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Dave Hill: We might have to accept that Starmer won’t be London’s friend

The Labour leader surely knows he can't restore a broken country without strengthening its capital, but his priorities appear to lie elsewhere
Dave Hill

Keir Starmer’s response to Labour falling short of winning the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election was infuriating and depressing. Rather than recognise that his party had taken a large step towards gaining a historically stubbornly Conservative seat despite facing a single-issue scare story candidate who mobilised just enough core support in a low turnout contest to cling on, the Labour leader and his deputy Angela Rayner decided to use this very local disappointment as an opportunity to give London’s double election-winning Labour Mayor a national telling-off.

Their public interpretation of the result as purely a repudiation of Sadiq Khan’s plan – that of a Labour Mayor, not a Labour Party in opposition – to further expand London’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) to the whole of Greater London has also raised concerns about what a Labour government would be like, including suspicions that Starmer is backing ever further away from his green policy agenda and Jack Brown’s fear that he is going cold on devolution.

You have to wonder, too, whether Starmer has been tactically shrewd. He has excited political journalists, always thirsty for splits, by creating a public rift with Khan. Today’s headlines are full of it. Surely, this could have been avoided. Would it have been so hard to have said that gaining Uxbridge  was never going to be easy, unusual circumstances applied, the ULEZ policy is the Mayor’s for the whole of Greater London, it will directly affect only a small minority of motorists, and hostility to it will fade – all of which would have been true.

Instead, he has flapped, flip-flopped – what happened to the it’s-a legal-requirement line he took during the campaign? – and hacked off the wrong sorts of people. It’s his job to alienate Corbynites, that bovine barrier to a Labour government. It’s not so clever to pick fights with soft left progressives who’ve twice attracted more than a million votes.

Starmer has been rightly assiduous in avoiding handing his Conservative opponents ammunition to fire at him. And maybe he thought that by rebuking Khan he would reassure the voters he most needs in the seats he most needs to win. But if so, any advantage he might have secured by doing so looks outweighed by the furore he’s inflamed. He has set running a media hare that could keep going until next May, with Conservatives cheering it on.

So much for making a decent advance look like a bad defeat. What does Starmer’s stance post-Uxbridge tell us about his attitude to London as a city? Jack’s devolution point is well made: the MP for Holborn and St Pancras has moved a long way since the days when he talked about “a federal UK” and handing regional authorities more power.

Labour’s report about constitutional change, published in December, recommended “empowering Mayors”, yet recycled a string of tired, missing-the-point northern grievance tropes about London getting more than its fair share. Now, the one-time advocate of Whitehall giving more power to Mayors has turned on the Mayor of the UK capital for his use of the limited powers he has.

London has endured four years of Conservative government micromanagement from on high – an onslaught of spite, stupidity and “levelling up” posturing that has harmed the city whose economy the whole country depends on. We now have to contemplate the possibility that a Prime Minister Starmer would be just as bad.

Again, in most respects, the Labour leader’s overall caution and insistence on message discipline make sense. To adapt two old adages, why interrupt your enemy when it is destroying itself, and why risk dropping a Ming vase as you nurse it across a slippery floor?

But as well as abandoning the first one, Starmer’s centre stage panic over Uxbridge hints at a broader anxiety about being linked by the Tories and in the public mind with a London of the populist imagination they and he know some voters dislike: that fantasy London simultaneously composed of “metropolitan elite” professionals out of touch with normal life and rampantly “lawless” un-Britishness.

Rishi Sunak’s “north London lawyer” jibes may be preposterous coming from a Kensington mansion-dwelling multi-millionaire, but he uses them for a reason. You can see how he might relish painting Starmer as a “soft on ULEZ” down south trendy in the eyes of car-dependent residents of the red wall.

Polling tells us that many voters don’t know what Starmer stands for and find him dull, but that might not matter if the Tories keep on sinking all by themselves. Should the Opposition leader decide it would help him to stir a bit of breast-beating, patriotic excitement, he has the option of joining with Mayor Khan to make Britain’s already world-beating capital even more of a trailblazer, enhancing its environment and boosting its growth by giving City Hall greater powers. The golden goose could lay even more golden eggs for the whole country to share.

It doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen. We might have to accept that, just like the Conservatives, Keir Starmer doesn’t want to be London’s friend.

Twitter: Dave Hill and On London. If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to Dave’s Substack.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Devolution, Keir Starmer, Sadiq Khan, ultra low emission zone, Uxbridge & South Ruislip

Jack Brown: Starmer’s response to the Uxbridge result was wrong in more ways than one

Labour's leader overstated the significance of ULEZ expansion and in a manner that deepens concerns about his attitude to devolution
Jack Brown

Much has already been written and said about the result of the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election, most of it focused on the impact of the upcoming expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone. This could be bad news for Sadiq Khan, but not necessarily for the reason you might expect.

Both Labour and Conservative politicians claimed the result proves the policy is a vote loser. Angela Rayner said it showed the pitfalls of not “listening to voters”. Sir Keir Starmer has urged the Mayor to “reflect” on the policy. Government minister Grant Shapps believes it proves the Conservatives can win in London, and Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall believes opposing ULEZ expansion will be key to winning next year’s race for City Hall. For his part, Khan remains committed to his pledge.

But saying the ULEZ expansion plan produced a bad result for Labour is itself open to question. And Labour’s rebukes of the capital’s Labour Mayor could point to wider ramifications for London and the future of its devolved government.

Let’s look at what actually happened in Thursday’s trio of parliamentary by-elections. The governing Conservatives did terribly elsewhere and less terribly in Uxbridge & South Ruislip. A swing of 6.7 percent was not enough for a Labour victory there, but although the Tories clung on to the seat, their previous majority of 7,210 was reduced to just 495. They clung on rather than winning decisively.

The issue of ULEZ expansion clearly played a part in their survival. It was central to their campaign, and newly-elected MP Steve Tuckwell’s victory speech cited it as the main reason for his success.

But there are important caveats. Labour candidate Danny Beales also adopted an anti-expansion stance, so this was not quite a straightforward matter of “the Conservatives versus the ULEZ”. Dedicated anti-ULEZ independents ran, but accumulated just a handful of votes between them. And Tuckwell was a solid local candidate who ran a campaign almost entirely devoid of mentions of national issues. He should get some personal credit too.

There is also the political character of the area to consider. The last Labour parliamentary victory in a seat containing Uxbridge was in 1966. Lewis Baston’s excellent preview analysis of the current constituency showed that it might be difficult for Labour to take this time.

That this was former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s seat may have influenced the result in unusual ways. Turnout was low, at 46 per cent. The group of oddballs that tend to compete in any election garnering national coverage stood. From the sometimes-amusing Count Binface to the frankly quite dull Laurence Fox, those candidates won collectively over a thousand votes. Under other circumstances, they might have been cast differently and even changed the final result.

So was this really a single-issue election whose outcome damned the ULEZ expansion irrevocably? Or could it be the case that we saw a local campaign resulting in traditional Conservative voters continuing to vote Conservative, albeit in smaller numbers than previously? The Labour candidate attracted nearly 5,000 fewer votes than in 2019, but the Conservative lost more than double that amount.

None of this is to say that ULEZ was not a significant factor, just that it would be a mistake to assume from the Uxbridge & South Ruislip outcome that hammering ULEZ is, in and of itself, a guaranteed route to Conservative victory.

Sadiq Khan may actually view today as a good day. He and his team have surely calculated that ULEZ expansion will not be unpopular with Londoners as a whole when it comes to his election day in May, and that when it comes into effect on 29 August – barring a successful legal challenge – it will directly affect so few vehicles, and therefore voters, that things can only calm down as time goes by. He is also right that most of the poorest Londoners do not own cars at all. Additionally, those it will affect will disproportionately also be those unlikely to vote for him anyway.

But there is also a reason for Khan to worry. Labour’s national leadership seems to have accepted the view that this policy is a vote loser. Senior party figures have either claimed that a better scrappage scheme is needed, or that it is simply “not the time” for such a policy. And their suggestion that Khan is not listening to voters is alarming.

