Tim Donovan | Former Political Editor, BBC London.

Do the Conservatives have the slightest hope of winning the London mayoralty in 2028?

On the face of it, the signs are not great…

They won back two councils in the recent borough elections and saw off a Reform challenge to hold Bexley and Bromley.

They came very close to winning Barnet and are now running a minority administration in Enfield.

There are just two councillors remaining across the three south west boroughs of Kingston, Richmond and Sutton. Is that a platform for a serious tilt at City Hall in two years’ time? It just might be.

The terrain is challenging, but routes have opened up in the fracturing landscape.

Londoners have so far shown limited support for Reform – they gained less than 80 seats and won only one of the handful of councils they craved. The Tories are the first choice of the right in the capital. It was also a good sign that where the Tories did well, it was against Labour.

However, Tories cannot really make safe assumptions yet about their next Labour opponent.

With his third term yet to fully take shape, there is speculation that Sadiq Khan may not run again. In a contest as much as anything about personality, what fresh energy could be generated by a shiny new Labour figure? How much might Labour’s poll rating recover from a Burnham bounce?

In the recent elections, the Tories got 20% of the vote share in London – third behind Labour (25%) and the Greens (22%). Reform won 13% and the Liberal Democrats 14%. It’s all to play for.

Under the two-choice supplementary vote system, the Tories need to attract second preference votes from Reform, Lib Dems and Greens or ideally get some of those voters to, tactically, make them their first preference.

They may also look to benefit from increasing competition between Labour and the Greens, particularly where those parties are now governing or opposing each other at borough level.

You can see already it is going to take a special kind of candidate to pull this off – particularly one who mops up the suburbs – but is palatable to inner London, able to persuade even some Labour and Green voters to put the Tories as second preference. A candidate who can attract middle-class liberals and socially conservative ethnic minority voters.

This is far from impossible.

There is an innate openness about the London mayoral contest. Londoners have shown that they are prepared to vote for an individual over party, and allegiances have never been so fluid.

It is not clear how keen he is yet, given the potential pitfalls, but James Cleverly has told journalists he is mulling it over and his role as shadow housing secretary has made him particularly concerned about one of the capital’s most acute challenges.

Strange as it may seem given he has been Foreign and Home Secretaries, some wonder whether he has the capital cut-through, that magic formula in a bottle with the faded initials BJ on the label.

The legacy of Boris Johnson remains a reference point for the party in London.

Not just over Brexit, Covid and Partygate. But because he is a reminder of the absurd combination of characteristics that were needed for a Tory to win in London.