Sadiq’s new emissions tax means private hire vehicles will need to pay the Congestion Charge of up to £11.50 per day when driving in the central London “Ultra Low Emission Zone”. As a result from today a £1 central London fee will be added to every Uber trip that starts, ends or passes through the city centre. Khan’s tax is being passed directly on to consumers, it will also hike costs for London’s shops and accelerate the shift to online retailers, which is why the Taxpayers’ Alliance dubs his charge zone an “Ultra Low Enterprise Zone”.

Khan says it is to combat air pollution. In which case it is irrelevant to the rapidly improving trend:

Despite a growing population air pollution in London was 900% higher within living memory. So what is he trying to achieve? He’s raising revenue to splurge for his re-election. Car drivers in the suburbs don’t vote for him and businesses don’t have votes, so he calculates he can tax ’em without losing votes.

In fact across the UK Britain is getting cleaner air at rapid rate. Khan’s tax is neither here nor literally there.Every time Guido gets into an Uber he’ll curse Khan’s tax. So will Londoners…

The Labour administration that runs Brighton and Hove City council has revoked Uber’s licence to operate in the city. They are citing a 2016 data breach by American hackers to declare that Uber do not meet the fit and proper persons test. Uber will appeal, if they lose Brighton residents will no longer be able to use the taxi app. Socialism isn’t cool, kids…

Stingy Jared O’Mara tipped his Uber driver just £1 – and then claimed it on expenses. A look through the absent Sheffield Hallam MP’s latest expenses records shows that last year, back when he was still turning up to work, Jared spent nearly £900 of taxpayers’ money on Uber journeys in just a couple of months. One driver back in August clearly deserved five stars because Jared deemed him worthy of a generous £1 tip. Which he swiftly then claimed back on expenses.

Using Uber is probably a worse crime than his internet postings in the eyes of the Corbynista-controlled Labour disputes panel…

Ilford Labour MP Wes Streeting is all over the TV hailing the Uber ban and reeling off lines attacking the company. Viewers aren’t being informed that in July Streeting took £7,500 from the GMB union which has been leading the campaign against Uber.

London Labour MPs hurting their constituents to please their union paymasters…

Faced with the choice between 3.5 million Londoners and his taxi union backers, Sadiq chose the unions. Khan promised he would not be a mayor for vested interests, well he has just hit Londoners in the pocket to please his GMB union backers who have been running the campaign against Uber. And he has delighted his militant LTDA union chum Steve Macnamara:

Londoners seeing first hand what a Labour mayor in hoc to the unions does for them…

Extraordinary decision. 3.5 million Londoners and 40,000 drivers use Uber, Sadiq is now going to have to explain to them why they are out of a job and out of pocket. Khan pays back the taxi unions who put him in City Hall…

The Tories say:

“This is a hugely damaging decision by Sadiq Khan that will effectively put 40,000 people out of work at the click of a finger. The Mayor consistently tells us London is open but in shutting down the operations of an innovative market leader like Uber he has caused immense reputational damage to our city as a global business hub.”

UPDATE II:Uber will challenge the decision in the courts. Their statement:

“3.5 million Londoners who use our app, and more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on Uber to make a living, will be astounded by this decision. By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice. If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport. To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts… This ban would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers.”

UPDATE III:Khan points out it was TfL’s decision but he backs it:

“All companies in London must play by the rules and adhere to the high standards we expect – particularly when it comes to the safety of customers. Providing an innovative service must not be at the expense of customer safety and security. I fully support TfL’s decision – it would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners’ safety and security. Any operator of private hire services in London needs to play by the rules.”

George Osborne has defended his employer BlackRock’s half-a-billion pound investment on the front page of the Evening Standard. In the most glaring conflict of interest since his editorship began, today’s Standard blasts Rebecca Long-Bailey as “out of touch” for criticising Uber, and favourably quotes her own colleagues who support the taxi app. BlackRock, which invested in Uber in 2014, has a stake now worth some £500 million. BlackRock pays Osborne a salary of £600,000 for 48 days work per year.

BlackRock keeps Osborne on retainer and it is in BlackRock’s direct financial interests to see Uber defended, Osborne will no doubt argue that he defends Uber on the Evening Standard front page for liberal reasons. Guido did warn him that as editor he would have to navigate a minefield of conflicted interests when he took the job. This was inevitable…

UPDATE:The first edition of the Standard had no mention of Uber on the front page. Second edition splashed it. Did someone pick up the phone to the editor?

This morning Guido was driven in an Uber by a student who liked the work because he could log on whenever he had spare time and whenever he liked. Choice, convenient for buyer and seller. Corbyn’s authoritarian Labour would run them off the road…

You spend your entire adult life defending unionised workers and what do you get to show for it? Last night poor old Owen Jones was nearly knocked off his bike by a dangerous black cab driver, who then wound down the window and told him: “I f***ing love it when you cyclists die”.

