London mayoral elections are in a few weeks – a peek at the policies of the likely winner, Sadiq Khan - seeking his third four-year term – policies that are likely in your city too

The election of a Mayor for the Greater London Authority (GLA) will be on May 2, 2024. Th Mayor has responsibility for specific areas not handled by all the Londo Boroughs and the City oof Londo (the Lord Mayor of the City of London is NOT the Mayor of the Greater London Authority - GLA).

There are 9 million people in the area covered by the GLA. There are 32 London Boroughs that levy rates to provide services NOT provided by the GLA. London has around 3.7 million households plus around 3 million businesses, Rates for the GLA were jacked up 9% for 2024/5 compared to 3% for most London Boroughs.

For context, News York City has a population of around the same umber – 8.8 million and spending of more than 100 billion bucks (80 billion pounds) – with 3.25 million households and 250,000 businesses.

NYC employs around 306,000 people, whilst the GLA employs just 1,300 – so there are going to be some important differences in the way things are run! . There are 750,000 public servants for the entire Londo region.

This is on top of the 10% increase for 2023/4. Tax and spend then borrow what you overspend – typical socialist behaviour.

The Mayor's budget | London City Hall

“The Mayor’s final draft budget was approved without amendment by the London Assembly on 23 February 2023. The Budget set the Mayor's 2023-24 portion of the council tax (the precept) for a Band D property in the 32 London Boroughs as £434.14 – a 9.7 per cent increase compared to 2022-23. “

Twenty per cent tax rate increase in two years.

(Side note – single people get a 25% discount on total city taxes – which means that, per capita, they pay three times the city taxes of a family of four – who makes far more use of “services” provided – that is how progressive taxes work).

From here:

“Each week, the average London household shells out £658 to live—£106 more than the UK average. In fact, Londoners spend 19% more running their households than the rest of the UK.”

Recall that excludes rates paid to the 32 Londo Boroughs.

As usual it is hard to pin down the finances of massive bureaucracies, like the GLA. There was this headline from here for 2020/21:

Access denied | Institute for Government

But tying that number into the spending plans for the next five years is difficult.

“The GLA has an annual budget for day-to-day spending of more than £13bn. In the 2020/21 budget, over half (£7.1bn) was allocated to TfL”

We can start here:

Mayor's Consultation Budget 2024-25 (london.gov.uk)

From page 51 of 79:

9.8 The GLA’s detailed five-year CSP of £7.008 billion over 2023-28 can be summarised as follows:

·        housing expenditure £6.376 billion which is primarily the Affordable Home Programme

·        environment expenditure of £38.3 million of which £12.6 million is attributable to the Sustainable Warmth/Home Upgrade Programme

·        skills programmes £59.1 million including Skills for Londoners £40.3 million

·        economic expenditure of £62.3 million including £19.3 million UK Shared Prosperity Fund and

·        other GLA Core spend of £472.7 million of which £377.8 million for LLDC, £70.2 million for TfL and £1.3 million for OPD

The 2023-28 plan is that five-year period so loved by socialist politicians. Let’s fig a little deeper int just the next few years.

The deficit in Net Assets rose from 1.14 billion in 2021/2 to a deficit oof 1.21 billion in 2022/3 Long term borrowings are at just shy of 6 billion pounds – costing maybe 300 million pounds a year at 5%.

See if you can spot that in the highlights below!

Here are more details of the spending plans for the areas for which the Mayoor of the GLA has responsibility from page 243 of 419 here:

Mayor's Consultation Budget 2024-25 (london.gov.uk)

Note the increases in the GLA and TfL spending plans. GLA spending is up 17% and TfL spending is up 13%. The GLA portion of rates (taxes) will have to go up by these amounts to cover spending plans (this is on top of past increases in rates). The overall spending plans are up 9%.

·        MOPAC = Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC)

·        TfL = Transport for London

·        LFC = London Fire Commissioner

·        LLDC = London Legacy Development Corporation

·        OPDC = Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation

The spending increases for TfL reflect plans on top of ay revenue increases from the Congestion Charge and Ultra Low Emission Zanne charges – with all the bureaucracy and equipment associated with enforcement measures and compliance costs.

Now, as with all socialist governments, tax and spend has to be supplemented with borrowings to cover the shortfall of politics over reality.

Here are the borrowing plans to stolen from the magic money tree – all socialists think that borrowing is unlimited and is income – since socialists think that it will never have to be paid back – only the mounting interest bill provides any kind of reality check. Just for the GLA, MOPAC and TfL Presumably this is the maximum allowed after all the checks and balances from oversight committee, bankers, rating agencies and so on have limited borrowing to.

Note that several ”woke”  socialist local authorities in the UK have gone belly up pursuing similar policies as the GLA.

To meet the spending plans next year – despite all those increases in spending and the extra costs to Londoners and others of the congestion charges etc, the GLA will borrow around 535 million pounds.

