Tory London mayor candidate sent formal complaint over fake flyer campaign

Conservative London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey’s campaign team has been sent a “formal complaint” from an election rival after distributing campaign flyers disguised as official warnings from City Hall about council tax rises.

In a complaint addressed to MP Greg Hands, who serves as Mr Bailey’s campaign manager, Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Luisa Porritt condemns the flyer campaign as a “heartless and cheap trick” aimed at misleading Londoners already struggling to make ends meet.

Stamped with a fake coat of arms and the words “City Hall”, the flyers warned London residents that if they do not “take action, your mayoral council tax will rise by 21.2%".

They then directed recipients to visit the website of an online petition to “Stop Khan’s Council Tax Hike”, with both the flyers and website being linked to Mr Bailey’s campaign in fine print.  

“[The] leaflet is disguised as official local authority communication. It is marked with the warning “DO NOT IGNORE” and is headlined with the threat “IF YOU DO NOT TAKE ACTION, YOUR MAYORAL COUNCIL TAX WILL RISE BY 21.2%',” Ms Porritt notes in the complaint, which was shared exclusively with The Independent. 

“There is a fake City Hall crest on the header and the letter reads as if it were official correspondence. At no point is it made clear that this is Conservative Party campaign material, except for a tiny imprint at the bottom – a legal minimum – and even that does not mention your party’s name,” the complaint states.

Read more: Tory London mayoral candidate’s campaign sends out fake council tax rise letters

“At a time when so many Londoners are worried sick about making ends meet, living through the deepest recession on record while the Covid-19 pandemic risks lives, this is a heartless and cheap trick to play,” it continues.

“Your campaign’s act of desperation may generate a few petition signatures, but its cost will be thousands of vulnerable people panicked into distress,” it asserts.

Comparing the move to a leaflet campaign that saw former mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith accused of racial profiling in 2016, Ms Porritt wrote: “You only have to look back at Zac Goldsmith’s campaign in 2016 to see what happens to candidates that borrow from the Trump playbook. 

"By engaging in such dirty, underhand tactics, this campaign risks going down as one of the nastiest in London’s history.”

“The right thing to do by Londoners is to apologise and retract the material immediately,” she said.

Speaking with The Independent on Wednesday, Ms Porritt said the flyer campaign “proves that Shaun Bailey is not fit to be Mayor of London”.

“I’m appalled that he would sign off on something like this being sent to Londoners in the first place,” she said.

“I think that Shaun Bailey and Greg Hands and the campaign should apologise for making Londoners worry at a time when they’ve already got so much to worry about,” Ms Porritt said. 

“It’s a very distressing letter to receive and it’s misleading, worst of all, so I think they should retract this material and stop engaging in these dirty tactics just because Shaun Bailey has failed to make any impact in his campaign through any other means.”

Mr Bailey’s campaign has not yet responded to the complaint. 

However, in an earlier statement to The Independent, a spokesperson for the campaign defended the flyers, asserting that “Londoners have a right to know the full facts. And the fact is Sadiq Khan’s planning to hike his share of council tax.”

“Since 2016, the Mayor racked up £9.56 billion in wasteful spending at TfL. That’s why TfL needed two bailouts in the space of a few months,” the spokesperson said, asserting that “Sadiq Khan himself proposed raising his share of council tax to pay for the cost of his mismanagement.”

“If the Mayor of London is annoyed about being exposed, he can only imagine how annoyed Londoners will be when they’re forced to cover the costs of his mismanagement,” they said. 

Speaking at a recent Mayor’s Question Time, Mr Khan said he would not rule out raising council tax, but he suggested that it would only be necessary to fill a TfL funding gap left open by central government.

Ms Porritt stressed the fact that nothing has been decided yet and accused Mr Bailey’s campaign team of taking the situation out of context.

“Shaun Bailey has been trying to blame the state of TfL’s finances completely on the mayor, but what has been happening in practice is that there have been short-term negotiations between the government and the mayor and the government has been treating London differently to the rest of the country," she said. 

The Liberal Democrat said that while the government has offered private rail companies assurances that “their finances will be protected” during the coronavirus pandemic, TfL has not received the same level of “protection or guarantees”.

If council tax is raised, she suggested, it will be to keep TfL running. 

“So, both the letter and the way the Conservative government have been treating the TfL are cheap tactics because there’s an election coming up,” Ms Porritt said. “I think it’s appalling.”

The Independent has contacted the government and Mr Khan’s office for comment.

Read the complaint in full: