The Conservative London Assembly Members have created a new brand to represent their organisation: City Hall Conservatives.
They’ve defined the mission of the new brand as being to “hold the Mayor of London to account, as members of the London Assembly”.
There are sensible reasons for making a new brand that is distinct from the national party brand.
All successful candidates for London Mayor – Ken Livingston, Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan – had strong personal brands that were distinct from the national party brands at the time of their election.
Having a strong personal political brand is a useful way of creating distance between a candidate competing at a sub-national level and a national party brand that has unpopular elements.
Livingston was distinguishing himself from the Blair Labour machine that stitched up the primary to prevent him from being the official candidate; Johnson separated himself from a Cameron-led party that wasn’t universally admired; Khan wanted to make clear he had nothing to do with Corbyn.
The national Conservative Party brand is in bad shape. There is currently no Conservative London Mayoral candidate that can embody and differentiate Conservatives in London from the national party brand.
Anything London Assembly members do currently will be tainted by the national picture and so seeking some separation makes sense.
The only issue with this rebrand is that it will be largely pointless the moment the Conservatives select their Mayoral candidate.
It is not yet known when in 2023 the party will nominate their candidate, but in recent weeks several candidates have put their hat in the ring.
When the candidate is chosen, the personal brand of the candidate should be the only one that any Conservatives in City Hall should invest in.
Which makes this rebrand a short-term and slightly pointless exercise.
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