Sadiq khan

Disruptive companies like Uber are the lifeblood of the free market

It has long been my understanding that innovative business entrants are the very lifeblood of our free market society. In recent months, however, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is no longer the case. Uber, Taxify, AirBnB, Deliveroo, Amazon, Google, along with many other modern innovators, have at times been treated like pariahs. Some of this criticism has been legitimate, with shortfalls in conduct or corporate culture rightly condemned. But much of the vitriol appears to be fuelled by those who have lost out to what is simply a more competitive and appealing business model. Customer service deficiencies or poor practices – even those that are easily addressed – are

Sadiq Khan discovers his inner Corbynista

When Sadiq Khan spoke at last year’s Labour conference, his speech was deemed hostile to Jeremy Corbyn. Fresh from victory in the London mayoral election, Khan managed to say ‘power’ a whole 38 times – in what was widely interpreted as a thinly-veiled attack on the Labour leader’s lack of electoral appeal. So, what a difference a year – and a surprisingly good snap election result – makes. After weeks of rows and attempts to prevent Khan from taking to the stage this year, the Leader’s Office must have today been left wondering what the fuss was all about. The Mayor of London fell into line – using his last-minute speaking slot to

Sadiq Khan’s Labour conference speech, full text

Conference, it’s great to be back in Labour Brighton. And it’s great to see our Labour Party so fired up under Jeremy Corbyn. Labour confounded all expectations at the general election this year. Let’s be clear, Theresa May called this snap election to try and wipe us out. And boy did she fail. It was inspiring to see millions of people vote for the first time – especially so many young people. And it was inspiring to see so many people who used to vote for our Party return home to Labour. We made huge progress in the general election and the credit for that goes to one person –

Steerpike

The Beast of Bolsover takes centre stage at conference

Sadiq Khan had to fight for his speaking slot at this year’s Labour’s conference. But while it was apparently difficult to squeeze in a politician with one of the largest personal mandates in Europe, making room for the Beast of Bolsover was not so tricky, it seems. Dennis Skinner was on familiar territory in his speech: bashing the Tories and talking of abolishing zero-hour contracts. He also returned to another favourite subject: the Queen. ‘It really gets to me when they talk about the Queen’s head being privatised,’ he joked. Skinner also had a revelation for the audience on how Labour would fund its plans if it ever made it

Steerpike

Sadiq Khan speaks

This year’s Labour party conference line-up has been as much about who’s not speaking than who is. After Sadiq Khan was denied a speaking slot, a tussle broke out between the unions, Labour HQ and the Leader’s Office over whether the London mayor should be allowed to speak. As things stand, he is now expected to be granted a platform in the hall this afternoon. However, given that just yesterday one Labour member took to the stage to call for Khan to be blocked from speaking as they see him on TV ‘all the time’, nothing is guaranteed. So, Khan’s speech at Sunday night’s New Statesman conference bash certainly piqued Mr S’s interest: ‘I

Labour conference rows over letting Sadiq Khan speak

When Sadiq Khan took to the stage at Labour’s conference last year, his none-too-subtle message to Jeremy Corbyn was a lecture on the importance of winning power. Now, a year on, some Corbynistas are determined not to give the London Mayor the same opportunity to speak up – as we have already seen in the conference. Khan was reportedly denied a slot on the main stage this time around. That decision was then reversed in the wake of a backlash by one of the big unions, as Katy Balls reports. But the row over whether Khan should be allowed to speak isn’t over yet. As proceedings kicked off this morning, one

Without Uber, London will be a more dangerous city for women

Transport for London has decided it knows what will keep me safe better than I do. The transport regulator has today refused to reissue Uber’s private hire licence, on the basis of ‘public safety and security implications’. Let me tell you about security implications as a woman in London. If I come out of a club or bar in the middle of the night, I do not want to be hanging around alone on the pavement for half an hour while my minicab fails to materialise, engaged in a frustrating negotiation with the operator about where exactly my driver is. I don’t want to trawl the streets in the hope

