Rachel Reeves had such a private bust-up with Sadiq Khan she actually booted him out of her office, according to the New Statesman. Ailbhe Rea reports:
“In private, she had heated, bitter disagreements with cabinet colleagues over squeezed budgets for their departments. “Get out of my office,” she told the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, as he tried to negotiate more funding for the capital, according to several people familiar with the incident. I’m told she cut short their scheduled meeting before the second half could begin.”
Khan is nonetheless walking away from this Budget with his prized Tourist Tax. Imagine if Reeves had caved even further…
Staff working for the Greater London Authority have instructed employees to spend a full 9-5 day receiving ‘climate literacy training.’ Is Khan organising this from New York…
They will “learn about the climate emergency and what you can do in your job to tackle it and help London achieve its net zero carbon by 2030 target.” This involves “writing three pledges on the day on how you will take climate action through your work at the GLA” and staff are instructed to “start having a think about this now.” Dystopian pledge-writing now included!
Staff are told “the course is very interactive and will contain lots of discussion and activities.” That’s how Khan is spending taxpayer pounds…
Read the full intranet post below:
Sadiq Khan has jetted off to Brazil this week to boast about how clever he is and complain about having “one hand tied behind [his] back” by a Labour government that hasn’t sufficiently backed his green agenda. To prove this point, he has flown around 5,750 miles to Rio de Janeiro, for a total round trip of 11,500 miles…
Ahead of the C40 World Mayors Summit, which Khan is set to co-chair this year, the Mayor of London said:
“I can’t understand how we’ve lost the art and ability to explain to people what we’re doing… [The public] can smell somebody who’s inauthentic. And I think you should be authentic. People respect somebody if you’re authentic. There are people who voted for me in the last mayoral election who may not agree with ULEZ but they respect the fact that I have got good intentions, but I also explained to them why we’re doing the ultra low emissions zone, the fact that in London we’ve got thousands of premature deaths…”
He went on to say the cabinet should be more enthusiastic about net zero and “it can’t just be the Ed Miliband show.“ For an entourage of five, the total greenhouse gas emissions pumped out for this trip will be around 27.7 tonnes…
A new report from the Centre for Policy Studies torches Sadiq Khan’s record on housebuilding in London. In 2024–25, just 4,170 homes were built across the capital – a pitiful 5% of his own 88,000-home target. Embarrassing…
Even worse, 80% of the homes completed last year were approved under Boris Johnson’s 2016 London Plan, while only 20% came from Khan’s 2021 blueprint. Despite the Mayor’s endless boasts about being committed to building a “better, fairer London for everyone,” it’s still Boris’ policies doing the heavy lifting on housing…
The report – “The City That Doesn’t Build” by Ben Hopkinson – blames a suffocating regulatory environment that’s driven costs so high that “even if the land is provided for free, developments in half of London are unviable.” Hopkinson also notes that despite London having the fewest homes per capita of any British region, it’s building at less than a quarter of the rate of the rest of England. Read the report in full below:
Continue reading “London Housebuilding Collapses Under Khan as Less Than 5% of Target Hit”
Keir Starmer has said he believes the ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ chant is antisemitic, putting him directly at odds with the Mayor of London. Who less than a week ago insisted “it was all about context”…
Asked by the Jewish Chronicle today whether he considered the chant antisemitic, however, Starmer said:
“Yes… I take a strong view on this, and we’ve dealt with cases in my own party where people have used that expression and we’ve taken action against them… I’m not just saying it to you here today. That is the history, that is the record that I have as leader of my party.”
Maybe worth having a conversation with Sadiq about all this…
Sadiq Khan has today linked protests outside asylum hotels with “hate crime and extremism.” To think Guido was worried Khan might not stick his foot in it this week…
In a press release this morning the London mayor announced “fresh investment to fight hate crime and extremism in London.” Khan is allocating £875,000 for various projects and learning initiatives on the topic. That includes funding for “Tech Against Terrorism” to “deliver schools-based workshops helping students to recognise harmful and radicalising content online.” In the press release Khanm adds:
“The action comes as anti-migrant hotel protests are becoming more common place in the capital and arrests for those aged 17 and under for terror related offences in the UK remained high, with 43 arrests in the last year.”
Khan goes on to attack X for failing “to act on 97 per cent of posts calling for violence against migrants or Muslims that are reported to the platform” and claims “the Mayor’s investment encourages Londoners to continue to celebrate our diversity and reject hateful and divisive narratives.” Susan Hall, leader of the City Hall Conservatives, said he should apologise:
“This tells you everything you need to know about the Labour Party’s attitude to illegal migration and stopping the small boats – it is disgraceful to conflate peaceful protest and freedom of speech with extremism. Clearly the Mayor should apologise.”
The campaign against migrant hotel protests in full swing…
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”