London as a place, a society and the big engine of the national economy entered 2024 still recovering from the pandemic and changed by it in ways that weren’t yet clear. Its people’s fortunes were mixed and its governance bodies were hoping for a better deal from a new national government later in the year. Here’s how 2024 unfolded against that background, as reported and explained by On London writers. Please support this website. Details here.
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JANUARY
Sadiq Khan was limbering up to seek a record-breaking third term as Mayor of London at the expense of his Conservative challenger, London Assembly member and Harrow councillor Susan Hall, a doubt-free personification of the populist extremism her party had embraced. The Tories and their media fans had decided that vilifying Labour’s Khan would help them to stave off defeat at national level too.
Relentless attacks continued on his further extension, back in August 2023, of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to cover the whole of Greater London. The criminality and intimidation tactics of some anti-ULEZ campaigners were downplayed or glorified by the same right wingers who criticised Khan over crime and policing – in one case, rather pathetically, by his fallen predecessor, Boris Johnson – and also for the handling by the Metropolitan Police of a continuing series of anti-Israel and sometimes antisemitic demonstrations in central London. Khan’s record on housing, too, was picked on.
Hall, though trailing in opinion polls, insisted she could win. This seemed unlikely, though the Khan team’s public insistence that the contest would be close was only partly a campaign tactic designed to combat voter apathy. The Tories did win a council by-election in Hackney, though in very specific circumstances. And they were completely expunged from Richmond Council, which they had controlled as recently as 2018.
In other news, I, writing under my fiction-writing pen name, embarked on a year-long fiction-reading mission, beginning with works by Syed Manzurul Islam and Muriel Spark.
FEBRUARY
After considering them for 18 months, “levelling up” secretary Michael Gove approved plans to redevelop the former ITV studios on the South Bank which Lambeth Council and Sadiq Khan had already backed. Gove also published his “review” of Khan’s housing record, a thinly-veiled political attack that fell rather flat.
The tone of mayoral election campaigning deteriorated further. Lee Anderson, the publicity-seeking Tory MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, made the imbecilic allegation on the extreme right TV channel GB News that Islamists had “got control” of Khan and that he had “given our capital city away to his mates”.
Some Tories, including London Assembly group leader Neil Garratt, condemned Anderson’s remarks, but Susan Hall stayed silent. A further Tory attempt to smear Khan took the form of a doctored video, which attempted to misrepresent the Mayor and Labour as favouring antisemitism. In reality, Khan’s support for Jewish Londoners has been a hallmark of his mayoralty.
Tory pessimism about their party’s general election prospects seemed betrayed by the decision of Nickie Aiken and five other London Tory MPs not to defend their seats. Meanwhile, the menacing behaviour of some anti-ULEZ campaigners caused the Greater London Authority (GLA) to decide to hold the next Peoples’ Question Time event online. The wider context was, as Politics London revealed, politicians across the capital receiving daily threats to their safety.
On London became seven years old. The London Society released its latest podcast, a documentary about Marble Arch and plans to improve it, made by me and top BBC radio producer Andrew McGibbon.
MARCH
Campaigning for Mayor and the 25 London Assembly seats officially began on the 19th. Sadiq Khan had already launched his third term bid at a venue in Westminster, accompanied by Labour leader Keir Starmer. Before that, he had appealed to Green and Liberal Democrat supporters to “lend” him their votes in order to help keep out Susan Hall – a reflection of the effect of the Tory government’s abolition of the supplementary vote system for electing Mayors, a move they hoped would assist Tory candidates.
The Lib Dems’ Rob Blackie launched his campaign in Brixton, and the Greens’ Zoë Garbett got hers underway in Bethnal Green. Hall held an event of sorts at what appeared to be a car park in Uxbridge, seemingly underlining the centrality of her pledge to do away with the ULEZ extension “on day one”. It appeared that no journalists were invited – Hall had already made some excruciating radio appearances, including one in which she effectively unravelled her own claim of the day before that she’d been the victim of a pickpocket on the Underground.
