London’s revolt against the Ulez scam is set to shatter politics as we know it

 The Tories should urgently pull out the stops to back Susan Hall, the one woman who can defeat Sadiq Khan

Source - Daily Telegraph 30/08/23

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When I wrote in April that Sadiq Khan could be ousted because of his persecution of motorists, my suggestion was widely panned as delusional. Didn’t I realise that nobody owns a car in our capital city, that London is a Labour rotten borough and that the Tories are finished? 

My argument doesn’t look so silly today. The mayor’s nasty, vindictive Ulez cash grab has triggered a wave of French-style civil disobedience, radicalised an outer suburbia that the snooty inner London elite had long forgotten even existed, lost Labour a parliamentary seat it could otherwise have won, and exposed the exorbitant cost to our pocketbooks and freedom of the rush to net zero. 

It turns out that there are, in fact, almost 9 million Londoners, and the vast majority don’t live in Islington or Hackney, don’t commute by bike and don’t work in a Left-wing think tank. Some 69 per cent of households in outer London have access to or own a car or van, and even in inner London some 42 per cent do so.

It was thus a terrible mistake for Khan, an incompetent mayor obsessed with virtue-signalling, to declare all-out war on motorists – via Ulez, Low Traffic Neighbourhods (LTNs), road-narrowing and the excessive expansion of 20mph zones – while mismanaging London Underground, presiding over a decline in buses, acting as a demagogue over Covid, squandering money on propaganda, jacking up taxes and failing to grip the calamity that is the Met Police. 

The good news is that there is now a clear alternative to Khan’s arrogance. The Tories have selected their mayoral candidate, and despite the party establishment’s best efforts at imposing a technocratic, Remainer type, ended up choosing Susan Hall, a true-blue activist who is committed to scrapping the Ulez extension and is a standard bearer for modern suburban values. She proposes a genuine alternative vision for London, a rupture with the dominant Left-wing urbanism, and would be the first mayor that hails from outer, rather than inner, London.

She campaigned with no money and no infrastructure, making her own way to endless hustings, unlike her well-funded rivals, and yet triumphed with the grassroots. For a while, in an act of unfathomable stupidity laced with snobbery and ageism, the central party appeared ambivalent about her victory, but it has now rowed in behind her. 

Yet Tory HQ’s efforts to support her to date have been woefully inadequate: the mayoral election is just nine months away. Rishi Sunak and Greg Hands, the Conservative chairman, must urgently ensure that the party does all in its power to improve her profile, help her raise funds and build the best campaign team in the business. She needs to become the face of the anti-Ulez uprising, for Hall is now the only chance to oust Khan and change the narrative ahead of the general election. It would be a scandal were the Tories not to give this race everything they have just because their candidate backed Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

A working-class Tory who oozes authenticity, Hall worked as a mechanic in her father’s garage before opening a hairdressing salon. A former leader of Harrow council, the Tory multi-ethnic success story, she made her name running the opposition in the London Assembly, infuriating Khan, who doesn’t know how to handle her. She doesn’t want to be an MP, and this would be her last job in public life, allowing her to show that she is a true localist committed to dedicating her life to serving Londoners.

Waging war on crime and lawlessness will be a key plank of Hall’s manifesto. She will remind voters that women have been especially let down by Khan’s inability to get a grip on criminality. She will emphasise the noxious air quality in the Tube, as well as the current mayor’s inability to take on the unions. 

Ulez will retain its potency even nine months after its expansion: most of those buying compliant cars are doing so on credit, providing a monthly reminder of the Khan surtax. Small businesses will keep telling customers why they’ve been forced to hike prices. Many Londoners don’t believe Khan’s denials over whether he would like to further extend Ulez, or impose punitive per mile charges on driving: these issues will be central to next year’s election. 

Labour’s lines of attack on Hall are already clear. They are going to emphasise her support for Brexit, even though Leave grabbed more votes in London (1,513,232) than Khan managed even with second preferences (1,310,143). They will go through Hall’s tweets, and highlight her support for Donald Trump.

There is a dirty tricks campaign in the making: despicably, Hall has been accused of racism for wanting to move the Notting Hill carnival to a safer venue, a policy even Ken Livingstone advocated and which many voters would back given the stabbings, the arrests and the assaults on the police. Some activists want to dismiss her as a “Karen”, a disgusting term used by the ultra-woke in America to attack white women. Her words on crime have been appallingly misconstrued by Labour as an attack on black Londoners. 

Hall also faces problems from the Right. The Reform party is standing against her because she doesn’t want to scrap the original Ulez zone, too, splitting the vote in the one first-past-the-post election that a united Right would have a chance of winning. But Khan’s coalition could also be shattered were Jeremy Corbyn to stand as an independent. 

Hall isn’t helped by the Evening Standard’s support for Khan, but her central advantage is a Labour mayor who is far less popular than his party. Almost any other mainstream Labour candidate would do better. Turnout was just 42 per cent in 2021, with some outer Londoners not even realising they live in the capital. Getting the vote out will be key: Hall must hugely increase the turnout in outer London, and pick off those inner Londoners who are angry at LTNs and crime. Extreme targeting will be required. All Tory manpower must be allocated to this fight.

For Sunak, retaking London would be his greatest legacy, the first step in the Tories’ post-2024 renewal, his only major electoral victory. For the rest of Britain, the elections will be seen as a referendum on Ulez-style schemes. A Tory triumph would launch a popular fightback, but a Khan victory would only embolden the zealots.