The London Mayoral Election is on Thursday 2nd May 2024 – your freedom to own and drive a car is at stake! The Choice is Stark, but Clear
It’s crunch time; make or break; the final countdown; zero hour; D-Day; moment of truth; the last stand… make no mistake, hold no illusions, be in no doubt – this is it.
The elections for the London Mayor happen this week on Thursday 2nd May 2024. And incumbent, Sadiq Khan is vying for an unprecedented third term in office as the most powerful man in London – some would argue, the most powerful person in the nation – he who controls the capital, controls the country?
Why would I, Shahzad Sheikh AKA the Brown Car Guy, want him out of office? After all, he could be a brother from another mother. We’re both British-born South Asians, grew up in London, our parents migrated from Pakistan, we’re both in our 50s and we are Muslim.
There is a misconception here among many, which probably needs tackling first. There is no compulsion as a Muslim to vote for another Muslim. It’s neither a requirement nor a given. The same goes for the Desi diaspora. Brown doesn’t have to choose brown.
I’ve never met the guy. I don’t know much about him. It’s certainly possible that if we sat down over a chai, we’d probably get on – I do have non-petrolhead friends too, you know! But as I’ve said before, hate the policy, not the man.
There are valid discussions to be had about the current mayor’s perceived failures in providing housing, supercharging business and, admittedly most importantly of all, tackling crime in the capital. During his tenure, London overtook New York for the number of killings in the city. And they have (more) guns there!
However, for this discourse and indeed all my discussions around the London Mayoralty and forthcoming elections, let’s stick to my primary area of concern: transport, and specifically road transport, primarily the personal car. Here too, London has achieved a significant accolade – it is officially the slowest city… in the world!
Ten kilometres of travel took an average of 37 minutes and 20 seconds in 2023. It achieved the slowest city status for the second year in a row and beat its own record by a sedate sixty seconds. It is over eight minutes slower than the next city on the list, Dublin, followed by Toronto, Milan and Lima.
Londoners, waste 148 hours in traffic each year, despite it not being the most congested city. So, if it’s not the sheer bulk of traffic, then this confirms that vehicles are held up by traffic calming systems, road narrowing and bottlenecks (often caused by little-used bus and cycle lanes) and of course the dreaded, injudiciously deployed, 20mph limits.
Vehicles are the lifeblood of a city’s veins, without the movement of man, materials and merchandise, a metropolis would fall silent and redundant, commerce would die, people would move out, tumbleweeds would move in and wildlife would reclaim the land (as we saw during the pandemic lockdowns); and humanity would pause itself to lethargic extinction.
I grew up near Old Street EC1, living between the City of London and the West End. I owned a car, would drive most places, and even cruised around for fun – all of this was still possible, with ease, just a couple of decades ago.
These days I almost never drive into London (I live in outer London now but still with an NW postcode). It’s just too slow, stressful and frankly no fun. Which means that nights out are local. I haven’t seen a movie in Leicester Square since GoldenEye, and for shopping, we’ll head to Westfield rather than the West End.
By stifling choice of transport, the city has been pulled to the precipice of paralysis with even tourists getting fed up with its inflexibility.
Recently some friends conducted an extraordinary road trip from Karachi in Pakistan to London. Across 10,000km (over 6000 miles) in 18 days, across cities like Tehran, Istanbul, Salzburg and Paris, and they comprehensively condemned London as the least welcoming and accommodating, as well as the most frustrating for them and their globe-trotting Toyota Hilux. Says a lot really.
I can’t, and would never, tell you who to vote for. And frankly, there is no dream alternatively candidate, because there are troubling aspects to either party, person or both in every option. None of them quite sit comfortably with me. But I do know who I cannot vote for, and that is Sadiq Khan. Not because he’s brown, not because he’s Muslim, but because of the narrow and blinkered viewpoint when it comes to Londoner’s transport needs.
For outer Londoners even more so. It’s not always apparent to those who don’t live in this city, but it is rather huge. Over 600 square miles. Right now, despite my NW postcode, I’m over 10 miles away from Buckingham Palace; it would take well over an hour to drive there even on this Sunday afternoon, as I write this, if the King happened to invite me around for a cuppa.
