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Levelling up Britain must not mean levelling down London, says outgoing TfL chief

Mike Brown made his final annual appearance before the London Assembly transport committee today
Charles Wright

“Levelling up” transport investment must not mean “levelling down” for London, outgoing Transport for London boss Mike Brown told London Assembly Members today.

“We are at a crossroads,” the TfL commissioner said in his final appearance before the Assembly transport committee. “I absolutely welcome a commitment to more investment in the north and other regions. But it serves no one if the levelling up that is achieved is at the expense of London.”

After almost five years in the TfL top job, Brown moves on in May to chair the delivery authority overseeing the £3.5 billion restoration of the Houses of Parliament. He joined TfL in 1989, rising up the ranks before a two-year stint running Heathrow airport, returning to TfL initially as managing director of London Underground in 2010.

His worst moment in the job had been the Croydon tram derailment in 2016, where six passengers died and many more were injured, he recalled: “I will never forget that day” And delays and cost overruns on the Crossrail scheme were a “massive regret”.

There had been significant achievements too: Tube improvements, “active travel” by foot, bike and public transport up to 63 per cent of journeys from 50 per cent, a doubling of protected cycle space since 2016, greener buses, better services on TfL-controlled overground lines, and dangerous nitrogen oxide emissions from vehicles down more than 30 per cent since last year’s introduction of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone. And Crossrail, still a “fantastic, world-beating project”, would see its central section finally open next year.

But with 40 per cent less funding than in 2010, and London one of the few capital cities in the world with no direct operating grant from government – a net loss of £700 million funding a year, coupled with £1.3 billion estimated fares revenue lost due to the Crossrail Elizabeth Line’s late opening – Brown’s message to the committee, and to Whitehall, was that more support was needed.

Recalling a “city in decline” in the 1980s, when he began his career, with three in 10 Northern Line trains regularly cancelled during the morning rush hour, he warned that decline could come again. “It’s important we don’t lose momentum. If we are going to have a safe, reliable transport network capable of meeting demand and supporting a functioning and growing city, we need government investment and we need certainty of that investment now.”

Signalling upgrades on the Piccadilly Line, increasing capacity on it by 60 per cent, would be his first priority for funding, alongside replacing Bakerloo line trains – the oldest in the country – and extensions to the Bakerloo Line and of the Docklands Light Railway to Thamesmead. 

“We have to keep the core service running. No one would forgive us if we allowed a degradation of existing operations on our watch. And only with government support can we complete the upgrading of the tube network,” he said.

New Piccadilly Line trains were being constructed in a factory in Goole in Yorkshire, he reminded members, with the potential for future orders for replacement Central Line, Northern Line and Jubilee Line trains – “2,000 jobs for a decade, in a different part of the country”. 

Wider certainty was needed too, he said, with TfL analysis showing Tube usage in particular fluctuating in line with Brexit and economic uncertainty. “We are in a very volatile situation, with fluctuations we haven’t seen in 20 years, except during the 2008 crash. It is important the message goes out that London is open for business.”

OnLondon.co.uk is dedicated to improving the standard of coverage of London’s politics, development and culture. It depends on donations from readers. Can you spare £5 (or more) a month? Follow this link if you would like to help. Thank you.

Categories: News
Tags: Bakerloo Line, Central Line, Crossrail, Croydon tram crash, Elizabeth Line, London Trams, Mike Brown, Northern Line, Piccadilly Line, Transport for London

Improved walking conditions can help tackle big London problems, campaign group tells mayoral candidates

Charity Living Streets says public health, climate and road safety issues could all be addressed by championing pedestrians
Dave Hill

The next London Mayor should champion the capital’s pedestrians by improving road crossings, funding more “low traffic” neighbourhood schemes and making it easier for children and family members to walk to school, according to a leading campaign group.

The London branch of Living Streets, a UK charity that encourages people to walk everyday journeys, has made the call in its Manifesto For Walking aimed at influencing candidates for the London Mayor election on 7 May.

The document also supports the creation of what it calls a Central London walking network, which could be replicated in other town centres in the capital, as well as calling for measures to reduce private motor vehicle use to help tackle the climate change.

Living Streets argues that by investing in street improvements and the public transport network, the next Mayor can simultaneously “cut congestion, reduce air pollution and ensure walking is easy and safe”.

Pointing out that walking is “often overlooked” in debates about environmental, public health and road safety issues, the manifesto highlights that pedestrians have been accounting for more than half of London’s street fatalities and more than one third of its serious injures in recent years, with “over 1,350 pedestrians killed or seriously injured” on London’s roads in 2018, and that poor equality is said to contribute to over 9,000 premature deaths a year while a large minority of Londoners appear not to attain “recommended physical activity levels”.