The Labour Mayor and the Labour leadership have different interests in the issue. Khan would argue that his policy shows he has been listening very closely to his electorate of Londoners as a whole. Starmer and his team have the different priority of gaining individual parliamentary seats all over the country, notably including Tory marginals in outer London which the ULEZ is set to encompass.

But more fundamentally worryingly for London is the wider context in which Starmer’s and Rayner’s comments were made. Labour’s national leadership is reportedly increasingly uncomfortable with devolution. With polling consistently suggesting a Labour government is on its way, Khan has warmly anticipated working with a Starmer national administration should he win a third term as Mayor. But Starmer’s remarks about the ULEZ suggest he might have to adjust to a new reality.

The Labour leader and his team are said to be concerned about the autonomy and lack of message discipline Labour’s big city Mayors enjoy. Despite early commitments to further devolution, the party in government looks as if it may well lean away from increasing the autonomy of Mayors and towards reigning it in instead. That would be a mistake, for capital and country alike.

Jack Brown is is lecturer in London Studies at King’s College and author of The London Problem. Twitter: Jack Brown and On London. If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to editor and publisher Dave Hill’s Substack.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Danny Beales, Devolution, Keir Starmer, Sadiq Khan, Steve Tuckwell, ultra low emission zone, Uxbridge & South Ruislip

Uxbridge: Tory ‘ULEZ referendum’ ploy pays off as Labour falls short in by-election

Conservative Steve Tuckwell has confounded predictions to hang on in Boris Johnson's former seat
Dave Hill

The Conservatives have held off Labour in the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election, vindicating their strategy of framing the contest as a referendum on Sadiq Khan’s planned expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) and demonstrating again the area’s historic reluctance to change its political colour.

The seat vacated by Boris Johnson after the Commons privileges committee found he had deliberately misled parliament had looked there for the taking by Labour’s Danny Beales, even though he needing to overturn a substantial 7,200 majority.

Yet even as Labour was climbing a far higher mountain to win Selby & Ainsty in North Yorkshire, local Tory councillor Steve Tuckwell retained the outer west London seat by a margin of 495 votes despite an anti-Tory swing of 7.5 per cent.

Both Tuckwell and Labour’s shadow justice secretary Steve Reed, the MP for Croydon North, said the ULEZ expansion plan had been central to the outcome. Tuckwell said in his victory speech that “Sadiq Khan has lost Labour this election” with his “damaging and costly ULEZ policy”, and Reed told the PA news agency it was clear that a lot of people “didn’t like the fact that ULEZ was going to cost people more to drive around at a time when there’s a cost of living crisis going on.”

The result also has echoes of previous Labour failures to capture Uxbridge, including at a 1997 by-election held shortly after Tony Blair’s landslide general election earlier that year. Previewing the by-election for On London last month, elections expert Lewis Baston noted the resilience of the Tory vote in last year’s Hillingdon Council elections and a core support in Uxbridge & South Ruislip that has been relatively little eroded by demographic changes in the area.

The salience of ULEZ is incongruous in the sense that vehicle registration trends in the area analysed by Transport for London suggest that close to 90 per cent of cars in the borough of Hillingdon as a whole comply with ULEZ standards, while 20 per cent of its households don’t have a car at all. The compliance rate for vans is much lower – though also probably rising, in 2022 it was only 58 per cent – but the number of such vehicles is much smaller.

Even so, the Uxbridge & South Ruislip result has shown the policy to have a formidable power to mobilise voters, which will encourage Susan Hall, the newly-selected Conservative candidate for London Mayor.

Congratulating Tuckwell on Twitter, Hall added, “Now we fight for the mayoralty”, and in an early morning statement, “Sadiq Khan and his disastrous ULEZ expansion have got to go. Next May, voters can make that happen and choose a better, brighter future for our city.”

The expansion is due to take effect from 29 August, some eight months before the election for London Mayor on 2 May, which might take the heat out of the issue. However, a legal challenge by five local authorities, including Hillingdon, could force a delay. A decision is expected by the end of this month.

