Sadiq Khan: 'There is potentially an existential threat to central London'
There have only been three London mayors and the current one, Sadiq Khan, is not like either of his predecessors. He doesn’t possess Boris Johnson’s entitled flamboyance, nor Ken Livingstone’s maverick independence. And neither has he inherited their gift for generating headlines. But, having met all three men, I’d say he is easily the most genuine and likable.
A much less obviously ego-driven character than the other two, he is, at 5ft 6ins, both literally and figuratively more down to earth. Where Livingstone and Johnson won as personality candidates, Khan was framed in the 2016 mayoral election, not least by his opponent, Zac Goldsmith, as the identity candidate.
He was vying to become the first Muslim mayor of a western capital five months after the terrorist attacks on Paris by gunmen loyal to Islamic State. That he triumphed had as much to do with his natural sense of inclusivity as London’s cosmopolitan diversity. His first instinct in almost any situation is to try not to alienate anyone.
When I met him last week he had just published an “action plan” to address BAME communities’ concerns about the Metropolitan police. The statistics the report throws up are startling.
Although more than 40% of Londoners are from BAME communities, they provide only about 19% of new police recruits. Black people are four times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts, and of those who are searched while driving, black people are six times more likely to be pulled over to the side of the road.
But it wasn’t these figures that prompted the action plan so much as George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed in its wake.
“What was clear,” says Khan, “speaking to black friends, black staff, black Londoners, was they were traumatised by George Floyd’s brutal killing, though it happened thousands of miles away. The common theme among black people is, there but for the grace of God, it could have been my dad, my brother, my uncle, my son.”
Here in London?
“Here in London,” he confirms. “And yes, American policing is very different to British policing. And that policing is light years better than it was when I was growing up, or at the time of Stephen Lawrence, but black people still feel this way. Now you can have a discussion about why they feel that way, but this is how black people are feeling, by and large.”
We’re speaking on the empty ninth floor of the now ghost operation that is City Hall in lockdown. It’s an eerie setting. Our conversation echoes quietly across the dwarfing size of the event room, against the backdrop of what Khan calls “the best view in London”. It feels like we’re on a film set – perhaps a billionaire’s loft – rather than in a local government office.
The symbolism of City Hall is too rich for any visitor to ignore. Its location on the south bank of the Thames, opposite the attention-seeking office blocks of the City of London and the stalwart sturdiness of the Tower of London, makes for a topography of wealth, power and history that is hard to beat.
Then there is the building itself, a Norman Foster-designed diaphanous bulb that was supposed to embody transparency but has more often evoked vulnerability. Livingstone called it a “glass testicle” and you can all too easily imagine its occupants girding themselves against the encroaching might of Westminster a couple of miles upstream.
Of course the second mayor, Johnson, is now in No 10 and it’s his successor, Khan, whose job it is to defend the capital against central government. Earlier this year, the usual tension peaked after Khan was forced to sign a deal with Downing Street to bail out Transport for London with a £1.1bn grant and a £505m loan. The deal resulted in steep travel price increases and several other bitter pills. Furthermore, the government then briefed the media that Khan had voluntarily acted to take away free children’s travel and restrict travel for older people, though these were the government conditions.
As he admitted, he “blinked” first in the negotiations, believing, he said, that what was in the interest of public health – the maintenance of public transport in a pandemic – was more important than the politics. To some observers, he looked naive, especially when he claimed that the government was seeking to make him look bad before the May 2021 mayoral elections
(postponed by a year because of Covid). After all, that is what politicians do.
What does he think of Johnson now? “Personally, on a social level, we get on OK. He’s perfectly reasonable. He is not rude. But I think for the last year and a half, he’s been held hostage by people – Lee Cain, Dominic Cummings. We’ll have to wait and see whether he’ll now be free.”
The fact is, Khan can’t afford to make an enemy of the prime minister. He wants him to honour the findings of the London Finance Commission that Johnson set up when he was mayor. It recommended fiscal devolution, which would bring London in line with other major cities in being able to spend more of what it creates.
“We only get to spend 7% of the taxes raised in London,” Khan complains. “New York is 50% and Tokyo is 70%. That’s the change of power we need.”
Making that case is a test of resolve at the best of times. Khan says there has never been a day when he has gone to bed feeling that everything went according to plan. He makes reference several times to being kept awake by problems and he gives the impression of taking the job much more seriously than Johnson.
