A meeting at Downing Street, then a big hug. What's Khan scheming with Starmer?
The new PM wants to transfer power from Westminster to UK cities. What does Khan want for London?
Morning — who do you trust more: the mayor of London and the boroughs, or Downing Street and Westminster? The new Labour government reckons you’ll pick the former. One of Keir Starmer’s first acts as prime minister this week has been to promise he’ll give more responsibilities to “those with skin in the game” across the UK’s city and town halls, in a big shift of power from central to local government. He gathered England’s mayors at Downing Street to discuss the plan — and of course, our own Sadiq Khan came along. What Khan could be scheming with Starmer is after your Sunday round-up below.
Plus: London bracing for the Euros final, a new major pedestrianisation project, and chasing muggers on a Lime bike through Soho.
In case you missed it: probably our spiciest Spy yet, with our article on the threats to London’s sex parties that we published on Thursday. Journalist Tom Duggins gives us an inside look at how organisers, venues, lawyers and police are trying to navigate the legally grey world of making the capital as kinky as Berlin.
What we’ve spied
🏴 In south London, a glimmer of hope ahead of England's Euros final against Spain tonight: Kirby Estate has returned to its former glory. The council estate in Bermondsey is usually famed as the UK’s ‘most patriotic’ for its displays of hundreds of England flags during international football tournaments, but this year residents could only muster a couple dozen St Georges after flag price inflation. Their plea for spare cash has paid off though — after more than £1,100 in donations on GoFundMe, Kirby Estate is once again completely draped in an obscene number of England flags ahead of the final. Meanwhile, most of the capital's big screens and pubs are booked up for the match, while 15,000 fans are on the way to watch the game at the O2 for free courtesy of City Hall, which organised a public ballot for tickets that saw 300,000 entries. The gesture has helpfully buried negative headlines from earlier in the week, criticising the lack of a dedicated England fanzone in central London for the semi-final against the Netherlands, unlike other cities. There's also been some outrage at the lack of Night Tube this evening, especially relevant if it goes to extra time and penalties. Clearly unafraid of jinxing things, the Met Police has announced it's deploying extra officers in the capital in case England wins tonight. The Lions are also expected to go on an open roof bus tour through London next week if they win 🤞
😬 Lots of top jobs for Londoners in Keir Starmer's new government — but a surprise snubbing for one of the capital's Labour veterans. Despite eight and half years in the shadow cabinet, most recently as the shadow attorney general, Emily Thornberry has been passed over for a job in the real thing. The Islington South and Finsbury MP was notably absent from Starmer's cabinet appointments made over his first weekend in power, then on Monday Thornberry confirmed she'd been left out in a statement. "I am very sorry and surprised not to be able to continue [my] work in government," she wrote, "but I wish all my brilliant colleagues well". The attorney general role has instead gone to Richard Hermer KC, a human rights lawyer and Israel critic who's being made a peer in order to take up the position. Thornberry has been close-lipped about the potential reasons for the snub. Perhaps Starmer sees her as a rival, as she ran against him in the 2020 Labour leadership election. She's also associated with the Labour left, having been a close ally of former leader and fellow Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn — though to be fair, she was one of the few MPs to campaign on the ground against Corbyn's independent run in Islington North. Or it might just be Thornberry's troubled history with flag-waving. Oh well — some of Thornberry's fans have now unofficially appointed her in another cabinet role.
💼 As for the Londoners that have made it to the corridors of power:
David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, has been appointed foreign secretary, and has already paid visits to Germany, Poland, Sweden and Washington. Lammy has previously said he "will take the responsibility of being the first foreign secretary descended from the slave trade incredibly seriously".
Wes Streeting, MP for Ilford North, has been appointed health secretary. His first actions in office have been to hold talks to end the junior doctor strike, then potentially to permanently ban puberty blockers.
Steve Reed, MP for Streatham & Croydon North, has been appointed secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs. Perhaps an odd role for a urban MP, but Reed has started off with a crackdown on the water industry.
A few junior ministerial appointments: Sarah Jones, MP for Croydon West and now a business minister, Ellie Reeves, MP for Lewisham West & East Dulwich and now a minister without porfolio in the cabinet office, Matthew Pennycook, MP for Greenwich & Woolwich and now a housing minister, Stephen Timms, MP for East Ham and now a pensions minister, and Sarah Sackman, MP for Finchley and Golders Green and now the solicitor general.