Ross Clark

Sadiq Khan has kowtowed to the protectionists over Uber

Let’s face it, the decision today by TfL not to renew Uber’s licence to operate in London has not come about ultimately as a result of genuine concerns over passenger safety. It is a protectionist move to promote the business interests of London’s black cab drivers and to satisfy the unions and other left-wing activists who have latched onto Uber as a cause célèbre in their efforts to stamp out flexible ways of working. I don’t know much of what goes on the back rooms of Labour party HQ but it is fascinating that the decision has come to be made on the same day that it was announced that

Forget London’s ramshackle Garden Bridge: bring on Nine Elms-to-Pimlico instead

I can’t work up much indignation at the collapse of London’s Garden Bridge project, which has been strangled by the refusal of mayor Sadiq Khan to guarantee its continuing operational and maintenance costs — assuming its trustees, led by former banker and minister Lord Davies of Abersoch, would have succeeded in raising the £150 million of private capital required to build the bridge and plant its 270 trees in the first place. Promoted by Joanna Lumley and Sadiq’s predecessor Boris Johnson, this was a beautiful but whimsical idea, placed in an overcrowded stretch of the Thames and based on a ramshackle business plan. In a more confident economic climate it

The Garden Bridge was the definition of a folly

Dry your eyes, Joanna Lumley, and try to move on. For the Garden Bridge was doomed from the start. Sure, it had all the hallmarks of an absolutely fabulous idea dreamt up by Patsy and friends in the early hours of Sunday morning after a humdinger of an evening on cocktails and Bolly. But by mid afternoon its shortcomings should have been uncomfortably apparent and the whole fuzzy-headed wheeze quietly forgotten. The mystery is that it’s taken so long – although even now, with the death-knell sounded, the bridge’s giddy supporters are petulant when confronted by unbelievers daring to suggest that, as a purely practical proposition, the idea stinks. Let

High life | 8 June 2017

New York   Main Street is a place, but it’s mostly an idea. It’s where locally owned shops sell stuff to hard-working townies, as we used to call the locals back when I was at boarding school. The townies had dependable blue-collar jobs in auto plants and coalmines. Their sons played American football hard, cut their hair short, and married their high-school sweethearts. I went back to my old school recently with my old buddy Tony Maltese, a wrestler who never lost a match. We had a nostalgic lunch with the wrestling coach and talked about old times. The feeling was one of community and of having control over your

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 8 June 2017

By the time you read this, the campaign will have drawn fractiously to its close, so here is a strong overall impression drawn from it, which stands whatever the result. Watching a large number of debates and question and answer sessions with party leaders and the public, I noticed, even more insistent than in the past, the righteous tone of the recipient (or would-be recipient) of state money. Whether it was a teacher or health worker, a person on benefits, a young woman wanting her tuition fees paid, or an old man sitting on a house worth (say) £750,000 and demanding that the state bear his putative long-term care needs

The most shocking thing about Donald Trump’s Sadiq Khan tweet? He’s right

How thin-skinned and pompous the British media class is. On the airwaves, Twitter, and elsewhere, the reaction to Donald Trump’s tweet about London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been apoplexy bordering on hysteria. Trump has deeply insulted our nation, it is said, and harmed the Special Relationship. Susan Minton Beddoes, the editor of the Economist, told American TV Trump’s tweet was ‘really damaging’. Countless others are now calling on Theresa May to give Trump a piece of their minds. I can’t help thinking May’s time could be better spent — addressing the terror problem, say — than getting into a war of words with the President of the United States. Besides, what do

