London is killing us. That’s the conclusion of Sadiq Khan’s alarming new book, Breathe: Tackling the Climate Emergency, which he publicised last night at a 90-minute event held in the Royal Festival Hall.
The sales pitch for Khan’s book was disturbed by hecklers and protestors who blew whistles and shouted constant abuse at the mayor. ‘F*** off, Joseph Goebbels, you c***,’ was a typical insult.
Khan ignored the protests as he introduced himself at the podium and read out a page from his book. He seems perfectly accustomed to being screamed at in public by the electorate. A hapless gang of stewards tried to curb the disruptions and they succeeded in yanking a few hecklers out of the building, but many more lurked in the semi-darkness and continued to yell and shout intermittently.
Khan seems perfectly accustomed to being screamed at in public by the electorate
James O’Brien, the LBC host, joined the mayor on stage to discuss pollution which Khan calls ‘the invisible killer that we all breathe every day.’ As the protests continued, O’Brien talked tough and threatened to remove anyone whose heckling displeased him. In fact this proved impossible and the bawling continued throughout the evening.
Khan’s campaign against pollution began in 2014 while he was training for the London marathon. He admitted this was a stunt designed to strengthen his ties with the Evening Standard whose support he needed during his campaign for the mayoralty two years later. Taking exercise for the marathon damaged Khan’s health and he was diagnosed with asthma, aged 43.
As mayor he sought out new ways to tackle air pollution and he met the mother of a nine-year-old, Ella Kissi-Debrah, who died from an asthma attack on February 15, 2013. Ella and her mother lived next to a busy road and Khan suspected that car fumes had caused her death. But the coroner had dismissed this possibility. The verdict was then quashed and a second inquest initiated, securing the desired result. In 2020, Khan told us, ‘air pollution was cited as a cause of death by a coroner for the first time anywhere in the world.’ He sounded immensely proud of this breakthrough and O’Brien was equally impressed.
‘That inquest changed science,’ he said. The crowd disagreed and they began to howl and yell as soon as the name ‘Ella’ was mentioned. O’Brien mounted his high horse. ‘To pollute the commemoration of a grieving mother is despicable,’ he said. The entire character of the event had been changed, just like that. It began as a book launch but O’Brien turned it into a memorial service.
The protestors can see through the mayor’s rhetorical trickery. He uses the trusted ‘baby in danger’ ploy. If your policy is inspired by the death of a child you can automatically sanctify yourself while casting your opponents as madmen or devils. After all, only a psychopath would object to a measure that saves the lives of helpless children. That’s the beauty of the ‘baby in danger’ device. It forestalls rational analysis and lets dogma replace sceptical inquiry.
Khan went on to discuss the benefits of his beloved low-emission zones and he suggested that thousands of Londoners had evaded death thanks to him, although he didn’t give a time-frame for these statistics. A heckler intervened, ‘but if I pay £12.50 I can still pollute.’
A reasonable point. Khan claims to have discovered a scourge that imperils thousands of Londoners and yet his solution is to write a book about it and to sell daily exemptions to motorists driving the most toxic vehicles. This doesn’t add up. It’s possible that Khan’s campaign is a scam cooked up with the help of tame scientists and a friendly coroner and that his real aim is to increase his authority and to extend his tax-base.
Khan certainly makes no secret of his relish for power. ‘We are still in the foothills,’ he said in relation to his regulatory plans which he coordinates with a network of mayors around the world. This group, C40, meets regularly to discuss further curtailments to civil liberties in the name of ‘climate action’. Khan boasted that they draw inspiration from a book called If Mayors Ruled the World by Benjamin Barber which sounds like a manual for aldermen with a Napoleon complex.
Khan’s eyes glittered with excitement as he mentioned Cop26 in Glasgow which he attended despite suffering from a mystery illness at the time. He told us how desperate he was to join the law-makers as they devised new ways of regulating and controlling the governed. ‘I wanted to be in the room where it happens,’ he said, quoting a line from the musical, Hamilton.
But let’s imagine an alternative explanation. Perhaps the Ultra Low Emission Zone policy is more than just a power-grab by the mayor. It’s possible that Khan sincerely believes the scientists when they inform him that thousands of Londoners, including vulnerable youngsters, are at risk from lethal exhaust fumes. Why not take action overnight? He could mount a publicity campaign that urges motorists to abandon their deadly vehicles forever. At the same time, he could accuse car manufacturers and fuel distributors of corporate manslaughter. Problem solved. At a stroke, he could save the lives of enough Londoners to fill a football stadium. But he takes no emergency action at all. He even raises money by granting licences to vehicles whose murderous side-effects are so well known to him that he can fill a book with his expertise.
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