Opinion polls about the ULEZ have indicated that Londoners favour the policy on the whole, but, especially in outer areas, have misgivings about Khan intending to enlarge it to cover the entirety of Greater London.

Steve Tuckwell was the man chosen to repair the damage done by  former Mayor and ex-Prime Minister Johnson, and he has done so – narrowly but triumphantly.

Twitter: Dave Hill and On London. If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to Dave’s Substack.

Categories: News
Tags: Conservativates, Labour, Steve Tuckwell, ultra low emission zone, Uxbridge & South Ruislip

Sadiq Khan and Tory rival Susan Hall clash over Met crime statistics

The Mayor and his Conservative challenger for City Hall traded figures and more at today's Mayor's Question Time
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan warned today of a summer of increasing violent crime, particularly among young people, fuelled by “unprecedented levels of economic hardship” in the capital.

Speaking at this month’s London Assembly Mayor’s Question Time session, Khan said that growing financial pressures on Londoners could reverse progress on tackling violence, and announced that he was calling on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to provide emergency funding to keep young people away from crime.

Citing recent polling reporting that more than half of Londoners were financially struggling or “just about managing”, Khan said extra cash was urgently needed for diversionary schemes during the school holidays. “With the cost of living crisis getting worse week on week, I am concerned about this summer,” he said. “That is why I’ve written to the PM.”

The session also saw Khan clash with Assembly member Susan Hall, his newly-selected Conservative opponent at next year’s mayoral election, over crime figures in the capital, offering a foretaste of a key campaigning issue for Hall, who pitched for the candidacy using the slogan “Safer with Susan”.

“Crime has been increasing in London,” Hall  said, quoting Scotland Yard statistics showing that over a million crimes of all types were recorded by the Metropolitan Police during the 12 months to the end of June.

Khan had his own take on the Met figures, comparing the year to June 2023 with the equivalent pre-pandemic period to show that burglary, robbery, vehicle crime, knife and gun crime and murder rates were all down compared with 2019/20.

And the Mayor highlighted Met Commissioner Mark Rowley’s “New Met for London” plans, announced this week, which include a boost to neighbourhood and town centre policing across the capital, with an additional 1,300 warranted officers patrolling locally and 500 more police community support officers.

While police numbers were now at record levels, Khan added, London’s population was growing too, meaning that the current 3.7 officers per 1,000 residents is below the figure of 4.1 per 1,000 in 2010, the year the Conservative-led coalition government was elected and began cutting police funding. Those have meant “police have one hand tied behind their backs,” he said, adding, with another likely campaigning line, that “it is only because of our economic competence over the last seven years that we can invest in more police officers”.

Khan also leant his weight to growing pleas for government action on homelessness in the capital, calling for the recently announced moratorium on mortgage repossessions to be extended to two years, and repeating his demand for new powers to freeze and regulate private rents.

“The affordability crisis in the private rented sector is already leading to extremely troubling homelessness figures,” he said, backing the campaign to increase local housing allowance (LHA) benefit levels, which currently cover the full rent of fewer than three per cent of properties available in the sector.

“LHA rates are out of touch with the private rental market in 2023, and the bad news is that things are getting worse not better,” he added. “The government must act urgently. They need to step up and help families like they did during the pandemic. There is no reason they can’t do the same.”

With increasing concern that the government’s Rental (Reform) Bill, outlawing so-called “no fault” evictions of private tenants and increasing regulation in a sector which houses 2.7 million Londoners, could miss out on parliamentary time, the Mayor also announced that he was seeking a meeting with communities secretary Michael Gove to impress on him the need for action.

Today’s Mayor’s Question Time can be viewed in full here. Twitter: Twitter: Charles Wright and On London. If you value On London, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to publisher and editor Dave Hill’s Substack. Thanks.

Categories: News
Tags: crime, housing, local housing allowance, London Assembly, London Mayor election 2024, Mayor's Question Time, Metropolitan Police, policing, private rented housing, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall

Luke Raikes: Forget the ‘north-south divide’, regions must reduce poverty together

The final report of a Fabian Society commission argues that different parts of the country should make greater devolution their common cause
Luke Raikes

The “north-south divide” looms large in our national conversation. It describes a sense, for us northerners, that our region hasn’t been given a fair shot at success. But the regions with the highest working-age poverty, after housing costs, are the west midlands, the north east – and London. So, clearly there is more going on than a simple north-south divide. And when we look at the full picture, we find a reason to bridge our regional divides, not deepen them.