And during this pandemic and its lockdowns, the business of being mayor has been a challenge that Khan says has taken a psychological toll. “I found it really hard working from home,” he says. “I’ve never in my life worked from home. Particularly, when you’re in a leadership position, it’s really hard. Lonely is the wrong word because I’m lucky – I’ve got a wife and kids and we get on in a decent-size house. But I thrive on company, I thrive on mixing with people, sharing ideas. Zoom meetings and team meetings aren’t the same.”
He says he struggled with motivation in the first lockdown. And going out only once a day for exercise really got to him. A keen Sunday footballer, he missed the release of competitive sport. He savours that normality of being on a football pitch, where no onetreats him differently. But it was the lack of access to his wider family, in particular his mother, which left him feeling quite downcast.
“People of my generation assume that if you’ve got mental ill health, you need to be medicalised. Not true. I’ve learned a lot over the last few years about mental health. One of the things you can do is make yourself more resilient. For example, exercise works for me, music works for me, running, playing football on Sunday.”
The son of a bus driver, Khan grew up in Tooting, south London, and he says that as a child he didn’t know anyone who went to work in a suit. On television, the only people he saw like himself were in TV shows such as Mind Your Language and It Ain’t Half Hot Mumthat would “embarrass” him.
The first time he got a sense of pride, he says, was when Chaka Khan had a big hit with Ain’t Nobody. He was so impressed by sharing her surname that he went to school and told his friends that she was his cousin.
Another American import inspired him to become a lawyer: the TV drama LA Law. Having studied at the Polytechnic of North London, he joined Christian Fisher, a small but radical law firm specialising in civil rights. It was there he made a name for himself winning discrimination cases and then defending a number of figures caught up in anti-terrorism investigations in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq war.
Colleagues from that time have since expressed dismay and disappointment at his political journey towards the centre left. Given that many of his political opponents, both in the Labour party and outside, have been surprised by how hard he works, does he think people tend to underestimate him?
“I think my entire life,” he says without hesitation. “I mean, one of my dad’s things was, you’ve got to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. But I always say, you shouldn’t be offended by the word prejudice. Itjust means prejudging. And people prejudge people like me. They always have.”
Leaving aside the racial prejudice, you can see why people might not at first appreciate just how shrewd a politician Khan is. He doesn’t always project himself as well as he might. He is an impatiently fast talker, often swallowing consonants or even syllables, and occasionally whole words, in the rush to make his point. And though he is a lively Twitter presence – his spat with Donald Trump further endeared him to Londoners – he can sometimes err on the side of subdued or longwinded when on television.
But in person he is a warm and engaging presence with a firm grasp of detail. There’s only one occasion when he bristles and that’s when I ask him if he regrets nominating Jeremy Corbyn for leader (he didn’t vote for him in either leadership contest). The answer seems to be no, I think. “In 2010, when I was helping run Ed’s campaign, do you know who nominated Diane Abbott to get on the ballot paper?” he asks. “David Miliband. And so all I would say is, it’s worth everyone just checking the history.”
Sometimes, his guile and determination have been depicted as naked ambition. And given that the last mayor became prime minister, the job could easily be seen as a career springboard. But he dismisses that possibility, arguing that cities are the political future. Just as the 19th century was about empires, and the 20th about nations, so he says the 21st is about cities.
“I think,” he says firmly, “this will be my last political job.”
Whether or not that proves to be the case, so far he hasn’t enjoyed any major policy breakthroughs that people automatically associate with his name. He is most proud, he says, of his clean air initiative, the biggest number of council homes built last year since 1983 and the values his office promotes. In many respects, he is well placed to be a reforming mayor. He’s certainly the first to know what it’s like to be the focus of biased police attention.
He says that when he was young he was stopped by the police between “10 and 20 times”. His father told him never to talk back to the police. It was advice, he says, that he made sure to follow – at least until he was a defence lawyer in court. “I’ve not been stopped in my car for ages,” he says. “But there is still that sensation you get when you’re driving and you see a police car behind you and your heart starts beating faster. And that comes from the experiences you have growing up.”
He wants to raise the Met’s BAME recruitment rate to 40% within the next two years and double the amount of sergeants and inspectors. It’s an ambitious target.
