Co-conspirators outside the capital will no doubt have been irritated to see Sky News lead their morning bulletins with news of a tube strike. Just two lines are running today, and plenty of bus services are cancelled, as a staff walkout has seen services grind to a halt thanks to the RMT. Sadiq Khan, who is never responsible for any bad news in London just the nice stuff, is blaming the government for “deliberately provoking” Mick Lynch. Which sounds a lot like victim blaming…

Regardless of whose fault the strikes are, it further undermines Sadiq’s election promise in 2016 that under his watch there would be “zero” strikes.

“As mayor, what I’d do is roll up my sleeves and make sure that I’m talking to everyone who runs public transport to make sure there are zero days of strikes”

At the time he added that Ken Livingstone’s 16 strikes were “too many”, and the 35 strikes during Boris’s eight years were a “disgrace” and a “sign of failure.” By the end of this week Sadiq will have presided over 95 strikes…

Per annum that strike rate breaks down as 2 for Livingstone, 4.375 for Boris and 15.1 for Sadiq. The Tory number crunchers at City Hall calculate 110 days have been disrupted by strikes under the current Mayor – over 2,000 hours-worth. In March this year, Sadiq said he was speaking to trade unions to persuade them to avoid further actions. Since then alone there have been 39 strikes. There’s a failure to keep promises, and then there’s Sadiq…

Sadiq’s finally got an answer for London’s soaring crime rates: longer days, school holidays, and… the weather. Speaking to LBC just now, in the wake of yet another appalling stabbing in the city, Sadiq said:

“We have seen over the last few days, the last week, a number of awful homicides. I’m afraid this summer we are seeing what we feared which is an increase in violent crime… there are longer daylight hours, school holidays, a heatwave and so forth. We are working with the police to suppress that violence.”

Yes, because this is the first time in history that the sun has set after 8pm. That explains everything. Presumably the police will just take the day off when it finally snows…

Sadiq Khan has announced he’s planning to make Boris Bikes across the capital more expensive for the first time in nine years. In a new press release this afternoon, Sadiq revealed the £2 charge per 24 hours will be scrapped next month, replaced by a £1.65 pay-per-ride system, spinning as a price decrease. Meaning those using the bikes to commute to and from work will now pay at least £3.30, rather than £2…

The ‘good’ news is he’s simultaneously adding 500 e-bikes to the fleet, although those will cost £3.30 per ride, and will initially be limited to those registered to the monthly or annual scheme. By the way, the annual membership is rising from £90 to £120…

Inevitably, Sadiq is actually spinning all this as a positive step towards encouraging more people to cycle:

“I’m determined to continue building a cleaner, greener London for everyone and this includes making cycling as accessible as possible […] The new Santander Cycles e-bikes will play an important role in helping to break down some of the barriers that stop people from getting on a bike, including fitness, age and length of journey.”

Encouraging people to cycle by making it more expensive during a cost of living crisis. Peddling nonsense like this still comes free of charge…

Sadiq Khan has spent the last 24 hours ferociously slapping himself on the back, supposedly for saving the NHS about £218 million by preventing 100,000 people becoming obese. How? By banning junk food advertising on the Tube. Truly a medical miracle.

Sadiq’s basing his unprecedented policy victory on a study published yesterday which, as Christopher Snowdon points out, features even more pie in the sky thinking than the last time Khan tried spinning this yarn:

“The authors claimed that London households ate 1,000 fewer calories of HFSS [foods high in fat, sugar or salt] after the ban. This wasn’t true in any sense. They could only pretend it was true by creating a ridiculous counterfactual in which consumption rose sharply for no reason if there hadn’t been a ban… It is a much, much greater calorie reduction than the Department of Health expect to be achieved from a nationwide pre-watershed broadcast advertising ban and a total online advertising ban combined.”

Not only did the researchers not bother to actually count the number of obese people in London – their figure is just based on half-baked theoretical modelling –  they also conveniently ignore that London was in lockdown for most of 2020… and child obesity has actually increased in the city since 2019. London has the highest rate of childhood obesity in the country…

Some food for thought, maybe. Meanwhile, here’s another statistic for the Mayor to chew on: last year was the worst on record for gun and knife crime in London, with 30 teenage homicides across the capital. In fact, just look at the crime rate per 1,000 population since 2016 – in other words, since Sadiq took office:

Still, at least he’s banned Big Mac adverts on the Central Line. Time for a slice of humble pie…

Today, Transport for London released the first data on the effects of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion across London. For co-conspirators living outside the M25, that’s the £12.50 charge Londoners are now whacked with if their vehicle breaches low emission rules. As expected, Sadiq is claiming victory, insisting “the ULEZ is working” because  “Nitrogen dioxide pollution has fallen by 44% in central London & 20% in outer London.” Just one small problem: Nitrogen Dioxide levels were falling faster before the expansion…

Between January-March 2021 – seven months before Khan expanded the ULEZ to the inner boundaries of the North and South Circular roads – Nitrogen Dioxide pollution was 56% lower in Central London than it would have been had the initial low emission area not been introduced. In the suburbs, that figure was 21%. Now, as Sadiq boasts, it’s at 44% and 20% respectively. So the ULEZ is now less effective… despite being 18 times larger. Expanding it hasn’t shifted the dial in the right direction. Don’t forget, the boundaries are supposed to expand again next year…

This afternoon it was confirmed the Greater London Authority’s Monitoring Officer is investigating Sadiq Khan for “serious” allegations relating to his premature announcement of the Elizabeth Line opening date. The inquiry was prompted by Grant Shapps, who wrote to the GLA and the electoral commission last month after Khan appeared to break pre-election purdah rules by revealing the opening time just a day before the locals. Now it’s full steam ahead for the probe. Shapps 1, Khan 0…

Luckily for Sadiq, he’s in good company with his Labour colleagues. He now joins Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, and David Lammy in being under active investigation. In fact, Sir Keir’s managed to find himself the subject of two concurrent probes: one for Beergate up in the Durham Constabulary, and another with the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner. That’s five investigations between the Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Leader, the Shadow Foreign Secretary and the Mayor of London. Will the last Labour figure not under investigation please turn out the lights…