How does this compare to the campaign rhetoric of Sadiq Khan?

Let’s check out just two of the socialist Mayor’s campaign “planks”. School meals and housing.

From here:

What are Sadiq Khan’s policies if he’s re-elected as Mayor of London? (msn.com)

“The cost of living crisis is the main concern of most voters as energy bills and inflation leaves households feeling the pinch. In order to tackle this, Khan says City Hall would fund a scheme to give every primary school pupil free meals. The mayor’s office has said the project, first introduced last year, would help more than 270,000 children in the capital and save families about £1,000-per-child over two years.”

The (faux) science behind “global boiling” has caused the rise in energy prices, resulting in a hidden tax via inflation. The GLA and its Mayor are a part of the Cult that caused that rise.

The “cost savings” for 270,000 kids of 1,000 a year over two years, works out at 270 million pounds or 135 million pounds a year. The extra spending plans and increases in city taxes plus represent tax increases on all Londoners INCLUDIG those with kids primary at schools getting free (lunches?) meals (must be all kids not just those that vote Labour!).

Note that there are 190 days in a school year - the average cost of a meal (lunch?) per child is budgeted at £3 pounds -  (153 million pounds a year divided by (270,000 kids times 190 days) 51.3 million – with around half that probably for labour ad transportation costs 9provided of curse there are no daily congestion charges of 15 pounds plus ULEZ charges of 12.5 pounds a day. And all those electricity charges = must be green! – and costs for all the fridges to store food, cook it and clean up – lots of diner ladies needed!

Rather than giving the less well off the 15 pounds a week to feed their kids, the socialist mayor removes  has decided to give a free lunch to 3% of London’s 9 million people by raising taxes on the other 8.73 million people, I am sure the elderly and the poverty stricken people I London are thrilled. In any event, my guess is that the actual cost per free lunch will be at least double that budgeted, leaving a budget headache of around 150 million pounds.

If we bring back the key spending policies campaigned on here:

·        housing expenditure £6.376 billion which is primarily the Affordable Home Programme

·        environment expenditure of £38.3 million of which £12.6 million is attributable to the Sustainable Warmth/Home Upgrade Programme

·        skills programmes £59.1 million including Skills for Londoners £40.3 million

·        economic expenditure of £62.3 million including £19.3 million UK Shared Prosperity Fund and

·        other GLA Core spend of £472.7 million of which £377.8 million for LLDC, £70.2 million for TfL and £1.3 million for OPD

You do not see the 153 million pounds a year for 270,000 primary school kids mentioned.

You can see a whopping 6.4 billion pounds spending on housing over the next five years. Here is the campaign rhetoric:

Again, taken from here:

What are Sadiq Khan’s policies if he’s re-elected as Mayor of London? (msn.com)

“Khan has pledged the “greatest council housebuilding drive in a generation”, with 40,000 new social homes completed by 2030. The pledge includes 6,000 rent-controlled homes for key workers in the capital.”

6.4 billion pounds for 40,000 houses. That works out at 167,500 per house.

From here:

The Average House Price by Region UK 2023 | PPO (propertypressonline.co.uk)

“With a prime location and excellent travel links in and around the city, Greater London saw an average house price of £697,212. The most popular type of property sold in Greater London were flats, which had an average sale price of £538,488.”

That’s the opportunity cost. An average price for a house is four times the price budgeted by the mayor and more than three times the price of a flat.

In other words, even if you believe the costings and that inflation won’t jack the price by 40-50% in the next five years, what the mayor is purposing is the building of 40,000 SLUM DWELLINGS.

And all that before making sure they are “green” houses.

This cursory look at the numbers and finances of the GLA and its future plans reveals just how incompetent and how much the campaign rhetoric is based on lies, hidden facts and undeliverable promises.

The same is happening in all socialist “Cult” cities in the world – maybe not in cities like Singapore.

Most cities are run by members of the Cult of Moloch – promoting “woke” education, tolerance of crime, over taxation, spending on crap and huge borrowing whilst ignoring the plight of those that really need help – all to buy votes.  London will vote for this Marxist, Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer – the mov will always vote itself a pay rise. The reason? His rivals are not smart enough and cannot spot the obvious flaws in his policies that are characterized by massive taxes, eve more massive spending with the deficit funded by ever increasing and huge levels oof deb (that soak up more and more taxes).

Finally, note the complete absence of any discussion about immigration and the cost of funding the economic migrants. There are probably at least 4 million in the UK with a quarter of those I Lond. The GLA will not pay for all their costs, but a significant amount of costs is incurred by the GLA.

Onwards!!!

Please subscribe ten dollars a month or annually for 100 bucks. You can also donate via Ko-fi – any amount from three dollars upwards. Ko-fi donations here: https://ko-fi.com/peterhalligan