Sadiq Khan’s at it again with his latest genius plan: let prisoners jump the housing queue. Speaking at a Times conference yesterday, London’s Mayor bemoaned the “big shortage of housing in London” and proposed his brilliant fix – give criminals a head start. Khan argued we need an “honest conversation” about letting some prisoners “jump in the queue to get housing to avoid them reoffending again.” Handing out houses to freed criminals isn’t exactly the magic fix to stop prisons from overflowing…

Nigel Farage was quick to blast the Mayor, tweeting: “Sadiq Khan wants free housing for criminals and illegal migrants. And he wants you to pay for it all.” Prioritising criminals over hard-working, law-abiding citizens. That’ll go down well with the public, no doubt…

Sadiq Khan’s disastrous “Night Tsar” Amy Lamé is taking it easy after miraculously recovering from “unplanned sick leave” and immediately going on holiday in August. She returned to work this month, just in time for yesterday’s 3-hour meeting of the GLA Economy, Culture and Skills Committee meeting on the capital’s night-time economy. And yet Lamé was – you guessed it – not present…

As night-time businesses shutter up at a rate of about a thousand per year some Assembly Members are trying to figure out what to do. Their meeting took views and evidence from numerous interested parties as part of the committee’s investigation into “the impact of existing Mayoral policies and initiatives aimed at supporting and invigorating London’s night-time economy, and what progress the Mayor has made in achieving his vision of London becoming a ’24-hour city’.” You’d have thought Lamé would be interested – was she too busy picking up her £133,000 pay cheque?

Commons sniping has kicked off again this afternoon with Parliament’s return. It was Rayner’s turn first for oral questions on housing. The Tories had some choice words when it came to Labour reducing London’s housing targets and raising them elsewhere…

This month it was revealed Sadiq Khan managed to build just 2% of his affordable housing target. At the same time the government has slashed London’s total target by 17,000 annually. Labour’s explanation: “We will ensure that we are pushing the mayor on a realistic, but achievable, target.” Does that mean the government’s view is that Khan’s own manifesto targets are unachievable…

Badenoch took a dig at Rayner on that line: “She attempts to explain why she’s reduced Sadiq Khan’ London targets and even more when she highlights that he’s consistently under-delivered but my question is: if other local leaders miss their new housing targets, will she reduce their targets too?” Bluster in response..

Today is the one-year anniversary of Khan’s hated ULEZ expansion – forcing all 32 London boroughs to cough up £12.50 to drive if they happened to have one of the 700,000 non-compliant cars. The tax collects a whopping £715,000 a day from motorists…

Late last month City Hall pushed out an unauthored taxpayer-funded report claiming that emissions had fallen “drastically” thanks to the expansion – it showed roadside Nitrogen Dioxide concentrations were a measly 1.93% lower on average since ULEZ’ expansion. Quite the reward for an anti-worker tax…

Buried in the middle of the report is the admission that it doesn’t measure either the expansion itself or ULEZ in isolation:

“The analysis for the ULEZ shows the impacts of not just the ULEZ and its expansions, but all of the Mayor’s policies to reduce emissions from transport, including those within the Mayor’s Transport Strategy. As such, it is not straightforward to isolate the impact of the ULEZ and its expansions. Therefore the analysis for the ULEZ can be seen to show the impacts of not just the ULEZ and its expansions, but of all the Mayor’s policies to reduce emissions from transport.”

On top of that new analysis claims ULEZ is responsible for £875 million of the total revenue generated by these zones since 2019. Seeing as it cost an extra £500 million to roll out, that’s a pretty hefty price tag. Now non-compliant cars are being forced off the road, Khan will have to think of a new money grab. Have no fear – pay per mile charging is on the way…

Sadiq Khan has taken the opportunity to deviate from Labour’s position on the US election in a fawning interview for The New Statesman. While Lammy and Starmer have been “studiously neutral” on November’s election Khan has no qualms about his support: “I’ve been so impressed with Tim Walz. It just shows the judgement that Kamala Harris has in relation to her choice for vice-president. Compare and contrast that with the choice made by the other guy, in JD Vance.” No matter – Trump knows what the Labour frontbench thinks of him…

Lammy’s defence is that “you’re going to struggle to find any politician who has not had things to say about Donald Trump in his first term” and that Trump has the “thickest of skins.” Khan is happy to destroy that line as well:

“The last time we had a Trump presidency, as a matter of public record, there was a massive increase in hate crime towards me… I worry about what a second Trump presidency would mean for me and my family, but I’m not going to allow these people to cower me.”

The “matter of public record” is analysis produced by Khan’s own office, now used to claim that Trump was in some way responsible for the targeting of a mayor in another country. The FCDO will be gritting its teeth at this latest breathless bluster…

Khan also claims politicians need to be “braver on immigration” as its problems stem from unfunded public services, and that the UK should have a “conversation” about re-joining the EU in the “medium to long term“. Khan is always ahead of the curve on Labour’s intentions…

After managing to get 2% of his targeted affordable housebuilding projects started, Sadiq Khan is giving up. The mayor is pushing Labour for permission to impose rent controls on the capital – requests Labour is minded to accept. A long-running campaign of his…

An act of parliament would be needed to hand over the keys to the rental market. Rent controls fail wherever they are implemented, most recently in Scotland, where rents rose higher than anywhere in the UK by a large margin after their imposition. They went so badly in Berlin that the courts declared them unconstitutional. Caving to socialist impulses at the first sign of pressure is standard…