The charity says there should be a pedestrian crossing at every signalised road junction, recognising that the bulk of deaths and serious injuries to pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists occur at junctions. It claims that “one in seven London crossings are out of date” in that they no longer meet Transport for London standards and urges an urgent audit of crossings, in line with the “vision zero” target set by Sadiq Khan as part of TfL’s strategy for reducing road danger.

Low traffic neighbourhoods are described as “networks of quieter streets where through traffic is filtered out and children play out, air pollution is lower and walking and cycling are the natural choice of everyday journeys” which the next Mayor should “continue to invest in” on a comprehensive scale.

On air pollution, Living Streets says car, van, private hire and taxi journeys should be brought down by “and accelerated rate” of 2o per cent by 2024 compared with the present Mayor’s target of 12 per cent by that time and says “radical change” is needed to encourage more people to move around by foot and by bicycle and public transport. More controlled car vehicle parking zones and higher parking charges are recommended along with preparations for “next generation road pricing” by the end of the next mayoral term.

Walking routes to school should be improved to encourage more travelling to and from them by foot, with better lighting and street management along with a well-enforced “default 20 mph limit” on vehicle speeds. Walking networks set up outside of Central London should be focus on “the moat deprived areas”, the manifesto says.

Read the full Living Streets London 2020 manifesto here.

OnLondon.co.uk is committed to providing the best possible coverage of the 2020 London Mayor and London Assembly election campaigns. The site is small but influential and it depends on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via PayPal or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: cycling, environment, London Mayor Election 2020, pedestrians, Sadiq Khan, Transport for London

Sadiq Khan calls Streatham terror attack ‘foreseeable and preventable’ as Benita and Stewart join debate

The Mayor and some of his rivals have been responding to Sunday's stabbings by a man just released from jail
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan has called for better resourcing of prison and probation services and greater sentencing powers for judges following the Islamist-inspired stabbing of two people on Streatham High Road, and two of those seeking to replace him as London Mayor have also joined the debate about preventing further such attacks.

The Mayor told Sky News he had “lots of questions for the government” including about what measures are being taken to ensure the “70-odd people” released after serving terror-related sentences aren’t a threat to the public and what is being done with the roughly 200 currently in jail to see that they are “punished and reformed” instead of radicalised.

Khan said that powers to impose sentences of indeterminate length taken from judges in 2012 should be restored and that prison and probation staff are “struggling” because resources are insufficient. He claimed the perpetrator of Sunday’s attacked, 20-year-old Sudesh Amman, who was shot dead by police on the scene, should not have been released from prison a week before because what happened had been “both foreseeable and preventable”, with the police sufficiently concerned about Amman to have had an armed team monitoring him, which is “not usual”.

The Mayor, who is to seek a second four-year term at the mayoral election on 7 May, made similar points in appearances on BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

Broadcasters have also sought the views of Independent candidate Rory Stewart, a former Conservative minister with responsibility for prisons, who recently published proposals for increasing the number of neighbourhood police officers in London. Stewart told Talk Radio that “this guy [Amman] was clearly an enormous danger,” and that “the real questions” raised are “whether we can increase the maximum sentences” and “what we can do with people when they are in prison and when they leave to make sure that we keep people safe and try to turn them around”. Stressing that reforming such offenders is “very difficult”, Stewart said “I don’t think we’ve got the approach right, we don’t have enough specialists working on that”.

Stewart told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire progamme that new requirement introduced at the end of last year would have meant Amman going through a “parole process” prior to release had he been sentenced prior to the change. He added: “Someone who poses an imminent danger or threat to the public, they need to be put back into prison. There’s no doubt about that at all.” Stewart said consideration should be given to “how we get the link up to police, prison, probation”, with “a single case officer tracking individuals through the whole system” and advocated a “proper lay down of police in the communities”, because recent attacks have been by lone individuals unconnected with large terror networks that are known to the security services.

In a press statement, Liberal Democrat candidate Siobhan Benita said, “It can’t be right that an individual with a previous conviction for terror-related activities is allowed back onto our streets when he still poses a threat to the public”. She called for “a review of terror legislation and, especially, the powers that judges have to keep our communities secure” and “an urgent return to community policing, which has been so starved of funds under the Conservatives”.

Benita has pledged to re-open local police stations, which have closed under Khan and his predecessor Boris Johnson in order to make savings as the Metropolitan Police budget has been cut since 2010. She also wants to increase the number of police in each London neighbourhood and “attach officers to schools to build trust from an early age. Prevention must be given the same urgency as enforcement”.

