“Voters Are My Boss”Natalie Campbell on Running for London Mayor
For Natalie Campbell, sitting on the sidelines was not an option when it came to the state of UK politics. The CEO of Belu felt disgusted by the handling of the case of “Child Q” in 2023, when a 15-year-old girl was strip-searched at school after her teacher claimed she smelt marijuana on her .
The lack of consequences for the Met Police and the Prime Minister’s silence fuelled Campbell’s desire to take action by running for Mayor of London.
“We have the PM burying his head in the sand, the fury within me was peak, and I couldn’t let a whole election cycle pass and be frustrated with the outcome, knowing that I could do something about it, so I decided to run for mayor,” she told me.
Her candidacy headline, “Good Homes, Safer Streets and Better Lives”, is indicative of what a Londoner wants to hear from a politician, with housing shortages, the cost of living crisis and increasing crime in London. However, are these aims even plausible?
Natalie states that her zero-bullshit politics is “reminding people that there are people out there that want to do this and do it well; be honest, transparent and bring integrity back to the offices that we hold.”
I sat down with Natalie in Wembley to discuss her candidacy and Team Campbell London. Her energy was warm and inviting, and her heart was in this election. From our conversation, it’s clear that she has always been keen on serving others and helping communities. Growing up in Willesden with Jamaican grandparents, she attributes her humanitarian qualities to her family.
One of Natalie Campbell’s (40) campaign t-shirts, an independent mayoral candidate, taken at her residence
“My grandparents raised me, and that element of service comes from them, and they went to church regularly. My grandma was a key figure in the church community, and we would go to Sunday school every week and as much as I’m not religious now, that element of service has never left me and so I don’t know how to do anything other than serve.”
Running independently significantly reduces her chances of winning; however, Campbell does not doubt herself and her capabilities.
“My grandparents always said you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want to be and never let anyone tell you otherwise. Imposter’s syndrome is not an affliction Jamaicans have. We don’t talk about being imposters; I know where I am is where I am supposed to be”.
The 40-year-old sought to be a “big fish in a small pond”. As a teen, she knew she wanted to be a CEO and started planning how to start a business.
“I decided to go to Lancaster University. It was one of the only universities at the time that did an undergraduate degree in entrepreneurship. Lancaster is tiny, so I knew that I could start a business when I got there.”
Her business mind plus her humanitarian traits combine in her role as CEO of BELU since 2020. BELU is a drinks business and social enterprise, providing British mineral water and filtered still and sparkling with the “lowest carbon footprint possible” and donates 100% of its net profits to WaterAid.
Likewise, her role as chancellor at the University of Westminster has influenced her political agenda as “there is absolutely no party or candidate that’s speaking to the 400,000 students across London”.
In her role, she has created a “chancellors circle”, which allows businesses to “give varying degrees of support to students from shadowing days to mentoring to funding.”
Despite having an affirmative thought that she wanted to be an independent candidate, Natalie met with the three main parties to determine if she could find herself running for one of them. Through meeting with the Labour, she asked “Does Labour have a problem with black women? And the fact that the people I spoke to couldn’t tell me ‘no’ said a lot.”
She was similarly unimpressed by the Liberal Democrats and adds: “I spoke to the Conservative Party, who at the time were doing batshit crazy things, but they were the only party that said if you want to try and run, run.”
Campbell does not disagree that running under the Conservatives would have be controversial, but she saw it as a strategic move rather than aligning with their ideals.
“You have to understand the system to change it. So, as much as I understand that running under a Tory ticket is unforgivable, I had to think about the bigger picture.”
Natalie Campbell (40), an independent mayoral candidate, during the interview with Savannah Robinson
In the long run, this decision wasn’t detrimental to her campaign. “Going through that process, I did have to sit down and ask myself whether I wanted to run as an independent. It’s expensive. You have to raise a lot of funds, and the people who generally want to give funds to politics have an agenda. Yeah. So, are you truly independent?
“I’m independent because I’m also self-funding, so I am not holding to anyone’s agenda other than my own, and my own is to serve people. So, the reality is that people are my boss; the people that vote for me would be my boss as mayor not any organisation or institution.”
Photography by Tom Fagg Sweet
