Cllr Matthew Goodwin-Freeman represents Hatch End Ward on Harrow Council.
I thought it was a joke. ‘Surely he can’t be?’ Yet as my Twitter/X feed and the Financial Times suggest, Sadiq Khan is seemingly set to receive the top gong in the New Year’s Honours List.
After hearing the news, I quickly jumped online – realising it would be rejected from the Gov.uk petition site as they can’t deal with Honour applications – change.org it was. And wow! Nearly 150,000 people really don’t want to see Sir Sadiq.
As a local councillor your entire purpose is improving the local area and quality of life for your residents. For many of us that has been made harder by the actions (or inaction) of Sadiq Khan. We are frankly small cogs in the giant political and social machine of London, yet the driving force behind so much of what we have to deal with is the Mayor. When it comes to crime, so many of us can recount conversations with residents, reassuring victims of crime and coordinating with our Safer Neighbourhood Teams to see what, if anything, we can do to help. Yet the buck ultimately lies with London’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Sadiq Khan, to make the big decisions about resources, closing police stations, and grasping this nettle. His failure to do so means we all struggle as a result.
The ULEZ expansion – be it to the North/South Circular or to outer London – is another example of how local government is significantly impacted by the actions of one man. In Hatch End, where I am fortunate to be a councillor, we have streets where if you turn left you avoid the ULEZ expansion; if you turn right you are hit by the £12.50 tax for popping to the shops, doing the school run, or just enjoying the freedom to drive your own car. And literally, one field away, you are in the middle of the fresh, crisp countryside, although this Mayor would lead you to think there’s an invisible barrier and suddenly it’s all dirty air…
These are just two examples where, as local councillors, we have had the rug pulled out from underneath us.
A knighthood is not a lesser honour, it’s the top gong. You would think only handed to those of lifelong service, who have helped deliver transformative change and historic impact to society.
The Mayor of London is London’s Police and Crime Commissioner, a role Sadiq Khan rarely acknowledges. Yet crime is through the roof. Gun crime up 30 per cent. Robbery up ten per cent. Knife crime up 13 per cent. All stats from his and the Metropolitan Police’s own data. So on crime, it’s hard to see how he’s earned the honour.
But what about transport? The Mayor of London is also the Chairman of Transport for London. Well if you look past the £6.9 billion in bailouts the “terrible Tory Government” as he would say, had to give to keep the trains and buses running. Or the 140 days of strikes – more than the previous two Mayor’s combined, when he promised 0 days. Or the £6 million spent renaming London Overground lines that no-one asked for, into a menagerie of colours – there again, I guess a knighthood is pushing it.
Then you have ULEZ as I’ve mentioned. The £12.50 a day tax to drive in London, do the school run, or pop to your local shops – that no-one wanted. 66% of Londoners said they didn’t want it in the consultation. The science from Mayor Khan’s own Jacobs Impact Assessment said it would have a “negligible” impact on air quality. Yet he still pushed ahead. Millions of Londoners left selling their car, unable to afford a new one, isolated or lonely, all while ULEZ has raked in £millions to fill TfL’s account. Yeah, struggling to see how he deserves a knighthood there.
And there are so many other scandals too. The charges on the Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels. The constant increase in the Mayor’s chunk of council tax – up 71 per cent so far. The lack of affordable houses being built. Breaking the rules about gifts and declarations by declaring Taylor Swift tickets late. Banning adverts of hot dogs and wedding cakes on the London Underground but adverts of hate preachers or assisted dying next to train tracks, that’s okay? The divisive racism calling “white Londoners” not representative of London anymore and saying there are “too many white men” working at TfL. If a white person said that about black people, they would be resigning tomorrow!
All in all, I and over 100,000 other people struggle to see where the math adds up. Sadiq Khan is a hypocrite and getting a knighthood for destroying our once great city is a kick in the teeth and shows just how out of touch this self-serving Labour government is. He’s not a knighted Mayor – he’s just a nightmare.
You can sign my petition here
This article (Matthew Goodwin-Freeman: Khan does not deserve a knighthood. He’s a nightmare.) was created and published by Conservative Home and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Matthew Goodwin-Freeman
Featured image: Remove Sadiq Khan from the Knighthood Honours List
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