Much of the early mayoral campaign debate has been about violent street crime unrelated to terrorism, though Khan’s contributions to that and his reaction to the Streatham attack have had the common thread of criticising Conservative-led national governments over funding cuts. Stewart, who was a Tory MP and minister, concentrated in his remarks on making the current systems function more effectively.

In his 2016 manifesto, Khan pledged to “lead a renewed push to tackle extremism and radicalisation in London”. In December 2016, following a critical report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation, he promised to “continue to make the case to the government that responsibility for probation services should be devolved to City Hall”, though he has not yet been successful. Amman’s victims are not in life threatening conditions.

Update 4 February, 2020: Green Party London Mayor candidate Sian Berry has told told On London: “We cannot let the terror attack in Streatham divides our communities.  Questions need to be asked about the attacker’s early release from prison as well as the on the debilitating effects privatisation has had on the prison and probation services, and the quality of rehabilitation offered to prisoners. We must look at the evidence-based solutions that will help us reduce the chances of something similar happening again in the future.” On London has been unable to make contact with the campaign of Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey.

Image: BBC News.

OnLondon.co.uk is committed to providing the best possible coverage of the 2020 London Mayor and London Assembly election campaigns. The site is small but influential and it depends on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via PayPal or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

Categories: News
Tags: Conservative, crime, Labour, Liberal Democrats, London Mayor Election 2020, Metropolitan Police, policing, Rory Stewart, Sadiq Khan, Shaun Bailey, Sian Berry, Siobhan Benita, Streatham, terrorism

Haringey: Labour members call for ‘working-class section’ in bid to regain power

Crouch End activists propose 'awareness-raising experience' and training workshops
Dave Hill

Members of a Labour Party branch in north London want to create a special grouping within Labour for working-class people in order to help the party form a national government.

An invitation to join the project circulated before the Crouch End ward’s regular branch meeting scheduled for tomorrow (4 February) says that although “the middle-classes come across as very nice people” they “don’t seem to realise they often have a condescending attitude towards us [working-class people], talking to us as if we are children”.

The author or authors of the proposal, seen by On London, say the first half of the larger Hornsey & Wood Green constituency level (CLP) meetings should be “conducted in the style of small awareness-raising group workshops” because “from our experience, we believe working-class people find this kind of informality much more interesting, although we feel it could be a bit threatening for the middle-classes”.

The invitation, which appears at the foot of a draft agenda for the meeting and is headed “text agreed to be circulated to members”, argues that a fall in support for Labour among working-class voters has occurred because “the Tories and their cronies have exploited our working-class language in the right-wing, vote-rigging tabloid press to deliberately poison our thinking and to manipulate the way we vote” and because “the idealism of Labour has attracted many millions of the more middle-class and professional people”.

While allowing that such individuals are “paramount for Labour’s infrastructure” and acknowledging their “easy-going confidence and verbal skills (although often verging on waffle),” the proposal says that “because of their influence we believe our election leaflets are middle-class and [we] feel them to be boring to working-class people”, when a more “straight-talking” and “tabloid-style way” of explaining Labour policies would be more effective.

It contends that middle-class members “seem to look up to and identify more with the rich” and that “working-class skills are just as important to the Labour Party, such as common sense, discernment and the guts to challenge mega-rich tax cheats and crooks with offshore funds, along with bent bankers, solicitors and estate agents who handle their dirty money”.

A potentially “revolutionary” mechanism for “the pooling of ideas between these two very different cultures” would involve one half of CLP meetings comprising “coming together” sessions to produce ideas which would be jointly written up “by one working-class and one middle-class member working together at local and executive level”. It is suggested that this “transforming idea of ‘joint roles’ could become a new ruling for all official rules within Labour”.

The proposal does not set out how the different social class designations would be defined, but it maintains that the approach it advocates would bring people together and “surely attract back the working-classes and with it, election success”. It claims the “vision of sharing roles and the use of awareness-raising techniques has its roots in a 3,500-year-old idea described in Exodus 18 as ‘metric-democracy'”. It adds: “We would like to see a Labour working-class section similar to the women’s section, with an exhibition space and training workshops at both local and national conference”.

Labour suffered a setback in Crouch End ward at the last borough elections, held in May 2018, when all three of its council seats were won by Liberal Democrats, having previously all been Labour. The sitting councillors for the ward had been replaced before the elections by Labour candidates supported by the Jeremy Corbyn-backing organisation Momentum as part of a wider campaign to de-select councillors not to its liking.