Last week, the Fabian Society published the final report of our Commission on Poverty and Regional Inequality. In A Good Life in all Regions, we focus on what we have in common: a desire to tackle poverty and improve living standards in all our regions. Our commissioners came from across England – from London, Newcastle, Manchester and Cornwall.

Our starting point was simple: to acknowledge that the UK doesn’t have just one regional economic problem, but two. Firstly, low growth in many parts of the country. Secondly, overheating in London and the south east. Neither is acceptable. Both result in poverty. They must be tackled together.

The first regional problem is real, severe and avoidable. We have a major problem of low economic growth and poor job opportunities that stretches from Cornwall, across a swathe of the Midlands, to the North, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The problem also affects coastal communities in the east and south east. Successive in-depth analyses have shown the UK to be the most regionally unequal country in the developed world.

This is incontrovertible. And it is fair to say most Londoners recognise the challenge: our survey found that respondents in the capital were twice as likely to say regional inequality has a negative impact on the economy of the country as a whole (54 per cent) than a positive impact (22 per cent).

The second regional problem is also real, severe and avoidable – the overheating faced by London and the south east. The concentration of economic activity in a small corner of the capital doesn’t benefit many Londoners, and comes at a price they will be well aware of: spiralling housing costs, which pull one million in the capital below the poverty line.

Again, this is incontrovertible. But it is rarely incorporated into a complete picture of regional inequality. It can be hard for those of us outside of London to look beyond its very conspicuous prosperity to the reality of people’s everyday lives. But we must.

Crucially, one problem doesn’t negate the other: we must avoid the trap of implying that the low growth problem is less important because Londoners are poor too. And neither should we suggest that London’s poverty is somehow less important because the rest of the country has a low growth problem. Instead of pitting these truths against one another, we should acknowledge them both and try and find common cause.

That common cause will come in taking power down from central government into the regions and nations where it can be exercised in the interests of the people living there – for example, by investing in new social housing, sustaining vital bus services, or ensuring childcare is available locally.

To solve these problems, we also have to tackle the ingrained idea that only London – and perhaps Manchester and Birmingham too – can grow. In fact, the evidence shows there are a range of different assets which places offer to an economy, including but not limited to the agglomeration effects that cities produce. Actually, places close to cities, more than the cities themselves, show some of the greatest potential – places such as Cheshire or the M4 corridor. Because, in reality, towns and cities work together, and they need to do so more effectively if the UK is to prosper in the future.

Some of our leaders have explicitly recognised the need to move forward. Responding to our commission, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said: “Devolution will be crucial to increasing prosperity, whether you live in London, Sheffield or the Wirral.” And Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said: “It is critical that national, regional and local government continue to work together to extend and expand devolution across the whole of England.”

Hopefully this is the start of things to come. If all the regions and nations of the UK have more power in future, then perhaps they’ll use it to work together for the common good.

Luke Raikes is research director at the Fabian Society. Follow Luke on Twitter. Photograph from the cover of A Good Life in all Regions, written by Luke Raikes and Ben Cooper. 

If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to publisher and editor Dave Hill’s Substack.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Andy Burnham, Devolution, Fabian Society, poverty, Sadiq Khan

Dave Hill: Does Susan Hall have any chance of defeating Sadiq Khan?

There could be a narrow path to victory, but the Conservative candidate may struggle not to be her own worst enemy
Dave Hill

For ten years and more the Conservative party, which regards itself with some statistical justice to be the natural custodian of national government, has treated the nation’s capital as its unnatural foe.

As Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, a former two-term Mayor of the city, helped cement his reputation for opportunism and duplicity by feeding anti-London sentiment with “levelling up” signals, as his courtiers and cronies eroded the autonomy of his Labour successor at City Hall. The word “London” has been deployed much as a metaphor for things today’s Conservatives dislike.

