REFORM UK announced another Tory defector as its candidate for London Mayor today.

Westminster City councillor Laila Cunningham resigned as a CPS prosecutor after making outspoken political remarks while still a civil servant last summer.

Announcing she was quitting the Conservatives as she is “tired of defending failure,” she claimed a lack of police officers in the capital was due to a “dereliction of duty” and predicted a “massive surge” in Reform councillors in London in this May’s local elections.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has announced that she would be the party’s candidate for mayor when London next goes to the polls in 2028.

He added that Ms Cunningham will be the figurehead for the party’s campaign in London ahead of May’s elections, which he described as the “single most significant” electoral test ahead of the next general election.

Appearing with him at a press conference, Ms Cunningham took aim at the Labour Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan’s record on crime, vowing to task the police with “targeting, hunting and prosecuting rape gangs in London.”

She claimed that she would to so by rewriting the London police and crime plan and added that she would scrap Ulez, the ultra-low emission zone, if she won power.

Asked if she would get rid of the congestion charge, she said “you will have to wait and find out.”

Pressed about a claim she wanted to restore London to its “glory days” and when she thought those glory days were, the 48-year-old referred to “when I was growing up.”