Labour lost seven Haringey’s council seats altogether (six compared with the previous election in 2014), the party’s worst seats outcome in all 32 boroughs on a night of overall gains, though it retained a council majority of 27. Under new Labour leadership, the Haringey cabinet has since lost two members to sackings (though one of them has since been elected deputy leader and restored) and another two to resignations, one of which followed a drugs conviction. Hornsey & Wood Green Labour MP Catherine West comfortably retained her seat in December’s general election, albeit with a reduced majority.

OnLondon.co.uk is dedicated to improving the standard of coverage of London’s politics, development and culture. It depends on donations from readers. Can you spare £5 (or more) a month? Follow this link if you would like to help. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: Crouch End, Haringey Council, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, Liberal Democrats

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 128: The remains of Colonel Blood

A criminal and spy favoured by Charles II, he had a nice little place on Tufton Street
Victor Keegan

On August 24, 1680, a man died and was buried in the graveyard of New Chapel, an overspill cemetery of St Margaret’s Church – almost next door to today’s Albert pub in Victoria Street – where his body still resides. Soon after, he was dug up again because a lot of people refused to believe he was dead.

And with good reason. This was Colonel Thomas Blood, the Irishman described as “the greatest rascal in British history” and said to have shed more innocent blood than any other adventurer of his day. Blood’s impersonation skills were so formidable and his ability to leave the scene of a crime undetected – such as when he tried to murder the Duke of Ormond – so seemingly miraculous that many would  not accept that it was his body that had been buried, not least because Blood had just been ordered to pay £10,000, which he did not have, to the Duke of Buckingham following a court case and had good cause to, so to speak, lie low.

His greatest feat of escapology was stealing the Crown Jewels – at least for a brief period – and instead of being executed, as would have happened had he stolen a sheep, he was reprieved by Charles II in person in Westminster Hall and given back his estate in Ireland plus a £500 a year pension. Talk about the wages of sin!

Screenshot 2020 02 02 at 10.31.43

Why Charles granted this extraordinary act of clemency is still a bit of a mystery. Blood’s actual words to the King were: “If his Majesty would spare the lives of my friends and myself it would save His Majesty and his minister further harm, and His Majesty would make his enemies his friends.” Did Charles genuinely feared that if he executed Blood his associates might kill him? There were a lot of plots around. Or was it because Charles thought it was all a bit of a joke or, maybe more likely, that Blood’s value as a spy outweighed other considerations?

When Blood’s body was dug up, the coroner summoned a jury and called upon his relatives to identify the remains. The only way they could do this was by recognising the abnormal size of his thumbs, whereupon he was reinterred and left to rot in what used to be called Tothill Fields, where he still resides under the last bit of greenery left in Victoria Street. A local resident at that time, he had a house on the corner of Great Peter Street and Tufton Street (image above).

Photograph by Vic Keegan. All previous instalments of Vic’s Lost London series can be found here.

OnLondon.co.uk is dedicated to improving the standard of coverage of London’s politics, development and culture. It depends on donations from readers. Can you spare £5 (or more) a month? Follow this link if you would like to help. Thank you.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Great Peter Street, St Margaret's church, Thomas Blood, Tufton Street

Brexit Day, London 2020

Leavers gathered in Parliament Square to celebrate. Remainers mourned.
Dave Hill & Joshua Neicho

“The war is over and we have won,” said Nigel Farage from Parliament Square in the final seconds before 11.00 pm and the United Kingdom formally left the European Union. He spoke to one of the larger gatherings mustered by Leave forces in the capital, where political parties led by Farage have never made much impact and which is seen by many as a city colonised by people and values they dislike. Farage himself once described his unease at being on a train heading for Kent from Charing Cross and hearing nobody speak English till he was beyond Hither Green. His speech brimmed with talk of liberation and was delivered a few yards from Ivor Robert-Jones’s statue of Winston Churchill.

“This is the greatest moment in the history of our great nation,” he declared, and described a Britain about to become “democratic, independent, self-governing and, I hope, proud. Free from the constraints of the European Union, we will once again be able to find our place in the world”. We would be able to “re-engage with the Commonwealth, with America, with our friends all over the world. It will be a global Britain.”

For several hours Brexiters had been converging on the spot, with their Union flags and hats and Brexit Day badges. Many of the voices were of the old London kind that has spread down the Estuary, returning now to celebrate and crow, though a party of three that boarded an Underground train at Waterloo had accents from the North of England. One was a woman in a motorised wheelchair, her vehicle festooned in red, white and blue tinsel. “Look at that athlete!” enthused one of her male companions fondly, as she bumped aboard the carriage. “Go on, girl!” said a fellow Leaver, posing for photos outside the branch of Greggs at the next stop, Westminster, as she trundled towards the lift that would bear her up to street level.