But the roots of the Tories’ London problem go much deeper. At successive sets of elections – general, GLA and local – their few notable wins, including Johnson’s second mayoral triumph in 2012, have been isolated novelties amid a sustained swing towards Labour and others. At last year’s borough elections their share of seats fell to just 22 per cent compared with Labour’s 63. The most recent poll of Londoners’ general election voting intentions put Labour a gigantic 40 points ahead of them.

All the while, the pleas of a handful of realists for the party in London to find a distinctive voice with which to speak to the capital’s millions of voters – a voice more attuned to the majority of Londoners’ values, beliefs and desires – have gone unheeded. And now they’ve ended up with Susan Hall as their candidate for the next London Mayor election, scheduled for 2 May next year.

Screenshot 2023 07 18 at 21.09.47

Let us begin with the formidable list of glaring, screaming, bellowing reasons why Hall’s selection, with 57 per cent of votes cast, looks disastrous for the Tories. Hall is nothing if not direct with her opinions. Past offerings on social media and elsewhere include egging on Donald Trump in his attacks on Sadiq Khan for the purpose of riling up his core support in the US. Right up until she decided to seek her party’s mayoral nomination just a few weeks ago, Hall’s main Twitter profile photo was of herself standing with Johnson, whom she continued to speak up for throughout the partygate scandal and beyond, even after his own MPs had dumped him.

A staunch backer of Brexit, Hall appears frequently on right wing television channels Talk TV and GB News, where she and like-minded programme hosts agree to heartily agree that Sadiq Khan is rubbish. When she was placed on the original Tory shortlist of three, GB News presenter Dan Wootton congratulated her on Twitter, embellishing his tweet with two union jacks. Yesterday, Hall hailed Wootton’s return to his show following a break, only to delete the tweet soon after.

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That hurried row-back might not have been unrelated to the very adjacent publication of a story about Wootton by Byline Times that does little to enhance his reputation. As for Trump, having encouraged his supporters in their violent insurrection, he is now charged with serious criminal offences. To beat Khan, Hall will need to reach well beyond the shrinking London Tory base. It won’t help her that she has flattered so incautiously.

Hall styles herself a plain-speaking “common sense” politician, which is a retail way of saying she is firmly on her party’s populist hard right. She occupies the same ideological space as prominent national Tories such as her predecessor on the London Assembly Kemi Badenoch, Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Conservative deputy chairman Lee Anderson. In the past, she has told a former UKIP councillor and deputy chair “we agree on most things“.

How did the Tories get themselves into this position? The received wisdom remains that minister for London Paul Scully was left off the shortlist because the party’s high command deemed his service in that role under PM Johnson tainted him beyond salvation. Yet, having also preferred a tech entrepreneur who had to drop out after a past alleged incident predictably came back to haunt him and an unknown barrister who comes across as a bit weird, they’ve ended up with a “Boris” apologist. What is going on inside their heads?

Does a politician of Hall’s leanings have a cat’s chance in hell of getting elected to City Hall? Judicious friends wryly suggested I headlined this piece “Hall selected, Khan rejoices” or even “Khan to win third term”. And, fair enough, another win for the Labour incumbent looks on the cards. Even if Voter ID and the government’s imposition of the First Past the Post system on the mayoral election assist the Tory cause, as the latter in particular looks likely to, can Hall hope to overcome such giant odds?

Not everything is stacked against her. Redfield & Wilton’s recent poll found that Khan’s lead over a then-theoretical Tory opponent was substantial but not enormous, and that 17 per cent of those who gave him their first preference vote in 2021 were either undecided about him now (10 per cent) or intended to vote Tory (seven per cent). Some will simply be bored with him after eight years. Some, like national journalists who haven’t been paying attention, will ask, rhetorically, “what’s he actually done?”

Hall’s targets will be clear and amenable to trenchant messaging: transport, especially roads and curbs on private motorists; crime and policing, where she will blast Khan’s record and promise to be “tough”; and housing, where she will rail against tower blocks and call for low-rise family homes instead. And it’s important to remember that although London is triumphantly liberal in its human variety, many Londoners are conservative on social issues, perhaps making them receptive to a culture war narrative against “woke” – something else that greatly exercises Hall. Even on Brexit, a hefty minority of Londoners – 40 per cent – voted leave.

