Reform UK candidate for Mayor of London Laila Cunningham would ban marches “praising Hamas or the IRGC” and which threaten the Jewish community, she has told the JC.
In an exclusive interview from the party’s annual conference in Birmingham, she also shared her views on current Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, explained why she joined Reform UK from the Tories and spoke about visiting Israel in the 1990s.
Cunningham told the JC she felt that British Jews had been “sidelined”.
She said: “I don't feel like the safety of British Jews, especially in London, has been taken seriously.
"Some of my best, best friends are Jewish, and never in my whole lifetime of living in London have I heard them wanting to move.
“I went to school with them. My kids went to school with them, and so many are telling me either they're thinking of moving, their relatives are moving.”
The 49-year-old mother of seven and former prosecutor added: “For me that is a complete failure of leadership and government. No one's asking why.”
Asked how would she do things differently, she says: “Wherever the Jewish community feels it needs enhanced security, it should be provided.
“Second of all, I wouldn't allow people to march on our streets, calling, praising Hamas or the IRGC [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps].”
She also said she would ban the annual Al Quds day rally, which, in previous years, has seen expressions of support for Iranian-backed terrorist groups.
“I will not have IRGC's propaganda marching on our streets. It is a disgrace. These are people that want to kill Jewish people and destroy the West. What are we doing? I cannot go into Iran and do the same.”
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice (second right) and Reform UK London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham (second left) in Golders Green. (Image: Lucy North/PA Wire)Lucy North/PA Wire
Cunningham, who is Muslim and whose parents arrived in the UK in the 1960s, disagrees with the free speech arguments against the bans.
Reform UK London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham (centre) at the scene in Golders Green, after a terror attack in April. (Image: Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire)Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire
“A symbol of a free city is not whether people can chant praising terrorists. It's whether a Jewish boy can wear the kippa or a girl can go to school and feel safe. For me, that is the symbol of a free system, and it's not right now.”
Cunningham is scathing of the current mayor of London and how he has handled increased antisemitism in the capital.
“What I hear from the Jewish community is that it's been woeful,” she says.
That Jews in the capital feel unsafe is “one of the biggest failure of Sadiq Khan's leadership”.
“And for me, if Jews are not safe in our city, then none of us are. I remember when I went to Golders Green after one of the stabbings, and so many people were like, ‘Thank you so much for coming to support us.’”
She was taken aback that her presence would be so appreciated.
"Your community is my community. I don't see London Jewish, Muslim, Black, Bangladeshi. We are all Londoners, you know, and that's the London I grew up in.
"We were all in it together. There was no dividing line between where you were from, what religion, I didn't know if someone was Jewish unless they were outwardly Jewish.
"I didn't know if someone was Muslim. Just we were Londoners.”
Prior to the interview, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf was criticised by Labour MPs after he singled out a candidate to replace Sir Keir Starmer in the Holborn and St Pancras because she was born in Somalia.
“The front runner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former Prime Minister Keir Starmer in our Parliament was born in Somalia. Do you understand what’s happening?” he said on X.
Cunningham said that she had not seen Yusuf’s comments, but she takes a markedly different tone to her front-bench colleague.
“In London, if it's not what colour your skin is, what you pray for, where you come from, it's where you're going.
"If you love this country and you are British and you want to contribute and you want to stand up for it, then you have my full backing,” she said, adding that Londoners of Somali heritage would be more than welcome in Reform UK “if they're British and they love this and they love this country”.
For Cunningham, this is personal.
“My parents weren't born here. I was born here, but my sister came when she was five, dedicated her whole life to the NHS. Became a consultant. She's just as British as I am.”
Cunningham continued: “I think sometimes you will find that immigrants that pick Britain are maybe more patriotic because they know the exact reason why they're here. They don't take it for granted. My mother is so patriotic because she knows why London, Britain, is so much better than back in Egypt.
“She knows exactly what Britain represents. They came with the sole purpose of being British. It was something to be proud of. When she'd go back to Egypt, she would on holiday she'd go, ‘I’m British’. You know, it was a sense of pride”.
She feels, however, that that sense of pride in Britain doesn’t exist among more recent arrivals to Britain. Perhaps because of the scale and speed of mass immigration, she says many “almost have a sense of pride of remaining foreign.”
Despite her patriotism and love of Britain, some on the right aren’t keen to see a Muslim mother of seven as Reform UK’s candidate.
Supporters of Rupert Lowe’s outfit Restore Britain have given her online abuse saying that she isn’t British and that she shouldn’t be deported.
A particularly venomous volley of abuse took place after she did a video in a kosher butcher. She said: “You should have seen the comments,” but reiterated her opposition to any attempt to ban shechita: “Who am I to tell the Jewish people what they should do?”
A former Conservative councillor in Westminster, she was disillusioned by what she saw as her party’s complacency and acceptance of mediocracy.
“I watched my city and my country decline, and I watched Conservatives pat themselves on the back that they did a good job, and it was so disconnected to what was actually happening on the street.
"I joined a party that was believed in business, low tax, low regulation, and we had the highest tax burden,” she said, adding: “I was so sick and tired of almost being gaslit, watching them pat themselves in black and say everything's fine.”
She attacks her former party’s record in charge, saying that some Londoners had found the Tories indistinguishable from Labour.
“The Conservatives declared a climate emergency in Westminster when crime was rampant.
“Who benefited from that? Ulez [Ultra Low Emission Zone] was really harming so many people. It was Boris and Cleverly who brought it in the 20 miles per hour blanket zone in Westminster. That was not Sadiq Khan. That was a Conservative Council.
"So, all these things that I'm like, hang on, what are we doing here? Who are these policies benefiting? Because it's not benefiting the average person.”
The mayoral candidate makes a direct appeal to British Jews considering making Aliyah to remain in London: “Please stay, wait two years,” adding light-heartedly: “I know once you go to Tel Aviv, you're not coming back.”
With Aliyah rates from the UK in the highest they’ve been in 40 years, Cunningham questions why the matter isn’t taken more seriously by the government.
“I'd expect like there to be almost a Cobra meeting. ‘Why are we losing all these Jewish people? What's going on?’ We need radical measures to stop them from leaving.”
Cunningham visited Israel herself in the 1990s as a 16-year-old. She didn’t tell her parents, but she made a long journey from Cairo to Jerusalem (via Eilat) and was astounded by the city’s beauty.
She says that if one positive can come from the current war with Iran, it is that: “Arab countries are fighting as allies with Israel against Iran, and they recognise that.”
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