Central and Inner London, up to and encompassed by the North and South Circular roads which was the boundary of the previous ULEZ, is both densely congested and extremely well-served by public transport systems. Outer London (the rest of it) is a different story, where around 60% of people rely on their cars to get to work, or for leisure and business. By comparison, the distance from the Palace to the M25 London orbital ring road is about 30 miles.
When the Mayor rode roughshod over the consultation and rushed through the latest ULEZ expansion to envelop the whole of London from the end of August last year, he baited the wrath of those of us living in that outer zone.
We were left distinctly unimpressed with the ruse of healthier air, which his own independent report confirmed would witness negligible improvement. Juxtaposed against the socio-economic hardship this imposed on communities and businesses in the expanded zone (60% of which said they were against the expansion during the consultation, alongside 80% of businesses) it seemed inherently unfair and unjustified.
But there’s more to this, and now we come to the ‘War on Motorists’. The Mayor hates cars. He has targeted the motorists both in terms of easy sources of revenue generation and to achieve self-imposed targets he has set to impress his friends in C40 Cities (an international cabal of Mayors of which Khan is chair).
Two things you need to be aware of.
Shortly after winning his second term as Mayor, Khan officially confirmed he had no intention of expanding the ULEZ any further (ie beyond the North and South Circular Roads) and that he would instead focus on tackling pollution hotspots instead. This is logical and makes sense especially if he tackles the fire that’s been burning and spewing out toxic crap for over a decade in the landfills of Rainham. This is stated on his official website. But he changed his mind.
Secondly, according to reports, tens of millions have already been invested in developing plans for pay-per-mile or road-user charging systems, with staff employed for this purpose and senior jobs advertised for people to run the program. He even discussed this in his book.
The Mayor now insists that he has absolutely no plans to introduce road-user charging and will not expand ULEZ further, with no increase in ULEZ-compliance restrictions. The trouble is, he cannot now be trusted.
In fact, he’ll be given every reason to double down on draconian motoring restrictions, as a new Labour government (inevitable by the end of this year) will further its overarching anti-motorist agenda.
A Labour government, working with a Labour Mayor… imagine. I’ve nothing against the party, just their policies targeting cars and motorists. Be in no doubt, the restrictions in London will be replicated in all the other major cities of the country – Angela Raynor has said as much previously – and eventually expanded further.
The British motorist is under pressure. Rising fuel costs, rocketing insurance premiums, parking restrictions, authoritarian and punitive road-traffic law implementation (remember the old days when police would stop you and just give you a bollocking instead of cameras casually capturing fines?).
Plus, new and used car prices are at record high levels, and even obtaining a driving licence for young people is both an expensive and exhaustive process. Many youngsters are not bothering with the hassle of car ownership, even existing motorists counting the pennies are finding it unviable.
The pernicious creep of curtailing our car cravings, clamping down on our freedoms to travel in our automobile where and when we want, will ultimately deprive us of much that we take for granted.
Imagine your car being taken away. Sit for a minute and think of all the things you do with your car, from getting to work, socialising, doing the big shop at Costco, cruising to a kitty party, making sure you get to those doctors’ appointments on time because missing one will mean another six-month wait (by which time… well… you know), to the simple therapeutic act of driving, or the fun of being part of car culture.
Even if you don’t currently drive or own a car, stop and consider how much of your life depends on the automobile, from Amazon deliveries to Uber rides.
If Sadiq Khan is re-elected as Mayor again on Thursday, he’ll take that as a validation, a vindication of all that he has done, and carte blanche to initiate further restrictions and limitations on cars and motorists. Pay-per-mile will happen, probably by 2026 as predicted in my book, The ULEZ Files.
This Thursday, consider very carefully a precarious future, weigh up the value of your freedoms, and give thought to you and yours’ mobility. All of that, and more is at stake. A message has to be sent. If it’s received, it could at least stall the ongoing War on Motorists, even if not quite give it the red signal. If the current Mayor wins again, all is lost for car owners, motorists and indeed my fellow car guys and gals.
Brown Car Guy 
boy, you really hate this guy. It’s Khan’s fault that so many people want to drive in London? Has he destroyed public transport? What about freezing fares and introducing the Hopper fare? Not to mention all the improvements to tubes and buses.
and the ULEZ. expansion applies to only 5% of cars. It is expected to raise no money at all by the end of 2026 as everyone will have upgraded their cars.
you’ve put a huge amount of effort into attacking him. Just think how much all that energy could yield if you did something productive with your time
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