The Tories put out a ludicrous video in which Khan was described as having “seized power” and depicted the capital as being in constant fear of crime, with children cowering indoors and footage of passengers in a station fleeing gunfire – a station that turned out to be in New York. Even Hall was embarrassed by it. On London carried lots of serious analysis of the core election issues, such as road user charging and congestion, planning and the Green Belt, skills and devolution.
APRIL
In collaboration with On London, Redfield and Wilton conducted an extensive poll which found 70 per cent support for Sadiq Khan’s ongoing free school meals programme (launched in September 2023), 50 per cent support for the ULEZ as a whole and slightly increased support (41 per cent) for the latter’s latest expansion. Anxiety about crime was higher than it had been five years earlier. Large pluralities favoured easing planning restrictions if it meant more homes being built. There was also support for further devolution to the Mayor, including greater powers over skills training.
The On London elections guide, a joint effort by me and Lewis Baston, was published, designed by Hutch and kindly supported by Lowick. A launch event was held in the room above my legendary Lower Clapton corner shop, Palm 2, starring panelists Jack Brown and Christabel Cooper. Afterwards, everyone went back to my house for drinks and shepherd’s pie. It was great.
I completed a series of election-related “supported content” pieces for Trust for London, which helped them and On London‘s bank balance. I was quite proud of my firm but fair profile of Susan Hall. On the final day of the month, On London was delighted to partner with the Institute for Government for a debate about devolution, with panellists Tony Travers of the LSE, Antonia Jennings of Centre for London, Alexander Jan from sponsors Central District Alliance and Alison Griffin of London Councils
As you would expect, April was dominated by the London elections. But I found time to write a long piece about Jewish Londoners, focussing on a synagogue in Newbury Park and its rabbi. Richard Brown wrote about London’s nightlife. Julie Hamill wrote about shopping. My alter ego wrote about Mollie Panter-Downes.
MAY
The London elections took place on Thursday 2nd. The following day, for the first time, the GLA released turnout figures before announcing the results. These showed a pick up in the outer boroughs. The reasonable first assumption was that this was good news for Susan Hall. Was it possible that she’d pulled off a shock win?
By tea time, though, number crunchers had concluded that even if the numbers did signify added support for Hall, it wouldn’t be enough. And when results started coming through on the Saturday, it was soon clear that the ULEZ expansion had been revealed as dog that, for all its months of barking, had no electoral teeth.
Sadiq Khan had won with ease, finishing 11 percentage points ahead of the Hall and actually securing swings in his favour in most of the outer constituencies. London, he later said, had “slammed the door shut” on Donald Trump-style hard right populism.
JUNE
A rain-soaked Rishi Sunak had already announced the long-awaited general election, and soon there was speculation that the Tories would be all but wiped from London’s parliamentary map. Lewis Baston deduced that the capital was not only leaning further towards Labour, but also doing so with a highly efficient geographical distribution of support. On London also provided policy analysis on housing, higher education, economic growth, Nigel Farage’s loathing of London and profiles of all the key marginal constituencies.
JULY
Another indication of the fragmentation of Londoners’ electoral loyalties was the number of seats in which Independent, Green or Reform UK candidates finished in second place. In the west of Greater London, from Cities of London & Westminster at the centre to Hayes & Harlington at the fringe, Tories hogged the runner-up positions. But the Greens finished second (to Labour) in a large cluster of inner London seats, Gaza Independents did the same in several east and north east contests and Reform finished second in four outer east London battles, almost capturing Hornchurch & Upminster. Lewis Baston shared eight thoughts about the capital’s results.
The question now was how much good Labour’s landslide would do the capital. It was addressed by Tony Travers and Robert Gordon Clark on the eve of the election and by Jack Brown after it. I, cheerful chap that I am, warned that the protest and populist politics London had seen at the ballot box should not be ignored.