“What’s clear from the conversations I had with black Londoners was they would rather I be ambitious and fall short than set a target just to tick a box,” he says, though the distinction doesn’t seem to contain a noticeable difference.
At the same time, he acknowledges that his ambition is seen by some as not nearly ambitious enough. His answer to stopping cars is to try to get some reliable data – at the moment, if a vehicle is not searched, there is no record of its being stopped.
Khan says the Met is going to do a pilot study for a year in a part of London, collecting details of who’s stopped. He’s really pleased that his plan has been welcomed by the Met’s commissioner, Cressida Dick.
“That’s really important,” he says. As there isn’t a “progressive government” he can liaise with, he says, he has to build his bridges where he can.
“Some people, and I don’t criticise them for this,” he says quickly, “don’t think that it [the action plan] has gone far enough. Some people, and again I don’t criticise them for this, think we’re interfering with police in some matters. And so you can’t please people on both sides.”
It’s a characteristic piece of Khan compromise and moderation. Critics say that his willingness to see both sides of the story is informed more by political expediency than any great empathic understanding. They point out that he’s flip-flopped on issues such as Heathrow’s third runway and the Thames garden bridge. Is it unfair to say that he’s prone to change his mind?
“I don’t think it is,” he replies. “I’m a former lawyer. One of the things you rely on is the evidence you have. And I think you should be pragmatic. Being an ideologue and being dogmatic is what leads to what you see in America, what you see with Brexit. I think you’ve got to just look at the evidence and be humble enough to adapt.”
Aside from evidence, it’s experience he says that informs his opinions. It’s why he rejects wholesale notions of “white privilege” and “white supremacy” that are increasingly part of the anti-racism debate.
“Since I was little,” he says, “I’ve always had mates, allies, people who are part of the coalition who are white. If I was ever walking down the street, and somebody used the P-word against me, or the N-word against my mates, it was my white mates who’d jump in first and there’d be a punch-up. So that sense of solidarity has alway been with me. People I grew up with, on the council estate, or people now in parts of London who live in huge deprivation, they are on free school meals, their parents can’t get jobs, many of them are white. I think you have to be a bit careful about the issue of white privilege or white supremacy.”
But perhaps the greatest anxiety he now faces is the social and economic future of London in a post-Covid world. As the spectacular view from City Hall testifies, the capital has flourished as a European centre of finance, even if, as Khan is quick to note, that wealth has been far from evenly distributed.
With London’s success has come ever more people, bringing the population in recent years to its highest level in history. Brexit, which London voted against, marked the first dent in the capital’s relentless rise. But the pandemic has raised a question about what kind of city will emerge from an era of homeworking. After all, 90% of workers say they don’t want to return to the office full time. Without the offices, what will happen to all the restaurants, bars and cafes? And without all of that, what will happen to London?
“That’s one of the big things that keeps you up at night,” he says, returning to the sleeplessness theme. “I think we’ve got to accept the fact that there is potentially an existential threat to central London as we know it.”
That is a shocking thing to hear a mayor of a city admit, but it’s not said for dramatic effect. He says his team are working on a number of responses to the threat.
“Are there going to be satellite-type offices in outer London because people may not want to work from home but in a co-working space in zone five or zone four?” he asks, conjuring an image of a suburban shift from the centre.
One of the joys of London, he says, is that, unlike many big European cities, it doesn’t have a “doughnut, where the centre is for the elite and the outside for the rest of us. We have a cheek-by-jowl model, sons of bus drivers and daughters of doctors living together.”
If a shortage of affordable housing has threatened that arrangement, the pandemic has placed it in long-term jeopardy.
“I think there will still be a huge role for central London,” he says, remembering his role as the capital’s chief salesman, “because of our unique ecosystem. It’s not just finance, professional services, and creative industries, it’s tech, it’s culture, it’s museums, it’s arts, it’s galleries. Young people,” he concludes, “need the buzz of office space.”
No doubt he’s right, but you sense the person who’s most in need of the energy of human interaction is the man himself. As I leave he is standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, striking a pensive pose for the camera, as he looks out over the city he hopes to continue representing come next May. I tell him that my 20-year-old daughter was thrilled by the fact he’s my interview subject and he lets out a big but appealingly bashful belly laugh.
In spite of all the problems he carries on his slender shoulders, just for a moment the mayor of London looks as though he’s king of the world.