The Uber ban: a tech giant humbled

“Uber’s plan was to become such a core part of London life that it could never be stopped”

“Short of placing an amateur busker in every carriage of the Underground,” it’s hard to know what Sadiq Khan could have done to annoy Londoners more, said Robert Colvile in the Financial Times. Since launching in the capital five years ago, Uber has attracted some 3.5 million registered users. With fares typically 30% cheaper than those of black cabs, it has turned getting a taxi from an “occasional extravagance” into a reliable alternative to the public transport network, used by everyone from late-night revellers to low-paid workers travelling long distances at antisocial hours. Uber took what had been the preserve of the elite, and democratised it. So it came as a shock when, last week, Transport for London (TFL) – a regulator overseen by the London mayor – suddenly announced that Uber’s operating licence would not be renewed at the end of September (though its cabs are likely to remain on the road for months, pending an appeal). Ironically, one of Tfl’s beefs with the firm is over its safety record. For women, in particular, weighing up the relative dangers of getting into a traceable cab that turns up within minutes with either venturing out in search of a black cab, or waiting on a dark corner for a bus, this seemed perverse indeed. Within 24 hours, more than 515,000 people had signed Uber’s petition calling for the decision to be reversed.

I detect a whiff of political opportunism, said Stephen Pollard in The Mail on Sunday. With days to go before the Labour conference, London’s Labour mayor is suddenly all over the airwaves, denouncing Uber’s “lack of corporate responsibility”. His union backers (who represent many black cab drivers) were jubilant, and Khan – who, as a moderate, was almost barred from speaking at the conference – was assured a hero’s welcome in Brighton. As a disruptive technology, bent on working with minimal state interference, Uber is everything Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party hates. The Londoners bemoaning the possible loss from the capital of this low-cost service – along with the livelihoods of some 40,000 drivers – should take heed. This is what Labour stands for: throttling competition, restricting choice and killing innovation.

Certainly, this apparent attack on the free market sends an unfortunate message, said James Quinn in The Daily Telegraph. London has become a world city by welcoming new entrants. Companies and investors crave certainty. The decision to strip Uber of its licence will spook them, and undermine the capital’s reputation as a centre for innovation.

Yet Khan isn’t the first London mayor to want to crack down on Uber, said Guy Adams in the Daily Mail. Boris Johnson had a go, too. Why? Because there is a lot about Uber not to like. It has flooded London with cars. (There are now 120,000 licensed minicabs on the roads, up from 55,000 when Uber launched.) This has exacerbated pollution and congestion, and led to surges in illegal parking and accidents. It has a shockingly lax attitude to safety: dozens of people have been assaulted by Uber drivers, yet Uber often fails to report these crimes to the police. There are concerns about the way it vets its drivers, and how it denies them employment rights. (Uber claims it is just a software platform, and that its drivers are self-employed – and is appealing a court ruling to the contrary.) Johnson proposed some reforms to address some of these issues – but Uber’s notoriously arrogant executives weren’t having any of it. By dint of aggressive lobbying – and allegedly aided by their close personal connections with the Cameron government – they had Johnson taken off the case.

I am all for competition, said Dominic Lawson in the same paper: the trouble is, Uber isn’t. Its aim is to become a monopoly. Its fares are only cheap because it’s running at a loss in order to drive rivals out of the market. In other industries, this is known as dumping, or predatory pricing. It is uncompetitive, and in some jurisdictions, illegal. As for its newfound concern for the welfare of its drivers, don’t be fooled: when Uber moves into the driverless car market, they’ll all be redundant. This is how the tech giants operate, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times. They produce a service so enticing that consumers resent any official attempt to take it away or limit it – even if that is being done to protect those same consumers. Uber’s plan was to become such a core part of London life that it could never be stopped, and, on the contrary, could hold the city to ransom. That’s why TFL was right to fire a warning shot, said Toby Moses in The Guardian. No business, however big or popular, can be above the law. With luck, Uber will now agree to some modest reforms, and Londoners won’t have to live without their cheap and convenient cabs.