London’s housing problems hadn’t gone away: as Charles Wright reported, developers were complaining that the London Plan was holding back housing supply; the construction skills shortage continued; permissions existed for 300,000 homes to be built, but nothing was happening; London Councils pleaded for a “new approach” to London’s rising homelessness. At least TfL’s finances were in better shape.
AUGUST
Legitimised by GB News and Nigel Farage, far-right rioters attacked asylum-seeker accommodation and threatened mosques in other parts of the country. I compared and contrasted Farage’s attitudes and tactics with those of Oswald Mosley, who was big in London in the 1930s. London’s communities escaped such violence, with the usual far-left suspects claiming all the credit. Also as usual, it wasn’t quite that simple and I argued that repelling the extreme right requires a broader coalition.
Charles Wright asked if the City of London Corporation had overreached itself by favouring the huge 1 Undershaft tower. Julie Hamill documented her Twin Peaks Thursday. I wrote at length about the opposition to a branch of Gail’s bakery opening in Walthamstow village. I also, at long last, read Oliver Twist.
SEPTEMBER
With the spring and summer elections binge complete and the riots quelled, there came a chance to draw breath, look at the city afresh and hope for better things to come. The new government gave the go-ahead for the plans to build homes on Cockfosters station car park that its predecessor had blocked. Calls grew for stronger powers to curb antisocial e-cyclists. Sadiq Khan signalled a further boost for London’s bus services. But London Councils warned that the housing crisis was set to “break borough budgets” and the London Assembly heard that the Mayor’s affordable homes programme was falling well short of its delivery targets.
In the middle of the month, the Mayor surprised everyone, not least Labour-run Westminster Council, by announcing that the new government was backing his long-held ambition to see a major pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. Alexander Jan said it could be a good thing but would have to be done well. Westminster made known its “key concerns”. I wrote an appreciation of the life and career of Nicky Gavron, who had died at the end of August. A happier event was the release of another London Society podcast, looking at the ways Holborn, St Giles, Farringdon, Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell are changing.
OCTOBER
More dimensions of the relationship between City Hall and the new government began to become visible. Charles Wright showed how this was already setting the terms for Sadiq Khan’s new London Plan. The Mayor himself struck an upbeat note about the stalled progress of HS2 and the Euston station upgrade, though there was no disguising the scale of the job ahead. When, at the end of the month, Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled her budget, there was indeed some good news about the project, as well as for TfL and affordable homes funding, though business groups gave mixed reviews.
Also in October: I asked for more congestion charging and went to a preview of the forthcoming V&A Storehouse on the Olympic Park; Lewis Baston analysed some by-elections; Travis Elborough went to the relaunch of the Space House; and I got a little Oxford Street MDC scoop.
NOVEMBER
I visited a special garden on Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm estate and the Conservatives picked a former London Assembly member as their new leader. Debate raged about plans to expand Liverpool Street station, and London TravelWatch called for improvements to the bus service.
Julie Hamill learned that London isn’t open to Scottish bank notes, the London Assembly heard that the hard part of London hitting its net zero targets was just beginning, and Housing Ombudsman Richard Blakeway warned against compassion fatigue in the face of London’s social housing troubles.
Also: more about Oxford Street, more and more by-elections, and a look back at London’s suburban spy scandal with Richard Derecki.
DECEMBER
Also on housing, there were some discouraging watchdog reports about some of the capital’s social landlords and the pressures they are under. These formed part of the context for the problems that have been faced by tenants in a Southern Housing block in Purley, who kindly let me visit them. I’m hoping we will keep in touch next year.
What else? Oh yes. On London threw a great Christmas party. I wrote a profile of long-distance Olympic Park visionary Rosanna Lawes and – completed earlier today – a bit of a defence of Amy Lamé. Also in December, my alter ago completed his 25-part London Fiction mission! And Sadiq Khan got a knighthood.
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