The battle to replace Sadiq Khan
Plus: London Standard editor pursues luxury side hustle; no plans to replace Amy Lamé as night czar; scroll down to learn how to always get a seat on a train out of Euston.
Welcome to the first proper edition of London Centric, published in a week where it never stopped raining and a member of the House of Lords called me a “prick”. If you’re one of the hundreds of soggy Londoners who subscribed on the basis of that comment by Lord Lebedev, then it’s great to have you here.
The national media’s attention is shifting to another big election happening on the other side of the Atlantic. But in London the run-up to 2028 and a potential new mayor is already beginning.
In May Sadiq Khan won a record third term as mayor of London. But in recent weeks London Centric has been meeting with sources in City Hall and the wider London Labour party — and the consensus is that he won’t stand again.
“There comes a time when, even if you’re doing well, it’s time to step down,” said one London Labour MP, surveying the options for Khan’s successor. “The battle will hot up”
Khan and his team are understandably aware of the risks of being seen as a lame duck mayor. They say he hasn’t made a decision on his long-term future, insisting he’s only just been re-elected and is working on a series of big projects.
Yet in politics nothing stands still. And the quiet conversations have already begun. Who will succeed Sadiq Khan as Labour’s mayoral candidate — and therefore favourite to be elected to the capital’s top job?
Paid subscribers can find out below, including some names that may surprise you.
London Standard editor’s luxury side hustle
The Saudi Arabian-backed Evening Standard was reborn last week as the weekly “London Standard”, with half its staff made redundant in the process. In last week’s pre-launch edition of London Centric, we confronted part-owner Lord Lebedev over whether he had been fair to departing employees. He said modest redundancy payments were justified because “those jobs wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t there”.
One person who has not been struggling for work is Dylan Jones, the Standard’s editor. He has been moonlighting as “consultant editor” on Aston Martin’s in-house customer magazine, advising the luxury car brand on editorial strategy and writing uniformly glowing pieces about its vehicles.
In one copy of the magazine Jones describes driving an Aston Martin DB12 (starting price £191,000) to the The Maybourne Riviera hotel in the hills above Monaco, where he is greeted by "admiring glances and looks of unbridled lust". A two-night stay in a junior suite at the hotel starts at £4,200, more than some Evening Standard staff were offered as a redundancy payment.
"Anyone who has ever spent any serious time in luxury hotels knows that your expectations rise with each subsequent experience,” wrote Jones. “We get so used to being pampered that we often actively seek out minor faults, imagine unintentional micro aggressions, or simply assume the tea you ordered for breakfast won't be the way you get it in London."
In another edition Jones was flown to Las Vegas to promote a 90-second advert for Aston Martin shown on a giant orb before a Formula 1 race. Casting a critical eye on the paid-for promotion, he wrote: "For some, watching the ad reveal was as exciting as watching the race itself."
He also took time off from holding London’s powerbrokers to account in order to describe the feeling of driving an Aston Martin: "I felt as though I could press the screen and play the new Chemical Brothers track while turning on the washing machine at home, while also imagining I was about to compete at Le Mans. That’s how this car is meant to make you feel. And that’s precisely how it made me feel.”
Sadiq Khan, intent on pedestrianising Oxford Street, travelled to New York last week and met the transport commissioner who banned traffic from Times Square. Her name? Janette Sadik-Khan.
Beat the Euston dash
Overcrowding at Euston station received substantial press coverage over the last week, as London’s worst rail terminus struggled to cope with crowds during a series of weather-related cancellations. Independent watchdog Travelwatch issued a warning about overcrowding, while the Labour and Conservative political party conferences were held in cities reached from Euston, meaning cabinet ministers and irate newspaper editors were caught up in the chaos.
The “Euston dash” — the few minutes between a platform being announced and the train departing, in which desperate passengers run to grab a seat — has become a way of life for many travellers. Yet there is another way. Because (and forgive the conspiracy theorist language) the railway authorities really are keeping the truth from you.
Next time you’re at Euston or another busy London railway station, look out for the small groups of people who are ignoring the departure boards and are instead standing by the gates to the platforms, repeatedly refreshing their phones. They’re checking raw railway industry data feeds, accessible via niche sites such as RealTimeTrains, which give details of a train’s platform before it’s formally announced. Simply key in your departure details, do your best to slip through the barrier, and claim your painfully expensive seat before the rest of the travelling public even starts dashing.
The omerta on this trick is strong. But if you didn’t know already, well, now you do.
No more night mayor puns
There are no immediate plans to replace Sadiq Khan’s night czar Amy Lamé, according to sources at City Hall, raising questions over whether the job, tasked with securing the future of London’s nightlife, functions in its current form.
The 6Music presenter stood down from her £132,000-a-year job yesterday, following an eight-year stint in which her role attracted both legitimate criticism and unhinged personal hatred as many venues closed.
The gripe at City Hall is that they over-promised with the role given the mayor’s limited powers. This meant Lamé was doomed from the off, with late-night licensing decisions largely in the hands of local councils. At the same time post-Brexit post-Covid staff shortages mean many venues can’t financially justify paying people to work the bars until the early hours. The future of the small team who worked with Lamé on nighttime policy is subject to a future review.
The passenger is always wrong
Talking of Euston, if you’ve ever been annoyed by the decision to replace the old departure board with an enormous advertising screen then you’re actually an unwitting victim of nudge theory.
In the past the station was overcrowded with a wall of passengers standing in front of one single enormous departure board. Now, as these Network Rail before-and-after heat maps show, the station is mildly less crowded because everyone is forced to wander around to look at one of the much smaller departure boards.
This bodge is, of course, easier and cheaper than just spending the money to fix the station properly.
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All feedback, both positive and critical, is appreciated. There’s a whole range of London Centric stories on the way: sad, fascinating, funny, and ultimately all about the humans who make London. And if you’ve got a story that needs investigating, get in touch.
Who comes after Sadiq?
Ask London’s Labour establishment who will replace Sadiq Khan as the party’s mayoral candidate and you’ll be met with awkward mumbling. For a start, there isn’t any formal vacancy: the mayor has pledged to see out his full term and is busy announcing legacy-building policies. A source close to Khan said “his sole focus is on continuing to build a fairer, safer and greener London for everyone”.
But, quietly, the conversations are beginning to take place within the party about what comes next. One prominent London Labour figure said it is “incredibly” unlikely that Khan will run for a fourth term.
And if you’re an ambitious Labour politician who wants that nomination, you need to start planning now.
Securing the Labour nomination doesn’t mean you’ve secured the job in City Hall — the Tories in particular will chuck everything at the next election — but it certainly makes it yours to lose.
This is what you need to know about a contest you probably didn’t realise was underway.
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