Gordon Ramsay's squatting nightmare
Plus: a mayoral heckler, a 1981 arson cold case, and Mizzy’s redemption
Morning — gosh it’s not long now till the London mayoral election on May 2. And this week, the campaign finally felt properly underway, with a face-to-face debate, and even a heckler causing trouble in the audience. And also, perhaps our favourite mayoral pledge yet, courtesy of one joke candidate. That leads your Sunday round-up below.
Plus: a 1981 arson cold case, squatters take over Gordon Ramsay’s £13m London pub, and Mizzy’s redemption.
Enjoying the Spy? Help us create a quality news magazine for Londoners by pledging a subscription to the Spy. You won’t pay anything yet, but you’ll automatically become a paid member when we launch. Like a crowdfunding campaign, in slow-motion. Digestible round-ups, detailed features and hard-hitting investigations — all for less than a pint each month.
What we’ve spied
🗳️ FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL 🗳️ Mayor Sadiq Khan and his Tory rival Susan Hall came face-to-face at the first mayoral hustings this week — though a heckler slightly overshadowed their bust-up. The event, held on Thursday night in Hampstead, had to be stopped for 20 minutes when an independent mayoral candidate in the audience kept shouting out the names of teenage knife crime victims, preventing Khan from talking. “Children are dying!” was among Andreas Michli’s interjections criticising Khan’s record on crime, until security staff eventually got him to leave. Michli was later photographed flexing his muscles by a police car outside the venue.
But there was still plenty of time for Khan and Hall to clash, notably on Khan’s policy of universal free school meals for London primary pupils. Hall said it was wrong for taxpayers to fund free meals for “millionaires’ children”, and said she’d only keep the policy for a year if elected. Hall also criticised Khan on crime, claiming violent crime had risen 33% and knife crime by 54% since he was elected in 2016. Khan offered a pretty brutal response: “Susan acts like somebody who applies to be the headteacher of a school but hates kids, hates teachers, hates parents and has no qualifications. Susan, why do you want to be mayor of London? You talk our city down”. Hall responded by saying Khan was reverting to “personal attacks”, adding: “It makes you look really pathetic”. Aside from Khan and Hall, Green candidate Zoe Garbett and Lib Dem Rob Blackie were also on the panel. Garbett said her focus would be getting rents down if she was elected, while Blackie accused Khan of denying TfL cash for investment through “election gimmicks” like freezing fares.
The hustings had been organised by the London Jewish Forum and some in the audience asked about the pro-Palestine marches in central London — both Khan and Hall vowed to do more to tackle antisemitism. When asked for their views on the “From the River to the Sea” chant, Khan said it depended on context: "Park for a second freedom of speech and the law, if you know that causes distress and anxiety to your Jewish friends and neighbours don't chant it’. By contrast, Hall said there was “no context” in which the chant was not antisemitic, and added that a “red line” on behaviour at the protests had been passed some time ago.
Elsewhere in the London mayoral campaign:
A commanding lead for Khan in a poll published on Friday, putting him 24 points ahead of Hall. The Savanta poll, conducted between April 5 and 8, found 50% of Londoners intend to vote Labour, vs 26% for the Conservatives, 10% for the Lib Dems, 9% for the Greens and 2% for Reform UK. “Time is running out for Susan Hall,” said Savanta’s political research director, Chris Hopkins.
Khan has been campaigning hard on the climate this week, arguing London would be a greener city if he gets a third term. He was joined by Ed Milliband, Labour’s shadow energy secretary, at a school in Stoke Newington on Friday, where he launched a “new climate action plan” for the capital and recommitted to making London net zero by 2030.
Hall pledged she’d recruit 1,500 police officers if elected, one-upping Khan’s recent promise of 1,300. She also said she’d halt the closure of any further police stations in London, and ensure there were at least two police bases in every borough.
In their new London manifesto, the Greens have proposed introducing a flat fare on the Underground and Overground, meaning it would cost the same to travel from Zone 2 or Zone 6. Garbett unveiled her manifesto on Monday, which also includes promises to create “at least ten major new parks” in the capital and buy back ex-council homes.
The Lib Dems say they’d create a London-owned developer to solve the capital’s housing crisis — the London Housing Company — if they win. Blackie says the public company’s focus would be on ‘filling in the gaps’ left by the private market. Some drama for the party though, after an ex-Lib Dem mayoral candidate urged Londoners to vote for Labour, in light of changes to the voting rules on May 2.
Fact-checkers have called out dodgy claims on road-charging in leaflets put through doors by the Conservatives. The leaflets, posted on behalf of Hall’s campaign, claim that Khan is “planning to introduce a pay-per-mile scheme” in London. But in its extensive check of the claim, Full Fact writes: “Mr Khan has repeatedly said he’s ruled out bringing in a pay-per-mile scheme while he is mayor.”
Count Binface unveiled his manifesto. Our fav idea: renaming London Bridge after Phoebe Waller.
Also: the deadline to register to vote in the mayoral election, as well as the London Assembly elections, is this Tuesday, April 16. You can register on gov.uk here.
