Hello,
A quick update on ULEZ, as Labour figures round on the Mayor, and also a reminder that ULEZ not the end of the Mayor’s road pricing plans but the beginning. That’s the most important point, so let’s start with that.
Earlier this month, Roads Minister Richard Holden met Khan’s team who told him they are working on per-mile charging: a toll for every car, on every road, every time it moves on any road in London. He’s right. But Khan’s team furiously tried to pretend he was wrong.
But it is true, so I compiled a little list of all the evidence and wrote it up for the Express, available online. Please do have a read and share.
Here are two of the most blatant examples I give in that article.
First the video of TfL’s finance chief openly admitting it, last July. At that time, the ULEZ expansion consultation hadn’t even finished, yet they were already recruiting a “substantial number” of engineers to work on the next phase.
Watch in this short YouTube clip:
London Mayor already has teams working on road user charging
And here’s what TfL are telling those engineers they’re recruiting:
So when the Mayor says “the technology is years away” remember that he’s going hell-for-leather to get the technology ready, and the ULEZ camera network is an important part of it.
As for how many years away it is. Well, TfL think the ULEZ expansion will only make money for 2 years. What do you think they’ll do in year 3? As the Roads Minister said: “They informed me that the Mayor of London, in anticipation of falling revenues from ULEZ in the future… had asked them to investigate the technicalities of introducing road charging across London”
Mayor Khan’s ULEZ expansion has been on trial twice in a fortnight: the judicial review in the High Court, and the court of public opinion in the Uxbridge by-election.
It was disappointing that the High Court found his expansion legal. Five Conservative councils had brought the legal action on behalf of their residents, but sadly their arguments did not prevail with the judge who found the Mayor had acted within his legal powers.
This means the debate returns to the public arena, where Mayor Khan is not doing so well.
Confounding the pundits, voters in Uxbridge elected Conservative Steve Tuckwell MP last Thursday. And the one thing people on all sides agree on is that it was Khan’s unpopular ULEZ to blame.
The Labour candidate had already disowned his own Mayor’s flagship policy, saying he didn’t support ULEZ in outer London. Meanwhile Khan himself was banned from campaigning in the crucial by-election in his own city, or even being seen in the area. But it wasn’t enough: people saw through it.
With his own party colleagues marking him out as a political liability, Labour’s top team publicly rounded on him:
Kier Starmer, Labour Leader: Sadiq Khan should "reflect" on the ULEZ expansion due to the "impact it's having on people"
Angela Rayner, Deputy Leader, slaps down Sadiq Khan, “This happens when you don’t listen!”
Rachel Reeves, Shadow Chancellor: don’t ‘clobber’ Londoners with ULEZ
Wes Streeting, Shadow Health Secretary admitted that neither he, Sir Keir, or shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves wanted the extension of Ulez to all London boroughs
Steve Reed, Shadow Justice Secretary, “if it wasn’t for Ulez, he believes Labour would have won this by-election”
We’ve known for a while that Mayor Khan’s own colleagues have been privately asking him to back off, but the I-know-best Mayor ignored them. So now they’ve gone public.
Just as he didn’t listen to Londoners in the consultation and he doesn’t listen to Londoners who come to events to challenge him. Khan prefers to smear them all as far right, even when they’ve told him they’re Labour voters.
Will he listen to the leaders of his own party, or is he going to call them far right as well?
As Uxbridge proved, sometimes the only way to be heard is to vote. Sadiq Khan is up for re-election on 2nd May 2024 - mark it in your diary!
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