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Also at Westminster Tube, Jennifer from Brighton, sitting with her son and a beautiful black labrador, said she was there “to spy and infiltrate”. She laments Brexit, “but I hate my smug middle-class friends who think it’s just racists and xenophobes who voted for it”. She’d told her son he was there to witness a moment in history, but says his father, who is German, would be “very upset if he knew I was taking him”. 

With two hours to go, there had been a seething, millenarian atmosphere in the square, with Brexit enthusiasts of every kind. Some seemed to have stepped out of 1970s newsreel footage. A cardboard model Big Ben dinged infernally. There were Brexit platitudes and unexpected personal takes. IT consultant Anthony Clarke from Esher, in a fine Union flag waistcoat, used to work for the European Commission. He said he was shocked by the corruption he encountered when he brought up accounting irregularities. He hopes the future for Britain is joining an alliance of independently trading nations, which he envisages might use a digital currency, a modern equivalent of the Ecu, just for trade.

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Harry Todd (pictured below) had been a national campaign organiser for Leave Means Leave and organised the March to Leave from Sunderland to London. “It was beautiful”, he says, adding that mocking media coverage of the tiny number of marchers wasn’t unfair per se, it just hadn’t accounted for the fact that they would be walking along A-Roads. Todd, a lifelong Conservative, campaigned for Remain in the 2016 referendum, but changed sides because he was infuriated by some Remainers’ lack of respect for democracy. He’s optimistic that there won’t be further rifts between the capital and the rest of the country, because “the silent majority in London understands it was a collective vote as a nation”.

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As the leaving hour neared, there were occasional beery outbreaks of God Save The Queen from little groups of men (literally) wrapped in Union flags making their way down Whitehall from Trafalgar Square. The odd bellow of “Boris!” went up as they passed Downing Street, where a countdown clock was projected on to the front of Number 10. Outside the gates, two defiant Remainers displayed EU favours. A light show played across the front of adjoining Whitehall buildings, switching from red to white to blue.

Paul, a French property manager working in London sees leaving as “culturally ridiculous” when the majority of those working in sectors like hospitality are European. Britain’s relationship with Europe is “a problem of acceptance”, and Brexit is, in part, due to “xenophobia” he thinks. “But you’re also chauvinistic and patriotic”. His companion Selma, French and of mixed heritage, “understands the need to recover identity”, but thinks the economic damage is heinous. “France is similar, but we are so invested in Europe” she says.

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A group outside St Stephen’s Tavern on Bridge Street were none too keen to talk. “Of course I’m a Londoner, where are you from?” said a thin man in glasses and a cap. “You sound like a cunt”. The protest chant of “Whose streets? Our streets!” briefly went up. Yet Frances Kelly from Cranham (below), standing with her husband opposite Downing Street, couldn’t have been a more agreeable poster girl for Brexit. Globalist Leavers tend to be thought of as a turbo-capitalist fringe, but Kelly seems to personify their outlook in daily life, suggesting that the main advantage of Brexit is bringing Britain closer to the rest of the world. “I think we [as a country] care”, she says. “I sometimes think my foreign friends are the best friends I’ve got.” She’d just had dinner at the Lahore curry house with people of all nationalities. She used to live in Barking and goes back there every week because she likes the diversity.

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Back in Parliament Square, the perturbing Neil Horan was predictably on hand, his hand-written placard proclaiming that “Boris Johnson is sent by Christ to get Britain out of the European Union and fulfill (sic) Bible prophecy”. One man, trying to locate a friend, barked into his phone, “You’re by the statue of the terrorist? Nelson Mandela? Fucking terrorist?” But they were the extremes. Paul from Lambeth watched Farage’s arriving car work its way through a mob of supporters. He’s a long-time Labour supporter who defected to the Brexit Party. He despairs of how “Labour has betrayed the working class over the last 20 years” and believes it will be another 20 before they are in power again. Keir Starmer is the only leadership candidate he thinks could stop the rot.

There was compering by radio presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer, an eclectic selection of songs – It’s Not Unusual, Re-Light My Fire, We Are The Champions –  speeches by the Brexit Party’s Richard Tice – longlisted to be the Conservative London Mayor candidates less than two years ago – and Tory MP Peter Bone. Almost everyone in the square was white, though a good number of BME Londoners milled about. For London, that is a novel demographic, but its appearance could be deceptive.