We can expect Hall to be direct, abrasive and, with the help of Khan’s planned expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone, perhaps to try to revive the “doughnut strategy” of speaking to outer London grievances that helped Johnson beat Ken Livingstone in 2008. She will make the most of being a woman and potentially the capital’s first female Mayor. She might end up doing better than current evidence suggests she will.

Doughnut country, though, is not as Tory as it was. Even borough strongholds like Bromley have seen threatening incursions by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Greater London’s own “blue wall” has weakened. On the face of it at least, Hall is the type of Tory least likely to rebuild it.

Twitter: Dave Hill and On London. If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to Dave’s Substack.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Conservatives, London Mayor election 2024, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall

Diana Beech: It’s official – London remains the best city in the world to be a student

Its range of universities and its international character make the capital's attractions unbeatable
Diana Beech

For the fifth year in a row London has been crowned the world’s best student city, shaking off stiff competition from the likes of Tokyo, Melbourne and Berlin.

With an impressive collection of 50 world-leading universities and higher education colleges, the capital offers students from around the globe an unrivalled choice of study options and an exceptional academic experience.

As well as being home to two of the four UK universities in the 2024 QS Global Top 10, plus many other large, multi-faculty universities offering first-rate, industry-facing training, London also boasts an unparalleled array of top-ranking small, specialist institutions – each offering a variety of courses across the performing arts, creative industries and even scientific research.

The opportunity to study in any one of London’s world renowned higher education centres  guarantees students a high-quality higher education and opens doors to a vast network of influential scholars, industry professionals and potential employers.

With this year’s school-leavers due to receive results for their A-level and equivalent qualifications next month, this news of London’s successes could not be better timed, especially for applicants looking to change or amend their study options as part of the 2023 UCAS Clearing process. This offers all of them the opportunity to release themselves from their firm offer of a university place and seek a different one somewhere else if they have the required grades and meet other criteria.

Earlier this week, the government announced plans to restrict recruitment to university courses that are not delivering good outcomes for students, based on employment prospects and future earnings. Today’s accolade for London’s higher education sector nevertheless suggests that the “Class of 23” would do well to consider any one of London’s higher education institutions among their summer clearing options.

After all, we already know that many of the top-ranking institutions for social mobility in the country are the less selective universities located in London – in fact 17 of the top 20! We also know that London’s students are more satisfied with their higher education experience than  counterparts anywhere else in England.

It’s easy to see why. Firstly, London’s diverse population attracts individuals from every corner of the world. Its multicultural environment offers students unique opportunities for interacting with people from a wide range of backgrounds, sharing ideas, perspectives and experiences. In turn, this exposure to different cultures fosters an appreciation for global diversity and enhances students’ intercultural competence – a crucial skill that is increasingly valued by employers in today’s interconnected world.

Secondly, London offers students a plethora of social activities, including live music events, film festivals, comedy shows and food markets from around the world. Students can explore London’s different neighbourhoods, make lifelong friendships and create memories that will last a lifetime, while on campus they can immerse themselves in intellectual environments that cultivate critical thinking, creativity and a thirst for knowledge, and inspire them to reach their full potential.

London’s universities power London and are powered by it in equal measure. It is London’s status as a hub for finance, technology, the arts, fashion and more that offers students unparalleled career opportunities across these various industries.

At the same time, London’s universities further enhance these sectors’ footprints in the capital, be it through their research and innovation activities, their ability to bring ideas to market through spin-outs and support for entrepreneurs, or their nurturing of the next generation of talent. Earlier this week, a  vice chancellor of the Royal College of Art described this “mutually beneficial ecosystem” perfectly.

The capital’s universities do employability exceptionally well, and students across London can benefit from internships, work placements, and networking events that facilitate connections with industry professionals. The proximity of London’s institutions to major companies and startups provides students with a competitive advantage, allowing them to gain practical experience and kick-start their careers.

