Sadiq Khan is ruining London – and the Tories are just letting him
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There are few consolations to covering politics in the 21st century. One glimmer of silver lining that occasionally appears on the horizon is the prospect of a truly awful political video. Every Christmas, I amuse myself by watching a Corbynista’s attempt at a festive number one with the song JC for PM for me. Who could fail to be cheered by the East Yorkshire MP Greg Knight’s Hitchcockian campaign video for the 2017 general election, featuring a jingle worthy of Alan Partridge? (“You’ll get accountability, with Conservative delivery. Make sure this time you get it right, vote for Greg Kniiiiii-ght”).
Now a new example has entered the pantheon with CCHQ’s lamentable effort to take the audiovisual fight to Sadiq Khan ahead of the London mayoral election. Featuring a husky, threatening American voice-over, it dispenses hyperbolic (and arguably defamatory) claims about the capital city and its mayor.
It accuses Khan of having “seized power”, rather than, you know, winning two legitimate elections. “Gripped by the tendrils of rising crime, London’s citizens stay inside,” it emotes melodramatically. Shot in black and white, in an attempt to evoke “Gotham City”, this mise-en-scene goes one step further in the next frame when shots of the New York subway were used in lieu of the Tube.
Still, while London may not rival the Mexican cartel cities as crime capital of the world, there are plenty of devastating statistics to choose from. The most recent ONS figures show recorded knife crime rose by 22 per cent in London in the year to September 23, compared to a national rise of 5 per cent. Last year saw a 56 per cent rise in crime on the London Underground compared to 2022. There is no shortage of effective attack-lines. So why not stick to the truth?
Ridiculous though the video was, it epitomises the Tories’ general attitude towards London and its politics; low-effort, low-energy, always managing to miss the open goal. It is all the more irritating as this attitude – that London is a lost cause – really shouldn’t be the case at all. Lest we forget, Shaun Bailey’s clunky 2021 mayoral campaign still managed to win 45 per cent of the vote after second preferences, even after CCHQ had basically left him to it. There are simply that many people who dislike Sadiq Khan.
More frustrating than this wilful electoral suicide is the damage it does to London itself. Khan is emphatically the worst mayor the city has had since the change to its governance at the turn of the century: given the other two candidates for that accolade are Boris and Ken Livingstone, it is quite the achievement. Speak to anyone who unambiguously needs a car for their work, and see what they think of the city’s 20mph zones and low-traffic neighbourhoods.
Everywhere, people talk of their discontent with Khan’s tenure in City Hall, but still the Tories fail to capitalise on it.
The mayor’s besetting sins are egotism and sweating the small stuff while the great intractable problems go unanswered. This manifests as petty self-promotion – often in instantly mockable ways (his “say Maaate” campaign to stamp out sexual harassment was a case in point).
The “sweating the small stuff” philosophy is mirrored in the gulf between what the police and local government do clamp down on. Massively lax on many crimes, yet insanely prohibitive on things like parking tickets and fines. Drive down the wrong street by mistake – £130, thank you very much. Be part of a gang slashing people’s tyres – how cute!
While the mayoral precept is pushed up, it’s fascinating what the mayor’s team focuses its time and resources on. Recent initiatives include £9 million advertising the Ulez expansion before it went ahead, £6.3 million on renaming lines on the London Overground, and Khan’s appointment of Amy Lamé as night-time economy guru – a tsar who makes Nicholas II look like Peter the Great. Meanwhile, crime and the housing crisis continue to escalate.
The latter is perhaps the most important issue affecting Londoners, yet building has stalled. New home completions hit a nine-year low of 33,712 last year. Middle-earners, neither super-rich nor eligible for social housing, feel particularly squeezed. Khan recently announced a Council Homes Acquisition Programme, “aimed at converting up to 10,000 private homes into council housing”. (Translation: using taxpayers’ money to buy out rental property to create social housing, while reducing the private rental stock even further so your rent rises.)
Despite the night tsar’s best efforts, the capital is losing pubs faster than anywhere else in England. Take almost any city across Europe, from Barcelona to Budapest, Athens to Oslo, and you will find more 24-hour nightlife options than London – a fact that ought to be a source of national shame. Greggs recently had to take Westminster council to court to be allowed to serve food late in Leicester Square owing to “resident noise complaints”.
It is grimly amusing when people decide to live in SW1 (rather than, say, Wiltshire) and then moan about disruption. But too many councils entertain these demands and neither the mayor, nor his night tsar, have much to say about it. It is heartbreaking to see London being run like a provincial backwater rather than the world city it ought to be.
Londoners have learnt the hard way that Sadiq Khan doesn’t care about the city’s decline. That the Conservative Party doesn’t seem to either adds insult to the current mayor’s injury.
