Reeves took £10,000 donation and had free holiday from Labour mayor hopeful
Tory candidate Susan Hall has been written off by some ahead of this week’s London mayoral election. But she fiercely believes she can give her ‘arrogant’ Labour opponent his comeuppance
RACHEL Reeves was last night at the centre of a cronyism row after taking donations and a free holiday from a businessman later selected as a Labour candidate.
The Shadow Chancellor accepted a total of £10,000 from Richard Parker in the year before he launched his surprise bid to stand for her party in a crucial mayoral election.
She told parliamentary authorities that the cash, which followed a £2,000 donation before the 2019 general election, was to support her office. Ms Reeves enjoyed a week-long stay in Mr Parker’s second home in Cornwall last summer, just months after he was chosen to be Labour’s candidate for West Midlands mayor.
She declared in the register of members’ financial interests that the freebie at the end of July was worth £1,400.
While she was there she posted a photo of St George’s Cove in Padstow, the town now best known for Rick Stein’s seafood restaurants, with the caption: ‘ Cornwall morning sunshine.’
Last night Ms Reeves, who has vowed to ‘clean up cronyism’ and accused the Conservatives of being ‘rife with conflicts of interest’, was under pressure to say if she had any role in the selection of Mr Parker. He was largely unknown in the political world when he was chosen ahead of a Birmingham councillor last April.
Gary Sambrook, Tory MP for Birmingham Northfield, said: ‘ These revelations raise some questions about how Richard Parker became Labour’s candidate for the West Mids in the first place.
‘The Shadow Chancellor promised to clean up politics and crack down on cronyism, but here she is taking multiple donations and a free holiday off one of Labour’s own candidates.
‘Parker and Reeves should come clean about this arrangement.’
Labour declined to say why Mr Parker had made the donations to Ms Reeves but said in a statement: ‘Richard Parker is a successful businessman with a proven track record of delivering for the West Midlands, bringing over £1billion of investment to the region. Only a vote for Richard on Thursday can end the Conservative chaos and give the West Midlands a fresh start.’
Mr Parker, 60, has been accused by his election rivals of ‘cynically’ pretending to live in the area he wants to represent at next week’s election.
Although he has long worked in Birmingham, for the council then for consultancy giant PwC, he has only recently started renting a flat in the city but declared it as his home address on nomination forms. His main property is the family home he has owned since 2005, which is in Worcestershire and outside the boundaries of the West Midlands area he hopes to represent.
Latest polling suggests Mr Parker is narrowly ahead of Tory incumbent Andy Street in Thursday’s mayoral election.
Redfield & Wilton puts him on 43 per cent and Mr Street on 37, with the Tory closing the gap significantly over the past few weeks.
FOR nearly nine months, Susan Hall has had a countdown clock propped next to the kettle in her kitchen in Harrow, north London, so that every time she pops down for her first cuppa of the day — usually just after 5am — it sharpens the mind.
‘This morning was seven!’ she says. ‘Just seven days left until the election. There’s still so much to be done. of course, I’m not enjoying it. It’s not flimsy, it’s important. So important. There’s no time for anything else.’
Not holidays — she hasn’t had one for two years. or days off. or friends — ‘I haven’t got any friends any more!’ or reading — ‘no time for anything but briefings.’ or booze — ‘I do love a whisky, but I haven’t had a drink for over a year because there’s far too much at stake.’
Instead, she has been doing nothing but knocking on doors and campaigning. anything to knock Labour’s Sadiq Khan off his very well-appointed perch in City Hall come the London mayoral election day this Thursday.
‘It’s about listening. actually hearing what Londoners want,’ she says. ‘I’ve met tens of thousands of Londoners [ she’s aiming for 100,000 by D-Day], and if they come out and vote, I will win. I know I’ll win. It’s totally doable.’
Which is impressive selfconfidence. Particularly as, from pretty much from the minute Susan, a 69-year-old grandmother and former hair salon owner, was anointed Conservative mayoral candidate last July, the polls have had Khan nearly 30 points ahead for a third victory and another four years as mayor of London.
MANY Tories have long ago written off this week’s contest on the basis that London is usually Labour anyway, with the very occasional Borisshaped blip.
(It also didn’t help that, in the past — despite her tagline ‘Safer with Susan’ — she has been a teeny bit trigger-happy on Twitter, resulting in a spatter of unfortunate gaffes involving Donald Trump, Enoch Powell, reality star Gemma Collins’s weight and reports of a ‘stolen’ wallet which turned out not to be. We’ll come to those later.)
But elections are rarely simple. and pretty much the only thing supporters of Khan and Hall can agree on is that the race for City Hall will be closer than most people think, partly due to three factors: last week Savanta research had the gap between the pair at just 13 points; because of a change in the voting system to First Past The Post; and increasing voter apathy — particularly in younger people.
It is also impossible to ignore the state of London right now, with knife crime, gangs and homelessness rising, the Metropolitan Police in special measures, endless threats of Tube strikes, the ongoing nightmare of Ulez and a raft of overpaid fat cats tucking into the mayoral cream. all under Khan’s watch.
