HALL
Susan

• 1. Political career

Susan Mary Hall is a British politician who has been a Member of the London Assembly (AM) since 2017. She was the leader of the London Conservatives on the Assembly from December 2019 until May 2023. She is the Conservative Party candidate for the 2024 London mayoral election.

Political career

Hall was elected as a councillor on Harrow London Borough Council for Hatch End ward in the 2006 local elections. She was given a cabinet position, responsible for the Environment and Community Safety in 2007, and became Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group in 2008. Hall became Leader of the Conservative group in 2010 and Leader of the Opposition. She took over as Leader of the hung Council in 2013, before returning as opposition Leader in 2014. She was appointed to the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority as a borough nominee in June 2010, switching to an assembly nominee in 2017.

In 2014, she tweeted that TOWIE star Gemma Collins, in a short appearance on ITV's I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here, was fat and ghastly. She also called Collins, via Twitter, a "stupid fat blonde woman". When asked about this tweet by ITV News, Hall told them that she 'meant it'; she said that she was a victim of a campaign by the Fire Brigades Union, and that 'it was a sad state of affairs when a person doesn't have the luxury of being able to say what they think because of political correctness or fear of trial by Twitter jury'. Hall has said that Twitter is her hobby.

At the 2016 London Assembly election, Hall was number 4 on the Conservative Party list, but was not elected.

She inherited the 4th Additional Member seat on the London Assembly in June 2017, following Kemi Badenoch's resignation on being elected as MP for Saffron Walden.

In 2018, Hall became deputy leader of the London Conservatives.

After Gareth Bacon was elected to the House of Commons in the December 2019 general election, Hall succeeded him as the leader of the Conservatives on the London Assembly.

Hall advocates for community safety and campaigns for crime prevention. She called for an increase in police funding to tackle knife crime.

In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in London, Hall wrote a letter to Mayor Sadiq Khan, asking him to "call in the police" to "enforce the coronavirus lockdown" in order to protect National Health Service workers.

Hall supported Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, tweeting 'Come on Donald Trump - make sure you win and wipe the smile off this man's face', referring to Sadiq Khan, who had been a vocal critic of Trump. Following the storming of the United States Capitol by Trump's supporters in January 2021, Hall compared the riot to other British politicians' opposition to Brexit.

She was re-elected in the 2021 London Assembly election. Hall was replaced as leader of the Conservative group in May 2023.

On 19 July 2023, she was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for the 2024 London mayoral election.

On 19 July 2023 Tory Party Deputy Chairman Nickie Aiken accused the Evening Standard of 'misogyny' with their choice of photo of Hall for their front page. In a letter to the Evening Standard's editor Dylan Jones, Aiken said 'Your choice of photo of Susan Hall is a clear mockery, and it is contemptible - especially as the first female candidate for London mayor from either of the two main parties'.