It is no wonder, then, that countless students from all parts of the globe continue to choose London as their educational home. It is a city that captures hearts and fuels ambitions. And for as long as we keep London ahead of the pack and retain its title as the world’s best city in which to be a student, the longer it can fuel growth and opportunity for the entire nation.

Diana Beech is chief executive of London Higher. Follow her on Twitter.

If you value On London, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to publisher and editor Dave Hill’s Substack. Thanks.

Categories: Comment
Tags: education, higher education, London Higher

London parliamentarians told homelessness services ‘close to collapse’

Dramatic shrinkage in the private rented sector post-Covid is making a desperate situation even worse
Charles Wright

London’s councillors and housing chiefs took their calls for action on homelessness in the capital to parliament this week, alongside tenant campaigners urging proposed private renting reforms to be speeded up.

On Monday, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for London heard from Newham Council housing needs chief Candida Thompson that homelessness services city-wide are “on the brink of collapse”, while Barking & Dagenham leader and London Councils housing spokesperson Darren Rodwell warned that the whole housing market in the capital, “sale and rental”, is broken.

That the claims were no exaggeration was highlighted by figures presented from recent research for London Councils, Trust for London, the pan-London Capital Letters agency, and the London Housing Directors’ Group.

London’s private rented sector was found to be under pressure, with rents soaring but the number of properties available for private rent down by 41 per cent since the pandemic. This “downward trajectory” was hitting the lower end of the market hardest – leaving fewer and fewer options for low-income households and for local councils seeking temporary accommodation for residents accepted as statutorily homeless.

And with just 2.3 per cent of advertised rentals now affordable to those relying on local housing allowance (LHA) benefits to cover their costs, that meant increasing numbers of homeless families placed in temporary accommodation including “bed and breakfast” in commercial hotels – a “jaw dropping” escalation, said Thompson, up 110 per cent over the past year in her borough, with “no sign these trends will be reversed”.

The government, now helping mortgage holders in arrears with a 12 month ban on repossessions, needs to put support in place for renters too, including pushing ahead with its Renters (Reform) Bill outlawing so-called “no fault” evictions, said Ben Twomey, director of the Generation Rent campaign group. Good landlords have “nothing to fear” from reform, he said. “It’s not too much to ask not to be chucked out for no reason.”

But landlords increasingly exiting the cheaper end of the market, including those letting much-needed homes to councils for homeless families, needed help too, the parliamentarians heard.

New regulation, increased costs, lower returns, and – most frequently cited by those interviewed for the research – the “anticipated abolition of no-fault eviction” were all encouraging landlords to pull out. That made a strong case, said report co-author Abigail Davies, from consultants Savills, for intervention to “smooth the landing” of the reform and keep supply flowing at the lower end of the market.

A strong theme from landlord surveys, the meeting heard, was also concern about “anti-landlord sentiment” attributed to governments at all levels and to the media, seen by some as a way of “shifting blame for the public sector’s own failure to provide enough affordable housing”.

The key recommendation from the boroughs remains an immediate hike in LHA rates up to the 30th percentile of current market rents, putting many more properties within the reach of poorer residents.

But further incentives for landlords to stay in business at the lower end of the market were also needed, the meeting heard. Those could include subsidising improvement works and licensing fees in return for long-term letting arrangements, mortgage interest and tax reliefs to encourage investment and stabilise the cheaper end of the market, new insurance products protecting against rent arrears and property damage, and a clearer approach to enforcement.

Time to pity the downtrodden landlord, as the old song goes? Not quite, but certainly time for a better understanding of what Davies said was a complex market. The trick, as the report says, is for “councils and national government can explore ways to smooth out risk and reward…without easing up on quality expectations or unreasonably underpinning landlord profit”. Meanwhile the second reading of the long-awaited Renters Reform Bill is not expected until the autumn.

Photograph by Daniel Kosky of London Councils. Twitter: Charles Wright and On London. If you value On London, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to publisher and editor Dave Hill’s Substack. Thanks.

Categories: News
Tags: housing, London Councils, private rented housing