London Has Crashed and Burned Under Sadiq Khan’s Mayoralty
In a scathing piece for the Telegraph, Sherelle Jacobs eviscerates Sadiq Khan’s performance as London Mayor, likening his leadership style to that of a dictator and comparing his reign to that of Soviet leaders. Here’s an excerpt:
The mind boggles when it comes to Sadiq Khan. In many ways, he is a faceless phantom – a fascinatingly bland Labour apparatchik incapable of an original thought or phrase. And yet somehow he has managed to build himself into the consummate dictator-bureaucrat, London’s own answer to Leonid Brezhnev or Raul Castro.
For conservatives he is the ultimate source of irrit-ainment, a figure that is constantly triggering animated outrage over his provocative social media posts and controversial schemes. And yet he is a genuinely disturbing political figure, spinning his own universe of deception out of London’s dystopian hellscape.
The mayor’s triumph at forcing through his Ulez expansion project brings home all this chilling force. It is the most egregious kind of vanity project. As an exercise in green gesture politics that is set to hit low-income residents with steep charges, and penalise communities that are already beleaguered by poor public transport, it smacks of bourgeois dogmatism.
Ulez also offers a masterclass in post-truth politicking. The Tories allege in vain that Khan made ‘false’ and ‘dishonest’ claims to the London Assembly over the scheme’s consultation. It ought to be a full-blown scandal that Khan’s office funded scientists who published studies on Ulez’s effectiveness and then sought to “discredit” those whose findings contradicted grandiose claims about its impact. Nonetheless, by loudly and relentlessly blaring about a “public health emergency”, Khan has reduced the complex truth to just another version of reality.
His obsession with Ulez is truly baffling. It is hardly an election winner, with polls revealing that London is largely split over the policy. Given that most cars in the capital are already Ulez compliant, Khan has essentially launched a pious eco-war against some of London’s most deprived areas for little electoral gain.
Yet in one sense, for a politician like him, it fits perfectly. Having spent a good part of tenure dabbling in BLM iconoclasm, calling for the removal of statues of slavers from public squares, he has moved into the more spiritually ambitious business of constructing a cult of the self.
As his recent book Breathless attests, Khan wants nothing less than to position himself as Britain’s most environmentally enlightened leader – a born again green ‘activist’ who has made the journey from Land Rover driver to electric car evangelist.
Having decided to make the green revolution the centrepiece of his political brand, the mayor has had his work cut out to upstage his no less radical predecessors. After all, the red congestion charge paint splattered across London’s roads serves as a constant reminder of Comrade Livingstone’s reign of terror against motorists. And whatever name anyone else gives then, the capital’s rented wheels will always be known as Boris bikes.
Naturally, then, Khan has set a target for London to be Net Zero carbon by 2030. The extensive green Ulez signage will serve as a constant symbolic reminder of his guiding role in pointing everyone towards green utopia.
Worth reading in full.
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He only cares about establishing his personal caliphate
Khan is a racist woketard and he’ll never lose his position because he’ll have the security of the migrants’ votes to fall back on, always. Blast from the past receipt from before he was mayor…I mean, who gives a stuff who’s on the TfL board? Black, brown, white, male, female…it shouldn’t matter so long as they’re doing a good job of it. Wonder how that TfL board compares nowadays under Dicktator Khan..
“I will reshape TfL’s board,” he said during a speech in Brixton this morning.
“It needs to better reflect London’s diversity in the interest of Londoners. Did you know there are 16 people on the board of TfL?
“Thirteen of them are white men. Thirteen. Think about it . It only has three women on it. That’s less than one in five. ”
He suggested the needs of women and ethnic minorities were being neglected as a result.”
https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2016/03/30/sadiq-khan-there-are-too-many-white-men-on-transport-for-london/
Don’t underestimate the stupidity of the urban population. This is a good test case. We are going to find out soon how self destructive the population is.
Time to stock up on candles and tins of food.
Many non-whites presumably vote for him because he is not white, and many people just always vote Labour, including large numbers of metropolitan liberals who would not be seen dead voting Tory and vote Labour to keep the Tories out.
That is probably part of it.
I also think that on the whole the urban population is very ignorant. Urbanites see the world through their lens, surrounded by concrete and steel and large crowds of people.