Theresa May’s decision to cuddle the Donald looks worse by the day

It is not often, especially in the midst of what has been a grimly dreadful election campaign for her, that one feels some measure of pity for Theresa May. But there she was today, gamely putting on her bravest, gamest, face when she was asked for her reaction to Donald Trump’s latest witless provocations.  The American president, you can hardly failed to have noticed, has not covered himself in glory since the weekend’s terrorist attack in London. When the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, suggested that Londoners should not be alarmed by the deployment of additional armed officers on the streets of London, Trump blustered “At least 7 dead and 48

Civil life in London is now balanced on a knife edge

I’m a member of a small and weird minority, the conservative urbanophiles. Obviously cities are nests of degeneracy and, even worse, the false faith of progressivism – my postcode voted 82 per cent Remain and the Tories finished fourth in 2015 – but nevertheless urbanisation is glorious, the best thing our species ever did. City life means socialising, culture and prosperity.  But the English-speaking world forgot two important things about city life in the 20th century, lessons that have been painfully half re-learned: that cities should be beautiful and cities need to be civilised. The story of American urban decline in the late 20th century is especially tragic, hollowed out

Steerpike

Sadiq Khan’s speech at Sarah Sands’ leaving do – Corbyn’s plans for No 10 and Farron’s big act

Last night, politicians including Boris Johnson, Nick Clegg and Sadiq Khan put their party political differences to one side for the night as they came together to bid Sarah Sands farewell at her Evening Standard leaving do. Speaking at party at The Ned, the Mayor of London paid tribute to Sands for her work as editor at the London paper — and wished her luck in her new role as the editor of the Today programme. However, Khan also couldn’t resist a few digs at his political rivals: ‘Tonight also gives many of us gives us a night off from the general election campaign. It means Tim Farron has a

Of course we’re not cowed by terrorism – what other choice do we have?

Stay safe, London. Stay safe, everyone. It’s nice, isn’t it, as a sentiment, which is just as well because it is the motto du jour of every celebrity who has added his or her mite to what passes as debate on the terrorist attack last Wednesday. And, my goodness, they all piled in: JK Rowling, Katy Perry, James Corden, Neil Gaiman; every man and woman of them, you’ll be pleased to hear, against this sort of thing, and urging us all – especially those not actually resident in London – to ‘stay safe’. The other trope is that ‘nothing will divide us’, that this is what terrorists want – Stella

George Osborne’s Evening Standard job is good news for London

George Osborne has been a good friend to London. He sees the point of infrastructure and I hope he’ll fight hard for Crossrail 2, which has been shunted into the sidings by this government. London business rates are a huge issue, close to Osborne’s heart. He’s a supporter of the arts, with a streak of romanticism missing in David Cameron and Theresa May. It’s good news for Sir Simon Rattle’s concert hall, and Thomas Heatherwick’s Garden Bridge. The mayor Sadiq Khan, who is more than a match for Osborne as a political strategist, will understand what they can jointly achieve as champions of an open, liberal city. The Prime Minister

Diary – 23 March 2017

So I am feeling a bit better about my lack of radio experience. These are exciting times for free movement of labour and with Westminster under the control of Tory and Labour cabals, lovely jobs outside Parliament are tempting. George Osborne is no more qualified to edit the London Evening Standard than Tristram Hunt to run the V&A, but now art and antiquities scholars have dried their tears, that is turning out splendidly. The late Nick Tomalin pointed out that success in journalism requires only ‘ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability’. The trade is temperament as much as technical skill and Osborne has a journalistic love

Cressida Dick’s anti-terror cock-up should have disqualified her from the Met’s top job

Well, on the bright side, it seems that the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London are forgiving people, at least concerning offences that don’t concern them personally. Amber Rudd and Sadiq Khan have, as was universally predicted, decided that Cressida Dick should replace Bernard Hogan-Howe as head of the Met, the biggest policing appointment in the country, which includes its important counter-terrorism brief. It would seem, then, that no mistake can be too grave – not to say fatal, no error of judgment too egregious, no apparent loss of control in a crisis too serious, to disqualify someone from taking control of London’s police force. Ms Dick was, of course,