy talker that it’s easy to see how her campaign rhetoric could be countered… but it has to be the right candidate.
Even if it was only implicit, they still have the problem of explaining why it’s ethnicity based. Not sure how many black members they have, but Asians might begin to feel worried. Suella Braverman is a target under either definition
Lumping all people with similar heritage is highly problematic, as is this weird notion that non-white people can't be racist. It's racist to think non-whites can't be racist! Also what is missing from the story here is class. As a British Egyptian, I can tell you that the class and cultural gulf between someone of her background and that of a poor immigrant from Egypt or elsewhere from the muslim-majority world, is huge.
She is white, do you not see the colour of her skin? White people can be ethnically non European, are you aware of that? FYI, Many from the Levant & North Africa are legally white in North America. She’s a cunt, but let’s not get into race/culture war nonsense please.
“She was eighth on the Conservatives’ list for the Greater London Assembly.”
It’s Greater London Authority not Assembly. The London Assembly is part of the Greater London Authority . No one seems to get that right. (I accept it’s a small hill to die on. 😁 )
good profile but I'm left wondering what does Farage see in her?
What first attracted you to the attractive, grifting bullshitter who would say whatever it took to get ahead?
TBF, he's a pretty canny operator. She probably won't win, but she'll have more appeal than Ant Middleton (brushed aside for a more electable Londoner) or the use white make middle managers they usually field
Her dermatology advantage for Reform.
Tall, wealthy Muslim woman in a skirt with an Angelina Jolie resemblance, personally impacted by crime… she can relentlessly attack Muslims every which way she wants and media will let it slide.
Why wouldn’t she want to comment on public Diwali celebrations 🤔 This is Muslim demonisation as official election strategy.
👇
‘“Cunningham also thinks there should not be Eid celebrations in Trafalgar Square, which have been running since 2006. “We’re not a Muslim city,” she tells me. When I ask if she would also like to cancel public Diwali celebrations, she responds that she would not say that right now.”’ [—Unherd]
‘"I just think, listen, celebrate whatever you want in private, but the civic culture of a city has to be British," she says. Cunningham does not pray or fast over Ramadan but does celebrate Eid at home with family.
"I think that it's not a Muslim city. And I think that I would like to see Judeo-Christian culture and British culture celebrated more in London."
How?
"I didn't see any Easter celebrations in central London, you know. I'd like to see, like, a... city wide Egg Hunt!" her eyes light up.
"Love that, my kids would love that, you know, where all of London, we all get in teams, and we do an egg hunt." She also wants the Union flag ("a beautiful sight") to be "everywhere"' [—The Times]