I thought it was a joke. ‘Surely he can’t be?’ Yet as my TwitterX feed and the Financial Times suggests, Sadiq Khan is seemingly set to receive the top gong in Sir Keir Starmer’s New Years Honours List.
So quickly I jumped online (realising it would be rejected from the Gov.uk petition site as they can’t deal with Honour applications) so chnage.org it was. And wow! 100,000+ people really don’t want to see Sir Sadiq Khan, a knight.
And that’s significant - it’s not a lesser honour, it’s the top one! You would think only handed out to those of lifelong service, transformative change and historic impact to society. Well, I guess Sadiq Khan has done all that, but not to the benefit of Londoners!
As a local councillor, your entire purpose is effectivly improving the local area and quality of life for your residents. For many of us that has been made harder by the actions (or inaction) of Sadiq Khan. We are small cogs in the giant political and social machine of London, yet the driving force behind so much is the Mayor. When it comes to crime, so many of us can recount coversations with residents, reassuring victims of crime and coordinating with our Safer Neighbourhood Teams to see what, if any, we can do to help. Yet the buck ultimately lies with London's Police and Crime Commissioner, Sadiq Khan.
The ULEZ expansion (be it to the North/South Circular or outer London) is another example of how local government is significantly impacted by the actions of one man. In Hatch End, where I am fortunate to be a councillor, we have streets where you turn left, you avoid the ULEZ expansion, you turn right, are hit by it. Yet just a field away you feel in the middle of the fresh, crisp countryside, although this Mayor would lead you to think there's an invisible barrier and suddenly it's all dirty air!
These are just two examples, where our lives as local councillors have the rug pulled from underneath us and only furthers the calls for this nightmare to not become a knighted-Mayor.
The Mayor of London is London’s Police and Crime Commissioner (a role Sadiq Khan rarely acknowledges!) Crime is through the roof. Gun crime up 30%. Robbery up 10%. Knife crime up 13%. So on crime, he’s failed to earn an honour.
So what about transport? The Mayor of London is also Chair of Transport for London. Well if you look past the £6.9 billion bailouts the Tories had to give him to keep the trains and buses running, the 140 days of strikes (more then the previous two Mayor’s combined) when he promised 0 days, and the £6 million spent renaming London Overground lines that no-one asked for, then again, I guess a knighthood is pushing it.
Then you have ULEZ. The £12.50 a day tax to drive in London, do the school run or pop to your local shops. 66% of Londoners said they didn’t want it in the consultation. The science from Mayor Khan’s own Jacobs Impact Assessment said it would have a “negligible” impact on air quality. Millions of Londoners left selling their car, unable to afford a new one, being left isolated or lonely all while it has raked in £millions every day to fill TfL’s account. Yeah, struggling to see how he deserves a knighthood there.
And there are so many other scandals too! The charged on the Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels. The constant increase in the Mayor’s chunk of council tax (71% increased so far!) The lack of any affordable houses being built. Declaring Taylor Swift tickets late and breaking the rules elected officials must follow. The divisive racism calling “white Londoners” not representative of London anymore and saying there are “too many white men” working at TfL. If a white person said that about black people, they would be resigning tomorrow!!
All in all, I and over 100,000 other people struggle to see where the math adds up. Sadiq Khan getting a knighthood for destroying our once great city is a kick in the teeth and shows just how out of touch this self-serving Labour government are. He’s not a knighted Mayor - he’s just a nightmare!
You can sign Matthew’s petition here: https://www.change.org/stopsirsadiq and follow Matthew on TwitterX, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok via @mgoodwinfreeman