By contrast last night Guido took an Uber home in peace, no grief from any self-entitled unionised loudmouth…

Labour are seeking to enshrine Friday’s hotly-contested ruling that Uber drivers are workers entitled to various benefits from the owners of the app. Shadow Culture minister Louise Haigh has put down an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill to enshrine the ruling, despite it still being subject to an appeal from Uber. Haigh’s amendment potentially affects other companies which use apps in similar ways, meaning thousands of other people would become ’employees’ of the apps they use. For example, self-employed black cab drivers who use Hailo or Gett would become employees of their apps. This is a completely nonsensical proposal from Labour: someone could be logged into Uber, Hailo, Gett and Deliveroo at the same time and be eligible for a minimum wage from all of them…

Sadiq Khan has caved in to the taxi unions and awarded black cab drivers a staggering £65 million taxpayer subsidy, 100 new taxi ranks across London and the installation of 90 highly expensive rapid chargers, which electric private hire vehicles will not be allowed to use. At the same time the Mayor is forcing new red tape on private hire drivers, including “advanced driving” and written English tests which black cab drivers will not have to take. So how did the taxi unions end up getting everything they wanted?

Khan’s “action plan” contains 27 measures, almost identical to the 28 measures in the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association manifesto. The day before the plan was published the Deputy Mayor for Transport took part in a photo op with the head of the LTDA. Sadiq himself met the head of the LTDA on his hundreth day in office. By contrast Uber has not been consulted on any of the new measures – indeed the Deputy Mayor for Transport has ignored two invitations to meet Uber drivers. It’s notable that the LTDA are the only people outside City Hall and TfL in today’s press release – it’s clear that they have been heavily involved in drawing this up while private hire firms have been shunned. Sadiq promised he would be a Mayor who doesn’t give in to vested interests. Instead he’s capitulated to the taxi unions. Rather than level the playing field by reducing regulations on cabbies, he’s slapped red tape on the innovators who make travelling across the capital so much cheaper and easier for passengers…

Karhoo is the new challenger to Uber, offering a “marketplace” for existing minicab firms to compete for your lift. Announcing its expansion today in Parliament, a gathering of taxi firm operators, politicians, and even a GMB representative turned up to hear the British CEO Daniel Ishag talk-up the firm’s three to five minute wait time in central London. The GMB private hire drivers’ union is this week challenging Uber over workers’ pay in the Central London Tribunal. Acting as an aggregator for minicabs, Karhoo is seeking to get around all the difficult TfL regulations, letting cab firms sort it out for themselves. Karhoo handing out £25 gift cards for MPs in attendance doesn’t do them any harm, either…

Isabel Oakeshott’s write up of working the room with Arron Banks at the White House Correspondents Dinner is filled with nuggets. She reveals the Uber app comms chief Rachel Whetstone is backing Brexit:

“Hovering at entrance to the 30,000-square-foot ballroom, we are surprised to bump into David Cameron’s former policy chief Steve Hilton, now US-based. He greets us exuberantly but his wife Rachel Whetstone looks like she’s swallowed a fly. She warms up when Hoey gets her talking about Brexit, saying she supports Out and wishes she could do more for the cause. Hilton keeps his powder dry but I know he was deeply unimpressed by Obama’s intervention in the debate.”

Whetstone’s grandfather Antony Fisher founded the IEA and the ASI. She is also of course married to Steve Hilton and is one of the PM’s closest friends…

Yesterday Guido had a look at how Action for Cabbies are looking to raise £600,000 to mount a legal challenge to TFL’s plans for mandatory card readers in black cabs. Under the proposals drivers would be forced to install a fixed card reading unit in the passenger compartment of their vehicle, bringing an end to the “Sorry, cash only guv” era. Action for Cabbies don’t seem best pleased by this, and the group’s protest has stood in sharp opposition to the LTDA’s call for a “taxi revolution”, with card readers and WiFi in every hackney carriage. So what’s it all about?

It turns out that the anger of Action for Cabbies isn’t focused on the principle of installing of card readers, they object to TFL’s restrictive proposals for how they should be installed. Most significantly, under the plans cabbies would not be able to pass on card processing fees to passengers as they can currently. This could cost each cab driver a proportion of their income, and is a restriction that virtually no other industry in the UK has to operate under. That is including private hire firms. Guido is for cabs having cards in them, however it doesn’t seem very fair to restrict the choice of cabbies and prevent them passing on costs to the consumer if they want to. Though if they do, it won’t help them compete with Uber…

The black cabbies’ union has launched a PR offensive to convince Londoners they are willing to modernise, vowing to spark “London’s taxi revolution” with super-fast wifi, credit card payments and ranks outside night tube stops. All sensible, consumer-friendly suggestions from the black cab industry, which needs to innovate to keep up with the competition. […] Read the rest

Quote of the Day

“I have worked with him when he was Foreign Secretary. I will work with whoever the Prime Minister is. I haven’t had a phone call yet to ask me to run his campaign in Scotland. I am not expecting the call. But I will genuinely judge him on the same criteria as I judge any of the candidates.”