The non urban world to them is strange and exotic and something to be engaged with in limited doses, as tourists basically.
Many of the essential things Iin their lives like their food, their gadgets, the products they buy, most of them come from outside their urban world. But they know little about it and don’t understand it.
Worse still they look down on it as dirty or unsophisticated. So these imbeciles don’t understand industrial production or farming, or what it entails. But they are so arrogant that they want to put rules and organise it, according to their ideas and their urban vision of the world.
In short, in many ways, they are f**King idiots that are leading us down a path of destruction due to their ignorance.
Correct. And the smart (and smug ;->) amongst us would do what we did – moved to the deep country.
Redrow, Wimpey, Persimmon, Barratt and other corporates are close on your heels. You can run but you can’t hide!
As an ex-Londoner there’s certainly a tendency to think the rest of the country is full of ignorant racist gammons.
Yes, but the Conservative Party are fake conservatives – I wouldn’t vote for them either. In fact all establishment parties are fraud.
Agreed
“Don’t underestimate the stupidity of the urban population.” As was the case with Covid, where many of our population acted like sheep.
Ulez is a WEF, globalist moneymaker. It is an attempt to make your life as miserable as possible.
It is my understanding that he has had the Conservative Gov’s blessing on ‘UZ Theft UZLESS’ because Grant Sch…communicated with the Kahn, and has agreement with this scheme. And the gov could stop it, they have legitimate power to do so but it is telling they choose not to!
The Conservative green lobby, who are on cabinet, MP’s snd the PM are getting Kahn to do their dirty work I wonder ?
Which means our C Gov are sacrificing London’s citizens to the many abuses.
Sweden already have a carbon credit card that restricts freedoms ! I think the green conservatives and labour in parliament are sacrificing us for this goal.
The legally binding air quality targets (mandatory ones) that are the reason for ULEZ are the product of May’s Net Zero legislation and a resulting statutory instrument. All of the outrage from the Tories is just smoke and mirrors.
Yes I see that now!
I also wonder, if they know it does not matter to them if they crash and burn at the next election because they have feathered their future careers in the green global agenda which includes areas of control.
So being a ‘public servant’ is extinct. Grant, Sadiq, Rush and green no cash global Ltd already high and dry.
Whilst we ?
I think the debate between folly verses on purpose is unraveling. It is both, selfish stupidity and purposeful converging selfish interests.
Not ordinary citizens interests.
When the penny drops it hurts. UZ.
Rish not Rush. . HA that was a rock band.
So very many in gov’t doing as they are told. WEF puppets. Destroying the UK one bad decision at a time. We now have illegal immigrants residing at the best western hotel Exmouth Devon. Moved in during the night, free to roam, all have an iPhone and smoke. I thought cigarettes were now £13 a pack? Folks you better wake up before it is too late. When I mention the illegals to neighbours and friends their comment “but what can we do”. Frightening.
Terrible betrayal of British people and our ancestors and our children’s children.
Treason against us.
Met Police even recruiting outside mosques now. Obviously their numbers are needing a boost in this particular ethnic group. What I will say though is that they won’t recruit many Muslim women that way as I never seem to see them come and go from mosques, but perhaps I just haven’t lurked outside of one for long enough….
https://twitter.com/BFirstParty/status/1693533429298520418
I moved out London a little over four years ago. Alexander Johnson was probably the ideal Mayor: he played the buffoon and let competent people keep things ticking over with a soft-touch administration. Once Sadiq Khan got in, it was back to Livingstone’s ‘Mayor of London’ diktats and bossy boots ‘We’re watching you!’-type posters. London is the new San Francisco.
I can’t claim this as my original thought, but here goes. The ULEZ proponents who are in favour of the scrappage scheme seem not to have given any thought as to its likely outcome. Either vehicles will be scrapped, in which case that will create its own environmental impact or those vehicles will be sold on and will continue the impact that Khant claims that he wants to avoid.
The last mayor who was criticised for destroying her city was Lori Lightfoot. She was gone in a year’s time. Her replacement is even worse than Lori. And like all the other puppets put into regimes, these people always land on their feet for a job well done. Lori is now a senior leadership fellow at Harvard. Must have been her outstanding performance as mayor of Chicago.
wonder where sadiq will end up?
Far too much power for one little man
Particularly an islamist.