London mayor Sadiq Khan wants to stay in power for 24 years... HERE’S WHY HE SHOULDN’T BE RE-ELECTED

Mayor earns more than the Prime Minister

Capital ‘most anti-Semitic city in West’

Violent crime up by a third with confidence in the police collapsing

Oxford Street a ‘national disgrace’ and drivers face worst jams of any major city

Rampant wokery as council tax bills soar to pay for his swollen court

SADIQ KHAN is running for an unprecedented third term as Mayor of London. But, unfortunately for the capital, he has even bigger ambitions.

Astonishingly, Khan has been telling staff he is vying for six four-year terms of office. That would put him on a par with Russian despot Vladimir Putin, who has just clocked up 24 years in power.

So no wonder even some of Khan’s Labour allies fear he has delusions of grandeur. At the Covid Inquiry in November, he bizarrely claimed that if he had been invited to the Cobra meetings with Government scientists and senior ministers, ‘lives could have been saved’.

When Khan, 53, a former lawyer and government minister under Gordon Brown, was first running to be London Mayor in 2016, he loved to boast about his working- class credentials as the son of a Pakistani bus driver.

Now he brags about having ‘the same level of security protection the Prime Minister and the King receive’.

And how he makes use of it. Puffed up with his own self-importance, Khan was once famously spotted using a cavalcade of three cars, including a gas-guzzling Jaguar, to take his dog for a walk — even though he lives only a few hundred yards from one of London’s largest commons.

Meanwhile, Khan has swollen his court to astonishing levels. The number of City Hall and Transport for London (TfL) officials being paid more than £ 100,000 has almost doubled from 655 in 2018-19 to 1,146 last year. There are 84 staffers on more than £150,000 and ten on more than £250,000. The £261,490 salary of Howard Smith, the boss of the Elizabeth Line, includes a £72,000 bonus, even though figures from the Office of Rail and Road reveal it had the highest cancellations of any railway line in August.

Louisa Rolfe, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is paid £313,000, despite a 21 per cent increase in knife crime in the year to June 2023.

Only last month, it emerged that Amy Lamé, who occupies the nebulous role of ‘Night Tsar’, saw her pay rise by almost 40 per cent to £117,000. In the past year, she has been to Australia to meet fellow ‘ night tsars’ from around the world, while her research has also taken her to Italy, Spain, India and the U.S. Her critics point to the struggling nightlife economy in the capital where 1,165 venues have reportedly closed in just three years.

As for Khan, who chairs TfL, his salary stands at £171,000 — more than the £167,000 paid to the Prime Minister. No wonder the Tories accuse Khan of turning his office into a gravy train.

The Mayor’s ballooning department is one reason the ‘Mayoral precept’ — the extra council tax Londoners pay to support his administration — has risen by 57 per cent during his time in office. All those advisers and administrators have to be paid for — and Londoners are footing the bill.

You might think Mr Khan would have the results to show for such high spending. However, his track record is one of abject failure.

Take the collapse in public support for the Metropolitan Police — a crucial issue in the run-up to the May 2 poll — which was put into ‘special measures’ in June 2022 after being rocked by scandals including the murder of Sarah Everard by serving police officer Wayne Couzens; and the strip-search of Child Q, a black girl of 15, wrongly accused of bringing cannabis to school.

The 2023 review by Baroness Casey into the Metropolitan Police, commissioned after the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, was equally devastating. The report concluded the service was ‘institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic’, with one serving police officer saying: ‘If you look at our performance around rape, serious sexual offences, the detection rate is so low you may as well say it’s legal in London.’

Meanwhile, since 2016, the year Khan became Mayor, violent crime in the capital has risen by 30 per cent. One of the grimmest milestones of his mayoralty was passed in January when the number of murders surpassed 1,000 — meaning 125 families have lost a relative to crime for each year of his tenure.

Yet Khan is quick to point the finger of blame elsewhere. In February 2022 he forced out former Met Commissioner Cressida Dick, only for a government-commissioned report by Sir Thomas Winsor to brand his actions ‘irrational’, alleging he had treated her unfairly.