Two young female civil servants, one of mixed race, one Asian, were there as the Brexit deadline passed. Among the group they were with was a smiling Asian guy in a Brexit Party beanie, who unbuttoned his overshirt to show that he wore a Brexit Party T-shirt too. The civil service pair were more ambivalent. One said she’d come to witness “a seismic moment. We wanted to be part of it”. The other thought the big moment was an anti-climax. Both said they were “really wary, in two minds if we should come”. One had walked through a Brexit march a few months ago, where the marchers had matched the aggressive, xenophobic stereotype. But in the square, she had been pleasantly surprised: “There hasn’t been trouble. I haven’t heard anything. It feels like a nice people event – people coming together”.

Earlier, Sadiq Khan had spoken at a reception held at City Hall for what were still at that point fellow EU citizens. He described the moment as one at which to “feel regret” but said tomorrow would be “a new day and an opportunity to build a future in a European image”. People sipped coffee, commiserated, and completed the sentence “I am a Londoner because…” on white “London Is Open” cards provided. “I can meet the world in one place,” said one. “I was born in London, even though my parents are from Poland and Ireland,” said another. Also: “I can get anywhere without needing a car.”

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Outside, the Thames rolled on and Friday night drinkers speaking in many languages spilled out of bars on to the streets of Bankside and Queen’s Walk on a mild January night dampened by rain. At the London branch of US steakhouse chain Smith and Wollensky, Rishi Fernando, a 25-year-old Conservative councillor from Hertfordshire, was holding a celebratory Brexit dinner. “Six months ago people were saying we would never leave the EU” he said. “Now the EU know they have to take us seriously”. One of his guests, St Alban’s councillor and international businesswoman Stella Nash, says her aspiration for Britain is to be part of “a global family, not a tribal family,” with “people being able to talk together and work together for a suitable solution for both”. 

Back at Parliament Square, The Final Countdown played. Clumps of police officers, looking on, appeared relaxed. The Farage Moment was nigh. Alexandra Swann, a young former aide to Farage, thinks he has been smeared as a “Katie Hopkins-esque figure of hate. The Nigel I knew firmly believed in [leaving the EU] for reasons of sovereignty and national freedom. All I ever saw is someone who believes in democracy”. She added that her own feelings have softened from being “ardently pro-Brexit” to acknowledging that for some, departure day was quite a sad thing. 

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Farage himself struck a conciliatory note, at least insofar as he expressed confidence that Boris Johnson would continue doing “all the right things – something I never thought I’d say about a Conservative Party leader”. He declared: “For the first time in history, the people have beaten the establishment, and that we shall celebrate!” Democracy has won tonight!”

At the end, a moustachioed, immaculately dressed gentleman with the air of an armed services veteran made his way along Broad Sanctuary. He was predictably pleased and relieved – “I’ve had enough of being ruled by Germans” – and optimistic that Remain sulking will quieten down. He hopes that in a few years time, “Britain will be making friends all over the world. Boris is a good, charismatic leader, we’ll be fine”. He added: “But I’m biased. I’m Nigel Farage’s father.”

Eleven pre-recorded Big Ben bongs rang out. Leavers began leaving, heading back to their homes in London and beyond towards whatever they hope Britain’s future might bring.

OnLondon.co.uk is dedicated to providing fair, thorough, anti-populist coverage of London’s politics, development and culture. It depends on donations from readers and would like to pay its freelance contributors better. Can you spare £5 (or more) a month? Follow this link if you would like to help. Thank you.

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: Boris Johnson, Brexit, Brexit Party, Bridge Street, Broad Sanctuary, Conservatives, European Union, Nigel Farage, Parliament Square, Peter Bone, Queen's Walk, Richard Tice, Sadiq Khan, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall

Dave Hill: Brexit Britain might not like London, but will need it more than ever now

The capital represents much that some Leave voters despise, but without it their nation would flail
Dave Hill

Brexit night has fallen and it just wouldn’t be British not to stoically declare that I can’t see much good coming of it, but I suppose we’d better try to muddle through. At this point, with the true implications of departing the European Union still unknown, I find myself feeling more puzzled than alarmed. Does anyone really know what is going to happen next? Will it be weird living in a quite large Hackney household in which, suddenly, only one of its members will continue to be a European citizen, by virtue of having an Irish passport since her birth?

I do not expect calamity to crush the capital or even Stockport overnight, but I do have a hunch that the withdrawal honeymoon might be over pretty soon. Greater London, of course, voted by 60 per cent to 40 to Remain, but 40 per cent is a big minority and it seems fair to assume those fellow Londoners will hope their lives are going to get better without “Brussels on our backs” rather than worse. Maybe just feeling that way will be enough.

