Hall’s campaign has focused on cars and crime while the opposition has exploited her tendency to ‘shoot from the hip’
Paul Icely puffs out his cheeks – and then slowly exhales. He is visibly deflating. “I thought there might be a few more of us,” the 67-year-old black-cab driver admits, his eyes darting between the students milling outside Barking and Dagenham college. “You seen anyone else?” Icely asks Lisa Prager, 40, as she limps towards him with the aid of an NHS issue crutch.
Prager, who harbours a grudge against a Labour council over the loss of her job at a local park, appears to be the only other supporter of Susan Hall, the Conservative candidate for mayor of London, to have turned up on this sunny mid morning in Dagenham, east London.
