Culture warrior Sadiq Khan can wave goodbye to his post-mayoral career
His cynical woke opportunism may play well in London, but outside the M25 it means his political ambitions have already reached their summit
TOM HARRIS6 September 2023 • 2:38pm
Few Labour Party observers would doubt that Sadiq Khan has long had his eyes on a political prize somewhat grander than his current job of London mayor. But a promotion that was already looking almost impossible to achieve risks being pushed even further from his grasp, thanks to his inexplicable
embracing of identity politics.
The mayor was the driving force behind “Black on the Square” last week, a celebration of black culture, food, and creativity at Trafalgar Square in central London. The event was always going to be an obvious target of critics, and particularly those on the Right who, unlike critics on the Left, have no fear of voicing their opposition to such initiatives.
After all, let us be clear:
the notion that every Labour-voting Londoner is entirely relaxed about the mayor devoting his attention to “Black on the Square”, that they,
as a group, don’t recognise a cynical act of virtue signalling when they see one, is a bit of a stretch. But none of them will say anything publicly, lest they are tarred with the same, tired old slanders regularly used to silence critics of right-on progressivism. There is no need, after all, when Nigel Farage can always be relied on to say what they’re thinking.
And it was the former Ukip leader’s description of the event as “horribly divisive” that earned him one of Khan’s most memorable and significant retorts:
“Listen, if Nigel Farage thinks it’s a bad idea, by definition it must be a good thing.” So there we have it: in these socially divisive days, there’s no need to justify any policy. Simply point to someone that your own tribe hates and boast about having done something – anything – to annoy him.
That’s what Khan did when he championed the expansion of the
Ultra-Low Emissions Zone (Ulez) to London’s outer burghs: those who raised the injustice of poorer Londoners having to pay disproportionately more of their income to drive into the capital seemed to be dismissed, collectively, by the mayor.
Khan has form for name-calling those with the temerity to disagree with him on anything. In 2009, while he was serving as a government minister, he appeared on the Iranian state-sponsored channel Press TV – a favourite platform of Jeremy Corbyn’s – and appeared to describe moderate Muslims as “Uncle Toms”, a remark for which he apologised seven years later when he was campaigning to be London’s mayor.
That Khan used the term to begin with and belatedly recognised the need to apologise for it confirms that this is
a politician who understands the power, both positive and negative, of identity politics. His party found itself swept into the wrong side of the argument over its previous stances on trans ideology and Critical Race Theory (CRT). Only hard Left-wingers in the Parliamentary Labour Party still take CRT, with its obsession over “white privilege” and “white supremacy”, seriously. More sensible heads in Labour caution that the political debate needs to be shifted away from such contentious issues if the party is to win back the trust of working class voters.
But Khan sees no danger to his own position by ramping up the culture wars in the capital. While Starmer appears to have softened his line on trans ideology, Khan is standing firmly by it. He told Talk TV this week: “A woman, when it comes to biology and sex, is an adult girl. But there are some women who may have gender dysphoria and you know, trans women can also be women as well.” This comes close to Starmer’s previous view that “99.9 per cent of women
don’t have a penis”, for which he was widely mocked.
But Khan knows
he will not be mocked, at least not publicly and only by those whose opposition he relishes and broadcasts in order to gain support on the cynical assumption that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. This woke opportunism with which he feels so comfortable might sit more easily with London citizens than with the rest of the country. He will find that it doesn’t play quite so well outside of the M25 and that his political ambitions have, therefore, already reached their summit.
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