🤖 A bizarre post-election moment for voters in Clapham and Brixton Hill, following suggestions their local Reform candidate had been AI generated. Mark Matlock, who got 1,758 votes in the south London constituency on July 4, is in fact real, but his strange smooth-skinned headshot, lack of internet presence and absence from the result declaration raised concerns he might have been fake. Matlock, who lives miles away from Clapham in the Cotswolds, eventually came forward to prove his existence, explaining his campaign photos looked odd because he lacked a Reform-turquoise tie, so he'd used AI to transfer his head onto an appropriate body.
🗺️ FROM THE BOROUGHS 🗺️ Camden high street might be about to get a boost, via a major pedestrianisation project unveiled this week. On Tuesday Camden council launched a consultation on whether to trial banning cars from a stretch starting from Britannia Junction, in front of Camden Town station, to Jamestown Road, the junction just before the canal and Camden Market. It's hoped the project can held deal with overcrowding on the street, which sees up to 40,000 visitors at peak times. Subject to the consultation, the trial would start by early 2025 and last 18 months. Meanwhile, over in Hackney this week, councillors have stared down a weeks-long pro-Palestine encampment by their town hall and voted against a motion to divest council funds from companies targeted by the boycott movement against Israel. The vote took place on Wednesday to the sound of heated rallies from both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel activists outside. Three people were arrested. South in Lambeth, the council's chief executive Bayo Dosunmu has now officially handed in his resignation, after being charged with drink driving and drug possession offences. Dosunmu had been arrested in Westminster at the end of June when he failed to stop at the scene of an accident and he's due in court on August 1. Fiona Connolly, usually the council's executive director of adults and health, has now been appointed acting chief exec. Finally, in Islington, there's concern over the mysterious resignation of a Labour borough councillor after just 69 days in office. Neither Ollie Steadman nor his party have offered a reason for his departure, reports the Islington Tribune, and now a by-election will take place.
🚨 There's been significant new revelations in one of London's coldest cases, the racist murder of Kelso Cochrane in 1950s Notting Hill. If you're unfamiliar with the story, Cochrane, a carpenter born in Antigua who came to Britain, was stabbed to death by a gang of white youths while walking home from Paddington hospital in 1959. At the time Notting Hill was a stronghold for notorious British fascist Oswald Mosley's Union Movement, and race riots had broken out in the area the year before. No one was ever charged with Cochrane's murder, and police at the time denied there had been a racist motive. Now, after years of fighting for their release, Cochrane's family have finally been given access to the original police files, which show a prime suspect told officers he intended to kill a black man. We highly recommend this report published on Friday by Mark Olden, a journalist who's been digging into the case for years and has previously published a book on it.
🎒 A London university is being sued by students over the quality of teaching during strikes and Covid lockdowns, in what could be a landmark case nationally. Around 5,000 students have brought the case against University College London (UCL), which had cancelled teaching or moved it online. This week a trial was set for the start of 2026, but an out-of-court settlement might take place sooner. There are a few other similar cases involving other UK universities in the works, but UCL’s has now progressed the furthest through the legal system.
🚲 An avalanche of London transport announcements in recent days — starting with the expansion of its e-bike hire scheme. TfL says a further 900 bikes are being deployed at docking stations across the capital as part of the scheme, which started in 2022 amid the rise of Lime, Forest and others at the expense of non-electric Santander bikes. This week also saw TfL launch a consultation on plans to charge drivers using the Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels, which at peak times would cost £4 under the proposals. Down in south east London, new all-electric tram buses have been unveiled for a route between Orpington and Crystal Palace. The trams have a striking futuristic, bubble-y design and are due to enter service in a matter of weeks. Out east, City Hall has unveiled new plans for a DLR extension from Beckton to Barking Riverside, which would come on top of proposals to extend the DLR to Thamesmead. One last thing we missed during the election — 4G and 5G coverage has now been rolled out to the Elizabeth line's tunnels.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
England fans surrounding the bus to Bellingham, south east London
Wireless Festival's ban on cultural appropriation clothing this weekend
Decent reviews for the new Barbie exhibition at the Design Museum in Kensington
On the questions, fears and myths surrounding London's parakeets
Alistair Campbell awkwardly running into Jeremy Corbyn in Highbury
Starmer and Khan are finally in power together. What now?
London mayor Sadiq Khan was among the first to meet with Keir Starmer at Downing Street this week, joining England's eleven other metro mayors on a trip to hear the new prime minister's plan to give cities more powers.
