There is something timelessly reassuring about Thomas Skinner’s face. There were Tom Skinners in the Saxon shield wall at the Battle of Hastings and on the quarterdeck with Drake and Nelson. Sergeant Tom Skinner held the troops steady at Blenheim and Waterloo and the Somme, with indomitable cheerfulness, undemonstrative courage and paternal affection. He is a perennial British type.

It is therefore apt that at a time of enormous uncertainty and difficulty for his country, Skinner is hinting at a move into politics.  On X yesterday, the TV personality wrote of his sadness that in the last decade and a half London had become “colder […] more hostile. It’s tense […] London don’t feel like London no more. The police ain’t on the beat. The people are scared.” The post was accompanied by a high-quality picture of a smiling, sharply-dressed Skinner. Cue a good deal of speculation that he might stand for mayor in 2028. “I’m not giving up on [London],” he wrote. “I still believe in this gaff […] But we need change […] we need safety.”

If Skinner is going to throw his hat into the ring to replace Sadiq Khan, he might have a pretty good chance. The British are restless. Eight years ago, at the 2017 general election, the Tories and Labour between them scored well over 80% of the vote. Now most polls give them a total of about 40-45%. The electorate is fragmenting, with anti-establishment parties such as Reform UK and the Greens the big winners.

A likeable, hardworking family man with an existing media profile — Skinner came to public attention on series 15 of The Apprentice and has 370,000 X followers — has as good a chance as anyone at taking advantage of the current flux. Skinner represents a clear contrast to the collapsing post-1997 consensus. He is not a graduate; he has not been formed in or by progressive institutions; he has no interest in the shibboleths of managed decline or conventional Blob thought. His is a commonsensical, man-of-the-people approach — in some respects he resembles Nigel Farage, exuding the same joie de vivre and taking a Falstaffian pleasure in beer, pies and full English breakfasts. He makes good-natured music hall-style jokes about his wife that would certainly lead to pursed lips and tutting in university senior common rooms or on Bluesky, and suffixes his motivational to-video monologues with a cheery “Bosh!”

There is, perhaps, an element of artifice in Skinner’s presentation of himself to the world. But that may not matter if he does enter the arena. He comes from, and advocates for, a large but neglected demographic: the old aspirational working and middle class, whose members are often culturally conservative, patriotic, tough on law and order, and seeking a chance to make their way in the world. At the moment, no legacy party stands for them in the way that Margaret Thatcher once did.

This group was key to the successful coalition mobilised by the Vote Leave campaign, and Brexit mastermind Dominic Cummings notably reposted Skinner’s lament for London, urging the Boshmeister to campaign against Sadiq Khan and offering the help of the old VL gang.

A little fanciful, but stranger things have happened. Politics is extremely volatile. Labour is polling half what it was this time a year ago. The Tories may be in terminal decline. There remains a substantial Right-wing vote in London for anyone with the gumption to harness it — the outer boroughs in particular are roiled with discontent. The crown, as Napoleon said, lies in the gutter. And maybe, just maybe, the absolute guv’nah is the man to pick it up.

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Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

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