Sadiq Khan is “angry”. The London mayor, reflecting on a decade in office after three election victories, has seen his party suffer “disastrous” results in the capital.
The Greens won their first London councils, three of them, plus a mayor, and Reform also won their first London council. The Tories and Lib Dems also increased their seats, with Labor losing control of 11 of the 21 London councils it held. The city recently considered a fortress of Labor was broken from all sides.
“My anger is compounded by the fact that we saw this coming. We made these promises before July 2024 and it’s been almost two years and we just haven’t delivered the pace of change that people voted for,” Khan told me.
We met at the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade in central London, where his team occasionally sat when working away from City Hall. I expected to meet him in a sun-striped boardroom decorated with nothing but a blank whiteboard and an abstract painting of a giant pineapple next to a small telephone box and a cyclist.
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In a perfect blue suit and a crisp white shirt, Khan entered walking at the speed I imagine he must have hardened on his 5k daily runs. But it was more about the badass boxer, who has been sparring since he was a boy, than the morning runner I met today.
It was the afternoon of Keir Starmer’s speech to defend his leadership – deemed “too little, too late” by Catherine West, a fellow London politician and backbencher who has been collecting MPs’ signatures to ask the prime minister to quit before September.
Instead of coming out and selling the party’s national achievements – on tenants’ rights, workers’ rights and childcare hours, Khan said “we were talking about Peter Bloody Mandelson”, referring to the scandalous appointment of the US ambassador that made headlines again after postal ballots were sent to voters.
“It makes me really angry because good councilors could have kept their seats, and they didn’t, not through any fault of theirs, their councilors or the council, but because of the Labor government.”
Khan, who was MP for Tooting in south London for more than a decade and served in various shadow cabinet roles – including shadow justice secretary – has been London mayor since 2016, when Britain was still in the EU, the Tories were still in government and Donald Trump had yet to grace the White House.
While he told me he did not believe Labor should oust its leader, he reflected on the Prime Minister’s stance. “I am not someone who is calling for a change in the leader, although we need to change,” Khan said. “But we can’t pretend that Keir Starmer was popular or a fortune on the doorstep. I mean, we can’t pretend, can we? Because if we do, we can’t address the issue, the importance of change, the importance of a North Star, the importance of sunny mountains, the importance of a vision.”
The beleaguered prime minister has insisted he wants to pursue the “decade of renewal” he promised – saying he will fight the next election and serve another term.
Does Khan think, as a politician who has just completed ten years in office?
“With the exception of the current company, I think, in general, the lifespan of a chief executive, a football manager, a political leader, is shorter (now) than it would otherwise be,” he replied.
“Keir won the general election – the first general election he’s stood in, which is fantastic. I think the main thing now is to focus on delivering and giving people hope and vision. I think the idea of talking about ten years at this stage is just, just being honest and frank, as I always am, you know, it’s not realistic because people want to talk about the next election.”
Khan went further than simply naming Starmer as an electoral drag. According to him, Chancellor Rachel Reeves also needs to change her approach. “There was, of course, discontent with Keir Starmer, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and with the Labor government,” he said, referring to what voters in London were saying on the doorstep.
“We have to give hope. I mean, this doom and gloom stuff, every time I hear the chancellor speak, it’s doom and gloom for the last two years. People didn’t vote for a Labor government for more doom and gloom.”
Shortly after taking office, Reeves warned that Labour’s legacy from the Tories was worse than expected – repeatedly referring to a “£20 billion black hole” in the public finances.
Khan said that in his role as mayor he speaks to many investors, venture capitalists and CEOs around the world. As they feel more security and stability in Britain after Labour’s slide, he found that Reeves’ narrative is driving them away.
“What’s bad is talking about our country, what’s bad is not being a great salesman for this country,” he said. “It’s really important to encourage people to come here, but to keep them when they come here. We are, unwittingly from the noise coming from the Treasury, encouraging people to leave this place to go somewhere else. It’s terrible,” he said.
“We want wealth creators here, we want people who want to live here, we want to encourage the rights of people and businesses to come here, and when everything is doom and gloom, why would you choose to come here?”
Not just investors, he says, but also tourists and students.
“You have to support people whose living standards (must rise), invest in public services, but you also have to work with the private sector to help create wealth, jobs and prosperity,” he added. “And I think my party in government has lost the ability, it doesn’t seem to have the art of being hopeful, optimistic, optimistic and that’s what people want.”
Khan also has Recently referred to Reeves as a “roadblock” greater powers transferred to London. Does he think the time has come, as has been rumored in some quarters, to reshuffle her from her role?
While he would not comment on a reshuffle, Khan said Andy Burnham – his fellow Labor mayor in Greater Manchester and a potential contender for Starmer’s leadership – should return to parliament. “You want the best people around you… It could be a team of rivals, it doesn’t matter, but you have to recognize the strengths of people who are out of parliament and if they want to come back, you have to open your arms to bring them back.”
It was “wrong” for Labour’s governing body, the National Executive Committee, to block Burnham from running as a candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, according to Khan – who added that “one of the things Nos 10 and 11 could do is say to the NEC: ‘If Andy wants to stay, don’t stop him'”.
Compared to Burnham, Khan has been more reserved and selective with his criticism and interventions regarding the National Labor Party – but one area where he has always been vocal is Brexit.
When we spoke, he urged the party to go into the next general election promising to join the European Union. “It is inevitable at some stage that we will join the EU. So why delay the inevitable?” he asked. “In the general election, say in plain English in the manifesto: ‘If Labor wins, we will join the European Union.’ And that is the means to a sunny highland.”
It’s all part of a more “progressive” argument his party needs to make, he says. He revealed that he has privately complained to Labour’s senior team that “there seems to be an obsession with this ‘hero voter'” – simply put, former Labor supporters who backed Brexit, then voted Conservative in 2019 and are now turning to Reform.
“There has always been a strategy to win over one set of voters at the expense of another,” he said. “That’s wrong, I think. And the birds have come home to feed.”
(Further reading: Tracked: Labor MPs calling for Keir Starmer to quit)
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