While gathered around the cabinet table on Monday morning, Starmer told the delegation he wants to devolve more responsibilities regionally, because "those with skin in the game... make much better decisions than people sitting in Westminster". Sat to his left was Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister and now the secretary of state for local government, making her the mayors' new point person in government. Afterwards, the group mingled in a drawing room, where Khan gave Starmer a big hug, then the mayors ended their day out with an Oscars-style selfie outside the No 10 door. Starmer asked the mayors to draw up their wish lists of powers, which will be discussed at a future meeting of a new 'council of regions and nations'.
Throughout his eight years as London mayor, Khan has often expressed an interest in policies he doesn't have the power to implement — like post-Brexit EU work permits, unemployment schemes, control of stamp duty, rent controls, or a Parisian-style SUV tax. As to his current thinking in 2024, he's been clear on at least one concrete ambition: bringing more rail services under TfL control.
During his re-election campaign this year, Khan promised "a rail revolution" in the capital, via the takeover of surburban lines currently run by the Southeastern and Great Northern franchises. It's a similar plan to Ken Livingstone's takeover of Silverlink services in the 2000s, which became the Overground. Khan's latest plan would mean TfL running services that go far beyond the Greater London boundary, to the likes of Stevenage in Hertfordshire or Sevenoaks in Kent. Such a takeover would be particularly noticeable to south Londoners, who currently tend to rely on the national network rather than TfL for their commute. Khan essentially wants a southern Overground expansion, or perhaps something more like Overground 2.0.
The rub is whether Khan's ambitions conflict with Starmer's, who's promised rail nationalisation across the UK through a new public company, Great British Railways. It's up to the Department for Transport to approve any TfL takeover, as was the case with Silverlink, but the DfT under Labour might have other plans. During the election campaign, Louise Haigh, who's now the UK transport secretary, suggested a Labour government would be focused on making sure any expiring rail franchises "would come under Great British Railways' control", rather than necessarily given it to TfL. Haigh's comments were widely seen as a snub to a new takeover in London.
Yet Khan was optimistic after his trip to Downing Street. "One of the things that was confirmed from the meeting this morning is once those franchises end and are brought into [DfT control], they will be talking to mayors like me about which of those railways we can take over," he said.
"I’ll be lobbying for, once those franchises end, those commuter trains that come into London for us to have that". He added: "Watch this space."
Rail is where Khan has been most forthright about his devolution hopes. More vaguely, the mayor said he discussed devolving powers around "skills and training" with Starmer on Monday. It could be a reference to Khan's long-running ambition to get control of the apprenticeship levy, a tax on employer pay bills that's ringfenced to fund on-the-job training. Back in 2018 Khan joined other English mayors in their call for the government to give them control of their regional apprenticeship levies that levy payers themselves did not spend. The logic being that they, not Westminster, ultimately have a better idea of where skills are short in their cities. Londoners trained on schemes organised by City Hall or perhaps the London boroughs might be on the cards if Khan gets his way with Starmer.
Otherwise, a recent report by the think tank Centre for London, published just before the election on July 3, offers further clues to what could be on Khan's wishlist. Aside from agreeing City Hall should get more control over rail and apprenticeships, the Centre identifies perhaps the ultimate prize for Khan: the power to raise and keep more tax revenue. The report points out that 69% of the cash spent by the Greater London Authority and the boroughs is handed to them by the UK's central government, usually in the form of grants with strings attached over what it can be spent on, versus 31% that's spent from revenue London raises itself. Contrast that with New York, where 74% of its city hall's spending is sourced from its own taxes, or Paris, 84%, or Tokyo, 82%.
As to what taxes — the Centre suggests giving City Hall control over property taxes. That would mean the power to update the property valuations or charging rates that underpin council tax, or to tweak and retain the business equivalent, business rates. There are other options too, like a tourism tax, something seen in other international cities but not currently within the London mayor's power. And of course, there's always the possibility of more road charges.
Khan has made calls for this kind of fiscal devolution in the past — as early as his first year in office in 2016. Whether that's a realistic ask from a Starmer government is another question, not least because Labour spent so much of the election campaign insisting it wouldn't 'raise taxes on working people'. Labour's Jonathan Ashworth also explicitly ruled out "changing council tax bands", which likely pours cold water on the idea of giving City Hall the chance to fiddle with them.
In any case, Khan is clear he wants more money for London. Over the past few months he's been lobbying the UK government for an "emergency stimulus" to the tune of £2.2bn to boost house-building in the capital. It's a lot of cash — but in theory Khan's finally got some allies in Downing Street, for the first time as mayor. Eyes peeled for what Khan might get from his next trip to see Starmer.