How apprehensive for them is it apt to be? Those Londoners who picked Leave did so for an array of reasons, only some of which might be thought sinister. That said, there are people in this city, just as there are elsewhere in the UK, who honestly believe that as soon as Brexit is “done”, all the apples will be Cox’s orange pippins, all the Muslims will be sent “home” – led, of course, by Sadiq Khan – and Britain will return to a blissful, tranquil, simple normality that’s been disastrously and repeatedly betrayed since even before Winston Churchill died. Some of them might end up extremely disappointed. Let us hope things do not turn too ugly.

Meanwhile, we can probably expect the nation’s economy to creak – that “scratchy period”, theorised by Boris Johnson when he was London Mayor – and that, just as during the world financial crisis 12 years ago, London’s famously resilient economy will take the strain.

The irony that Remain City, with its polyglot clamour and “metropolitan elite” and all the other things poor old Nigel Farage can’t abide, may become still more essential to Leave Nation as a provider of jobs and exporter of taxes, seems unlikely to be widely appreciated let alone ruefully reflected on. Perhaps, though, it won’t escape the present occupant of Number 10 Downing Street, who flew the Londonist flag with such gusto when he was boss of City Hall. Surely he knows as well anyone that when he used to proclaim that if London does well the whole country does well too, he spoke the truth. Surely he also knows that “levelling up” Britain is simply not compatible with doing London down, at least the ways things are for now.

Many of those for whom 11:00 pm on 31 January 2020 will forever be the start of taking back control of whatever they feel they’ve been deprived of all this time might not appreciate, as the Prime Minister might, that the West End and the Square Mile, both lying a short walk from the Palace of Westminster, pump out around six per cent of the entire nation’s wealth between them, thanks largely to a load of foreigners.

They will have to make a few adjustments. We Remainers will too. Perhaps my imagination is in overdrive, but I keep seeing signs of a general groping in the gloom for some type of new normal that has yet to fully form. I’m not going to get worked up about BBC London’s decision to use a bulldog as its backdrop to TV news items about Brexit, but it does prompt double takes to see it lurking there behind Riz Lateef. I wish I had been a fly on the wall when the choice of that canine symbol was approved.

And so an era comes to an end in the World City of the 2012 Olympics and new and uneasy one begins. If one thing is for sure it is that although Brexit Britain might not care for London and what it represents to them, it’s going to need its capital city more than ever in the months and years and probably decades to come.

Photograph from Parliament Square by Sheila Fitzsimons.

OnLondon.co.uk is dedicated to providing fair, thorough, anti-populist coverage of London’s politics, development and culture. It depends on donations from readers and would like to pay its freelance contributors better. Can you spare £5 (or more) a month? Follow this link if you would like to help. Thank you.

 

 

 

Categories: Comment
Tags: BBC London News, Boris Johnson, Brexit, European Union, Muslims, Nigel Farage, Riz Lateef, Sadiq Khan

Charles Wright: The row about Silvertown Tunnel is far from over

Environmental campaigners, supported by two London Mayor candidates, are stepping up their opposition to a planned new road tunnel backed by Sadiq Khan
Charles Wright

Sadiq Khan’s £1 billion Silvertown road tunnel plan may not be on everyone’s radar yet, but that’s likely to change as this year’s mayoral election campaigning gets underway.

The controversial Transport for London scheme, a new 1.4 kilometre tunnel taking four lanes of traffic under the Thames from Silvertown by the Royal Docks on the north bank of the river to the A102 on the Greenwich peninsula, is designed to tackle congestion at the nearby Blackwall Tunnel, one of the busiest routes in the capital.

For TfL, with major new developments underway in the area and congestion as well as air quality around the Blackwall predicted to get worse, the new tunnel will provide a “more reliable crossing, ensuring goods and services can continue to move around London”. New buses on dedicated bus and goods vehicle lanes are promised, with user charges on both the new tunnel and the existing one regulating traffic volumes.

But for the growing body of objectors to the scheme, including mayoral candidates Sian Berry from the Green Party and Liberal Democrat Siobhan Benita as well as Newham, Lewisham and Hackney councils, local headteachers, clean air campaigners and academics, it’s a “20th century solution”, out of step with current climate emergency challenges.

King’s College London professor Frank Kelly, whose research underpinned Khan’s ultra-low emission zone, put the case succinctly in a letter to the Mayor last year: “When we have a new road or tunnel link built, it’s basically filled up with traffic…by providing more provision for cars it’s moving in the wrong direction for the future of London.” 

