The British are coming . . . for Mayor Bloomberg!
Conservatives across the pond are seeking to draft the billionaire anglophile to run next year in the London mayoral election, the Sunday Times of London reported.
Friends of Bloomberg, who were not named, told the paper the ex-mayor of Gotham is “considering” running as the Tory candidate. The city of 8.5 million will elect Boris Johnson’s successor in May 2016.
While the movement is likely a political pipe dream, powerful Brits publicly backed the idea — perhaps seeking mayoral bans on fizzy pop, black cabs and high-calorie bangers and mash.
Steve Hilton, a trusted adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron, is urging Bloomberg to run, the newspaper reported.
“It would be an incredible coup for London if Mike Bloomberg could be persuaded to run for mayor here,” Hilton said. “His kind of pragmatic, problem-solving leadership is exactly what London needs.”
Hilton said he previously discussed the possibility of a Bloomberg run with Conservative Cameron and Finance Minister George Osborne back in 2008, before Johnson was nominated as the Tory pick for mayor, but abandoned the plan when Bloomberg announced he would run for a third term in New York.
Even Johnson discussed the idea with Bloomberg, the paper said, citing an unnamed Johnson pal.
“Mike is an enormous friend of London. He’s a great contributor to the city. He’s got many supporters and admirers, of which Boris is definitely one,” the source said.
The paper itself cheered the idea, with an editorial declaring: “This is one of those ideas that, at first blush, seems to be off the wall . . . On closer inspection, however, the idea has much to commend it.”
The paper noted Bloomberg’s love of London and push for charter schools, gun control and redevelopment of rundown areas when he was mayor of New York.
The editorial even compared Bloomberg to international soccer stars who play for UK teams.
“Britain is no stranger to successful foreign imports,” it reads. “And where would the Premier League be without foreign managers and players? If it is good enough for Arsenal and Chelsea, it should be good enough for London.”
But Bloomberg aides called the whole thing bollocks.
“You can quote me on the record ruling it out,” former Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson told The Post.
“He is flattered, but he loves New York City too much to leave it — and knows how tough it will be for anyone to follow Boris.”
After his mayoralty ended in 2013, Bloomberg began spending a lot of time and money in London, building “Bloomberg Palace,” a two-tower skyscraper, on the site of Roman temple ruins. He owns a $20 million town house in the city by the Thames and sits on the board of the Serpentine Galleries.
Queen Elizabeth II bestowed him with an honorary knighthood in 2014 for his entrepreneurial and philanthropic work in the UK.
“I am deeply honored to receive this recognition, which is especially meaningful to me because of my close . . . ties to London and Britain,” he said at the time.
Bloomberg added Britain is “a place I have long considered my second home.’’
However, he is not a citizen of the UK or the European Union, a prerequisite for running for mayor.
Then again, he has never been dissuaded by pesky election laws, famously campaigning to extend mayoral term limits so he could run for a third term in 2009.
Rich foreigners can fast-track their applications for British residency by investing $15 million in the UK, but that still takes two years. Tory politicians could speed up the process because Bloomberg has invested at least $745 million in the UK, sources told the Sunday Times.
“We don’t think it would be a problem,” insisted a source familiar with the discussions.
Both Bloomberg’s daughters, Emma, 36, and Georgina, 32, are British citizens, as is his ex-wife, Susan Brown, born in the UK.
Johnson, born in New York in 1964, joked in 2013 that he and then-Mayor Bloomberg could “swap” jobs.