Susan Hall, the Conservative candidate for mayor of London, faces fresh calls to step down after a new poll found that two-thirds of Londoners believed her social media activity to be racist.
Days after Hall received Rishi Sunak’s backing, most London residents said the apparent views of the 68-year-old failed to “fairly represent” the city’s vast diverse population.
Last month it was revealed that Hall had liked a tweet praising former Tory minister Enoch Powell, best known for the infamous “rivers of blood” speech that helped inflame racial tensions in the 1960s.
Hall was also shown to have engaged with Islamophobic tropes about current London mayor Sadiq Khan and, in another tweet, seemingly endorsed Donald Trump’s baseless contention that he won the 2020 US presidential election.
Last week, Hall claimed that Khan’s “divisive attitude” had left Jews frightened; in the wake of those comments, Sunak gave her his full support at last week’s party conference.
The poll, commissioned by anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, found that three-quarters of Londoners do not believe that a London mayoral candidate who likes racist and Islamophobic comments can fairly represent all Londoners if elected.
Six in ten say the Tory party should suspend and investigate Hall. And 64% say they consider a mayoral candidate who likes tweets that are Islamophobic and oppose multiculturalism to be racist.
Georgie Laming, director of campaigns at Hope Not Hate, said: “It’s clear that Londoners think that Hall is not fit to represent London. The Conservative party must suspend Susan Hall immediately and she must be removed as a candidate.”
Hope Not Hate wrote to the chair of the Conservative party, Greg Hands, last month asking him to suspend Hall, a London assembly member, over her views, but have yet to receive a response.
Hall was a surprise choice to take on Khan in next year’s mayoral election, largely because of her hard-right views and support for figures such as Trump and Liz Truss.
Since then scrutiny has intensified of her social media activity, which includes quote-tweeting an article from notorious rightwing misinformation site the Gateway Pundit alleging a conspiracy to steal the 2020 US presidential election from Trump.
Hall also replied to a tweet from far-right provocateur Katie Hopkins calling Khan “our nipple-height mayor of Londonistan” with the endorsement “Thank you Katie!” The term “Londonistan” is a term of Islamophobic abuse used by far-right supporters to convey the idea that Muslims are taking over the city.
The latest controversy erupted last week after comments she made in a speech to Conservative Friends of Israel at the party conference. “I live in north London and I know the wealth and joy of the [Jewish] community. But I tell you something else, I know how frightened some of the community is because of the divisive attitudes of Sadiq Khan,” she said.
Despite this, during his keynote speech at Conservative conference, Sunak said: “Susan Hall is doing a great job holding Sadiq Khan to account. You will be safer with Susan.”
When approached to respond to the results of the poll, a spokesperson for Hall said: “Susan is proud to celebrate London’s diverse communities and as mayor she will fix the bread-and-butter issues that people care about – making our streets safer and putting money back in your pocket.
“Susan regularly engages with people on Twitter [now known as X] without endorsing their views and wholly condemns any racism or Islamophobia on the platform.”