🚨 Two high-profile murder cases are now unfolding across London. On Monday, detectives said that the human remains found in a park in Croydon last week had been identified as those of 38-year-old Sarah Mayhew. A man and a woman — Gemma Watts, 48, and Steven Sansom, 44 — appeared in court on Thursday charged with her murder, along with preventing her lawful and decent burial. The Old Bailey heard the prosecution’s case, which alleges Watts and Sansom killed Mayhew at a residential property on the night of March 8, then cut up her body with power tools and dumped her remains in Rowdown Fields, New Addington. Not all of Mayhew’s body parts have been recovered from the park, however, the prosecution said. A plea hearing is set for June 27. The second murder case broke on Monday, when police forced entry into a property near Hyde Park and found the body of a woman, later identified as 27-year-old Kamonnan Thiamphanit. She was found to have suffered several stab wounds, and there was no sign of forced entry at the property. As of writing, no arrests have been made. Scotland Yard has now referred itself to the police complaints watchdog over the case, after it emerged officers had been contacted twice by friends concerned about Thiamphanit’s welfare the evening before she was found dead.
👮 While we’re on crime: nearly a third of Met Police officers intend to resign from the force because of low pay and morale, according to a new survey. Conducted by the force’s staff association, the Metropolitan Police Federation, the survey of 6,000 serving cops found 29% of officers intended to resign “within the next two years” or “as soon as [they] can”. Several former officers have spoken to BBC London about their reasons for resigning — one, Ali Hassan Ali, who served between 2019 and 2021, said his starting salary of £1,700 a month after tax left him with “nothing” after paying rent and bills in London. Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has been warning for a while now that the force is struggling to recruit as many officers as it’s losing. It casts those mayoral recruitment pledges, mentioned earlier in this round-up, in a difficult light.
📣 One last thing for the Met: the force has been accused of “surrendering” to the killer behind an unsolved arson attack in Walthamstow in 1981. The attack, which took the lives of an Asian woman, Parveen Khan, and her three children, was highlighted in a Channel 4 programme that aired this week, Defiance, which charts Britain’s Asian community’s struggles against far-right hate. At the time the Met was criticised for disputing local claims the attack was racist — there are now calls for the force to apologise and restart the hunt for the killer.
🏚️ Aaand it’s gone — this week it’s emerged another London borough has flogged the family silver to a developer. Greenwich council has now completed the sale of its former town hall — a huge Grade II-listed building with an iconic clock tower in the borough’s historic centre — to Lita Homes for £2.475 million. The developer has plans to turn the 1930s-era building into 80 flats. The actual sale went through in January, but Greenwich council had kept the deal hush until local news outlet Greenwich Wire asked about the building this week. The Wire points out that the town hall is the third listed building sold off by the council in the past nine years. Some are amazed at the final price of the deal, claiming it’s “less than the price of a large house in the same neighbourhood … The developers who bought it must be laughing”.
👵🏻 A group of pensioners are occupying an estate in southeast London to stop its demolition. Residents of the Lesnes Estate in Thamesmead say they are determined to stay in their homes, which are slated to be knocked down after Bexley Council approved plans by housing association Peabody to replace the 816 current homes with 2,778 new ones. "Most of us here are retired and we have worked our lives to pay and to say 'this is our home', and then Peabody come in to tell us we cannot live here and they want to take our property, offering peanuts,” says Dolorosa Buhari, 69, who’s lived on the estate since 2003. "The money they are offering cannot even get you a one-bedroom flat anywhere in London… I don't think even Peabody's forklifts will lift me away from here." Thamesmead was once one of London’s most famous post-war estates, with much of 1971’s Clockwork Orange filmed in its brutalist setting, but a lot of the area’s old estates have been knocked down in the past few years.
👨🍳 More London occupation — this time for Gordon Ramsay. The celeb chef’s pub near Regent’s Park, the York & Albany, has been taken over by a group of squatters, according to the Sun. Ramsay is actually midway through selling the pub for £13m, but at least six squatters have now used the chef’s own kitchen appliances to barricade themselves in, glued shut the locks, and put up a legal notice saying they’ll take action against anyone who tries to force them out. Ramsay called the police last Wednesday, but the group have managed to stay put for now. While we’re on celeb chefs:
🚲 Good news Lime bike fans, and bad news haters — the company is planning a huge £25m expansion across London. After Parisians voted to ban Lime last year, the company seems to have bit more cash knocking about, and it has instead set its focus on the capital. Lime already operates rental e-bikes in 16 boroughs, but it's apparently going to expand to three more — though which ones exactly hasn’t been reported publicly yet. The company is also planning to build a new warehouse in north London, as well as spend £1m on more dedicated parking areas — perhaps a sweetener for opponents, who regularly criticise the way Limes get parked on pavements.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
A map of residential density estimates in London, powered by machine learning
This new book out in May — London: A History of 300 Years in 25 Buildings
Re the Lib Dems’ call - there’s already a London owned housing developer - TfL’s Places for London