But one more factor, according to Susan, is that she has been grossly underestimated.
‘ There’s always sexism and snobbiness. It’s not easy, but I’m not going to complain,’ she says. ‘I was a small business owner and I know how things work, so if I win, I won’t be stretching out behind my big desk — I’ll be sorting out this bloody mess.’
Starting with cancelling the controversial Ulez extension on day one (replacing it with a £50 million fund to address traffic pinch points), sorting out the police, scything through all the perks and jerks of City Hall and clearing out its mad wokery.
no wonder she is described by supporters as ‘authentically and unapologetically Conservative’. Someone who would be tough on crime and take on the unions.
‘Everything I promise in my manifesto will be delivered,’ she says, looking me hard in the eye and smoothing her blue skirt with neat little hands.
But don’t they all say that?
‘I am different,’ she insists. ‘I keep my word. I’m not in it for the ego or the trappings. I was born to work hard.’ Susan’s heroes are her late father — one of 13 children, who built his own car mechanic business and ‘literally worked himself to death’ — and Margaret Thatcher. She goes a bit pink and dreamy when she tells me how she once shook her hand. ‘She used to say: “If you want something said, ask a man, but if you want something done, then ask a woman.” ’
Susan is very much a doer. She was born in Willesden, north-West London, in 1955 and, when her father died young and the money dried up, she helped out with the family business from the age of 14. By then, she could already strip a car engine, and soon learned how to do everything at home from unblocking U-bends to rewiring electrics (she gave that up a few years back when she was thrown off a kitchen table trying to replace a ceiling rose).
Susan also loves to be in charge. For years she ran the family salon business and its 20 staff in Harrow, while Gerald, her ex-husband, cut hair. ‘When I divorced him, I promised I’d always look after him. So he still uses my house to cut hair,’ she says. ‘It works well. and it’s great for amazon deliveries, because he’s always there and I’m always out working.’
It wasn’t until their two children were grown up that she joined Harrow Council in 2006.
By 2013 she was in charge — freezing council tax and balancing the budget after Labour left a £6 million deficit. She became a member of the London assembly in 2017 and has led the London Conservatives from 2019 to 2023.
as a former chair of City Hall’s Police and Crime Unit, she understands ‘how the Met works’, and her passion for policing goes back years, to an incident when she was threatened by a customer in her salon. ‘That feeling — the knot in your stomach, when you don’t feel safe, is shocking. no one should have to feel that,’ she says, admitting that when walking to her car from the train station, she holds her keys sticking out of her tiny fist for protection.
Something for which she blames Khan, as she does most things. ‘He doesn’t deliver. He keeps reannouncing things — it’s all smoke and mirrors and virtue-signalling.’
as well as being his political opponent, she clearly loathes him. ‘The arrogance of him! Hopefully people will see that. and he can’t stand women. It’s not just me, he talks over us all. So rude!’ They have never once had a meeting, and she insists that he even ignores her in the lifts of City Hall. ‘I’ve tried to talk to him,’ she says. ‘I’ll say “hello” because that’s good manners. But he’s always surrounded by security staff and just looks away.’
But let’s forget Khan and his many faults for a minute and consider whether Susan is mayoral material. When she was nominated as the Tory candidate, not everyone was thrilled.
Many dismissed her as the best of a bad bunch after one of her two running mates, Daniel Korski, a former advisor to David Cameron, stepped down after historical allegations of groping — firmly denied — were made against him by broadcaster Daisy Goodwin. and the other, Mozammel Hossain, a KC, had no political experience to speak of. It didn’t help that the Evening Standard newspaper ran an unflattering photo of her — arms aloft, eyes bulging and grinning like a loon — on its front page.
‘ That was unkind and misogynistic,’ she says. ‘Did they apologise? Did they heck!’
THOUGH what she cannot blame on others is her controversial social media posts. She’s a vocal supporter of Donald Trump and Liz Truss, and backed the former Prime Minister’s disastrous mini budget.
But it was last September when the Twittersphere went truly apoplectic after a Labour campaign group revealed that she had ‘liked’ a tweet praising Enoch Powell in 2020. and back in 2014 she called reality star Gemma Collins a ‘stupid fat blonde woman’ on Twitter.
Today, she is much more conciliatory. ‘I’ve learned by my mistakes, apologised for them and I won’t be doing it again,’ she says.
She also points out that a bizarre campaign video released last month (now deleted) called Life Under Labour had nothing to do with her team. It supposedly depicted a lawless London, but used footage of commuters running from gunfire in a new york railway station. ‘It’s very annoying and unhelpful,’ she says ‘but you have to forget it and move on.’
It’s a shame that these missteps keep tripping her up. Because in many ways Susan is very impressive — tough as old boots, hardworking, straight- talking and totally committed to improving the lot of Londoners.
And, unlike Khan, perched high on his throne and surrounded by lackeys, she’s knocking on doors, meeting the electorate every day, until her kitchen countdown clock stops.