The Lessons Keir Starmer Should Learn From Sadiq Khan

The London mayor won a historic third term in the face of fierce opposition from the Conservative party, the press and a far from supportive Labour leadership

The Labour leadership sometimes acts like it is half-ashamed of London Mayor Sadiq Khan. 

Speaking at the count of his party’s victorious new West Midlands Mayor, Keir Starmer rattled through a list of the party’s achievements in these local elections, which conspicuously omitted Khan’s historic third term victory.

The omission is not a one off. Relations between City Hall and Team Starmer have long been uneasy. During the course of his leadership, Starmer has shot down multiple proposals from the London mayor, most recently his call to be handed powers to impose rent controls in the city.

Relations between the two men were most seriously tested last year after the Labour leader spoke up against Khan’s plans to expand the Ultra Low Emission Zone in London, and effectively blamed him for the party’s defeat in the Uxbridge by-election.

Starmer’s call for Khan to “reflect” on the scheme, caused fury among those around the Mayor, who believed it would only deepen public opposition to the mayor’s plans.

Khan’s team believed, rightly as it turned out, that public opposition to the expansion would quickly fade once it was implemented and most Londoners realised they weren’t directly affected. They also questioned whether Starmer’s calls to delay ULEZ were merely a pretext to scrapping it altogether.

As one City Hall source put it to me at the time: “when do they expect us to delay it until exactly? Never I assume”.

Khan ultimately ignored Starmer’s public intervention and pushed ahead with ULEZ in the face of huge opposition from Labour’s political opponents and large parts of the press. Even when the Conservative party decided to run Susan Hall’s campaign as a de facto referendum on the campaign, Khan held firm.

The result was that Khan won a significantly increased majority in the face of a Conservative campaign of disinformation, outright lies and Islamophobia. His vote in Uxbridge, meanwhile, went up.

At the same time, London’s air will now become significantly cleaner, leading to the avoidance of potentially thousands of premature deaths.

Khan’s principled stance stands in stark contrast to Starmer, who in the face of similar opposition, quickly abandoned his own plans for a Labour government to spend £28 billion a year on green projects.

Here’s the big lessons the result in London should really teach the Labour leader.