MP Sarah Olney hopes to be her party’s candidate in 2028 reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter
Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Olney has launched her bid to become the party’s candidate for the 2028 London Mayoral election by pledging to run a “bold and optimistic campaign” to topple the Labour-Conservative duopoly in City Hall.
The Richmond Park representative said that, despite polling showing the Liberal Democrats in fifth place in London, she could reach the capital’s six million voters through an ambitious digital campaign, the likes of which “has never been seen before”, and be the main challenger to Labour.
At her launch event in Southwark, she said her campaign will focus on boosting London’s businesses, solving the housing crisis through mass regeneration of old estates and creating a strategic authority to solve any issues with river crossings.
“This is going to be one of the most consequential mayoral elections we’ve had,” she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) in an exclusive interview.
“It’s high time Labour had a real challenge in this city. I don’t think that challenge is going to come from the Tories – they haven’t got the support across London.
“The Liberal Democrats have a real opportunity, if we run a bold and optimistic campaign, to really gather the kind of support that can actually provide a challenge to Labour.
“We can provide a program that Londoners all across the city will feel that they can vote for.”
But the Liberal Democrats face an uphill climb ahead of 2028 if they want to stand a chance of taking City Hall.
A recent poll by Savanta UK for the Mile End Institute put Labour on 33 per cent, the Tories and Reform UK on 18 per cent, the Greens on 17 points and Liberal Democrats in single digits.
Olney admitted the party, which finished a distant third on 5.8 per cent of the vote in 2024, will have to step up their appeal outside of their strongholds in South-West London.
“A lot of it will come down to the way we campaign, and I think London gives us an opportunity to really send out a bold message right across the city,” she said.
“We have got the opportunity to really attract support from all sorts of places where possibly they haven’t been used to voting for the Liberal Democrats before. We’ve seen in Richmond, Kingston, and Sutton in the local elections – where people have got Liberal Democrat representation, we’ve grown our support, we’ve increased our vote share.
“We’ve got a really good, all-positive, optimistic message that we can send out across London, and I think that’s the challenge of the campaign.
“We need to look at our methods of campaigning, and really take this opportunity to form that message, to make it bolder, to make it sharper, to make it clearer, and to use, you know, all the methods that are available to us to make sure that we get that across.”
Olney’s policy platform will focus on boosting London’s businesses, driving up housing standards and quantity through estate regeneration projects and reversing cuts to police station front counter opening hours.
To do this, she pledged to ensure her deputy mayor for business would be elected by a consortium of business leaders, rather than appointed.
“We need to boost the economy at every level and get London moving again,” Olney said. “Businesses will have someone speaking for them directly in City Hall, so that they’re right there at the table when policy is being formulated across London that impacts businesses.”
Howard Dawber currently holds the role, appointed by Sir Sadiq Khan in 2023. He has been criticised by opposition assembly members for refusing to explicitly condemn the impact of National Insurance hikes on hospitality firms in the capital.
Olney says she met Dawber for the first time earlier this year but that until then she had no idea he was in place.
“The deputy mayor for business and the economy in London needs a much higher profile, and I think a directly elected deputy mayor can really help to deliver that,” she insisted.
“It wouldn’t be a party political person. The whole point of them is to be the voice of business in City Hall to whoever the mayor is—that’s the whole point.
“They’re not there to represent a party line; they’re there to represent the voice of business in London, and that’s why it should be an elected post.”
She says she will also avoid “sagas” like the Hammersmith Bridge closure by bringing all river crossings under a single strategic authority, which will also focus on ensuring links like the planned Canary Wharf to Rotherhithe crossing are delivered.
On housing – which she calls Sir Sadiq’s “most significant and visible failure” – Olney says she would immediately look at what “more we can do on regeneration”.
“We’ve got some great examples in my own constituency where dilapidated housing has been replaced with new housing,” she added.
“Not only can you add more housing and more units, but you can also rebuild in an energy-efficient, accessible way that is designed to suit modern ways of life.
“I’m really interested to see what more can be done with that, both on a large scale and a small scale, right across the city. That’s the sort of thing where you can get things going quite quickly and really move forward at speed.”
Like many of Sir Sadiq’s opponents, she is also critical of the Met Police’s decision to close some station front counters in London and reduce hours for others. Keeping at least one open in every borough in London was a 2024 manifesto promise by the current Mayor.
“By breaking that promise, he’s really breaking a very important link between the police and the general public,” Olney said.
“People are feeling that: they feel the police are not in their communities, they feel the police are not responding when they report crime, and they don’t know where to go to submit evidence or report a crime. My big priority would be to try and repair that relationship between the police and the communities they serve.”
The party will select its candidate in early 2027.
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