And while Khan claims ‘London is for everyone’, the police’s conduct over the regular marches for Palestine have turned central London into a ‘no-go zone’ for Jewish families, according to the government’s counter-extremism Commissioner, Robin Simcox.

Only last week Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister, branded London the most antiSemitic city in the West.

Yet Khan seems too preoccupied with other things — not least his war on motorists — to care.

The expansion of the Ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) — a daily charge on older polluting cars — has been wildly unpopular.

Indeed, it was blamed by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer for his party’s failure to take the Uxbridge seat vacated by Boris Johnson last summer.

Despite suffering crushing defeats in two other by-elections that day, the Tories held Uxbridge by turning the contest into a referendum on Ulez.

Even so, on Khan’s watch London’s roads have suffered more congestion than any other major global city. Cars sat stationary for an average of 156 hours in 2022 — for the second year in a row — according to a survey of 1,000 cities in 50 countries.

If you think taking public transport in the capital is a better option, you should reconsider.

In his 2016 campaign, Khan pledged ‘zero days of strikes’ on public transport. Two years ago, he had the unenviable record of having presided over more strikes on the Underground in his six years in office than Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson in their combined 16 years in power.

Instead, Khan is more focused on superficial, woke gestures. Last month he announced, to howls of derision from commuters, that he had spent £6.3 million rebranding six branches of the Overground railway with such names as the ‘Suffragette Line’ and ‘Lioness Line’.

The assault on motorists, combined with people working from home, has added to the plight of the retail and hospitality sectors. On Mondays and Fridays, once the busiest weekdays, much of the city centre lies deserted.

Papa Bruno, a family-run cafe opposite the Home Office in Marsham Street, is a victim of the crisis. A fixture in London for more than 40 years, it’s now boarded up. Before the pandemic it was selling more than 600 coffees a day — by the time it closed last year, barely 100.

Oxford Street, once Europe’s busiest retail hub, is in deep decline. Last spring, 42 of the street’s 269 stores, or almost 16 per cent, were empty — up from 4.3 per cent in 2019, and higher than the average for High Streets across Britain.

Hamish Mansbridge, chief executive of Heal’s, whose flagship furniture store is on Tottenham Court Road, said: ‘We’re seeing significantly lower footfall than before the pandemic. [With] the congestion charge, Tube strikes, train strikes, cost of living crisis, and Ulez, it’s like they’re actively

trying to discourage people coming into London.’

Ex-chairman of Fenwick department store, Richard Pennycook said: ‘If you walk the length of Oxford Street, it’s a national disgrace.’

Housing will also be a key battleground in May. In his manifesto, Khan pledged to double his previous commitment to oversee the construction of 40,000 new council homes by 2030.

Despite his promise, London is Britain’s worst-performing region, with new home completions at a nineyear low of 33,712 last year.

Hence why Housing Secretary Michael Gove last week dramatically intervened in the capital’s housing crisis.

He ordered a review of the ‘London Plan’, the blueprint for development in the capital, saying: ‘Londoners are being let down by the mayor’s chronic under-delivery of new homes.’

In December, Gove and Khan clashed on the proposed MSG Sphere, a 21,500seat concert venue next to the Olympic Park in East London. It was blocked by Khan, who said ‘light pollution’ from the arena might disturb the otherwise tranquil East End evenings.

James Dolan, the U. S. businessman behind the Sphere, said: ‘This really is the end of the line. Why doesn’t London want the greatest show on earth?’

Yet Khan still looks to be heading for victory. A poll by Savanta puts him on 51 per cent and Tory contender Susan Hall on 27 per cent. But in Labour circles, I’m told, they fear it’s closer.

Four years ago, Khan scraped a win in the first round of voting with a margin of only five per cent. But with second preference votes, he won comfortably. This time, it’s a first past the post ballot, which is why Khan’s appealing for LibDem and Greens to back him.

With a March poll showing 45 per cent dissatisfied with his performance, he may well need them.