‘I’ve got a realistic chance of beating Sadiq Khan’

That said, chief executives, largely from the retail and property environment in London, weren’t wowed by him at a hustings past thirty day period. 1 attendee gave Bailey a “six out of 10” and added: “He said the ideal issues, but we weren’t less than the impression we have been talking to the upcoming mayor.”

With the shattering of the “red wall” in 2019, the suspicion is that the Government’s eyes are somewhere else as it appears to be right after its new voters and tries to “level up”, leaving Labour to dominate the capital. But can Bailey, who says he speaks to the PM “all the time”, wrest its attention away from those recently won seats?

He rejects the premise, highlighting the billions poured into London to hold a half-empty transport system on the go. “Remember Sadiq Khan has had the single biggest bailout of any establishment in the state. The plan that the Government is having its eyes off London I truly really don’t accept. If we want to go up the sign up of the Government, we have to exhibit that we will meet up with them half way. The mayor requested the Government for an added £29bn – that is just not reasonable.”

To that finish, Bailey wants to set up a London infrastructure lender, leveraging personal resources to help elevate £10bn to spend for new initiatives in the capital, covering everything from the extension of the Docklands Light Railway to potholes in the road. But he also says he is geared up to choose fights and that there will be a good deal of options for “barneys” with Variety 10, over hotspots these types of as the scrapped VAT rebate for international holidaymakers in January.