The scheme dates back to Boris Johnson’s tenure, amid concern about growing congestion at Blackwall, which has in use since 1897 northbound, and had its southbound bore added in 1967. The plan was designated a “nationally significant infrastructure project” in 2012, making the secretary of state for transport the final decision-maker.

By April 2016, TfL was ready to submit its application to build the new tunnel. It recognised that this was an “uncommon approach” – there had been no new investment in road capacity in the capital since the 1960s. But “only a new road crossing at this location can address the ongoing and severe problems of congestion, closures and a lack of resilience at the Blackwall Tunnel: measures to improve the situation without adding capacity will not by themselves suffice,” the transport body argued. 

Crucially, as well as paying for construction costs, user charges for both tunnels would be used to manage demand – keeping vehicle numbers down both to alleviate congestion and mitigate air pollution, TfL said. Sadiq Khan signed off the application early in his term, adding extra measures to “mitigate potential air quality impacts” – new bus routes through the tunnel, a possible bus shuttle to carry cyclists and their bikes, and additional pedestrian and cycling improvements around tunnel entrances.

The then transport secretary Chris Grayling approved the scheme in May 2018 after a six-month public inquiry. Measures addressing pollution concerns, including varying user charges to reduce traffic flow, meant that despite some “localised impacts” the scheme would overall “have a beneficial impact on air quality”, he said. Contracts were signed in November last year, with the tunnel set to open in 2025.

While the government green light saw the formal winding up of the resident-led No to Silvertown Tunnel campaign, which fought the plans at the public inquiry, the arguments haven’t gone away. In fact, as the campaign says in its final website post, “the climate emergency has now come to the fore as a reason to cancel the scheme in a way that it never did in the hearings”.

Campaigners in a new Stop the Silvertown Tunnel coalition are vigorously targeting mayoral and London Assembly candidates, not least through active tweeting directed primarily at what the tunnel’s opponents see as “hypocrisy” on the part of the Mayor.

Says campaign coordinator Victoria Rance: “A lot of people still don’t know about the tunnel. We want it to be a major issue in the mayoral election campaign. It’s such a horrendous blight for the future – at the same time as all these councillors are going to conferences about climate emergency and carbon emissions.”

The campaign continues to challenge the scheme’s assumptions – that the project is the only way to tackle the Blackwall Tunnel bottleneck, and that congestion can be managed and air pollution controlled through tolling – as well as the new tunnel’s inclusion within the planned wider ultra-low emission zone.

It has a firm champion in Sian Berry. “Sadiq Khan has signed off an urban motorway tunnel, bringing potentially-fatal levels of particulate pollution from heavy traffic right to Londoners’ doorsteps,” the Green mayoral hopeful told On London. “He claims this road tunnel, which prioritises HGVs, will improve air quality. But the reality is it will simply funnel pollution elsewhere while the hotchpotch charging scheme, like the timid ULEZ scheme, fails to cut traffic overall.”

The argument goes wider too. “You cannot build yourself out of congestion. Yet the Silvertown Tunnel is trying to do just that,” according to Hackney councillor Jon Burke, who has led that borough’s action on climate change. The borough last year urged Khan to scrap the scheme, arguing it was a “20th century solution completely unfit for the environmental challenges London is facing”, that would “induce even greater demand for motor vehicle use in Central London, worsen air quality, and embed decades of greenhouse gas emissions into London’s transport system.” 

But Khan is sticking to his guns: “I am committed to reducing car dominance, improving air quality and addressing climate change. The current situation at the Blackwall Tunnel cannot continue, as it fundamentally undermines these goals,” he said in a letter to campaigners late last year.

The Mayor continues to put climate change centre stage in his bid for a second term, recently announcing a “green new deal” for the capital alongside a carbon neutral by 2030 pledge for the capital. As mayoral campaigns heat up, the Silvertown protestors will be making sure his record does not go unscrutinised.

OnLondon.co.uk is dedicated to providing fair, thorough, anti-populist coverage of London’s politics, development and culture. It depends on donations from readers and would like to pay its freelance contributors better. Can you spare £5 (or more) a month? Follow this link if you would like to help. Thank you.

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: air quality, Blackwall Tunnel, Boris Johnson, buses, Chris Grayling, climate change, Frank Kelly, Greenwich Council, Jon Burke, King's College, Lewisham Council, Liberal Democrats, Newham Council, pollution, River Thames, Royal Docks, Sadiq Khan, Sian Berry, Silvertown, Silvertown Tunnel, Siobhan Benita, transport, ultra low emission zone, Victoria Rance