Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

• THE Conservatives have launched their campaign for the London elections next year with campaign literature for their Barnet & Camden candidate Julie Redmond falling through letterboxes.

This leaflet has the audacity to claim that her priorities will be safety on our streets and cleaning up London’s air.

This from the party that has overseen £700million in cuts from the government to the Metropolitan Police Service.

That has seen the loss of a third of staff posts, two-thirds of police community support officer posts, and 114 police station front counters.

This from a party whose austerity programme has seen £1billion lost to youth services in England.

This from the party that weaponised a world-leading air quality improvement programme to win a by-election. Who put their desperate clinging on to power ahead of your children’s health.

This from the party so devoid of ideas and ambition after 13 years in government, that it is now more interested in taking the easy way out, retreating into conspiracy theories, dog-whistle politics, and a right-wing ideology that has made life unaffordable for millions in the last year.

Meanwhile Sadiq Khan as London mayor has ensured through a huge expansion of free school meals that primary schoolchildren in the capital this year won’t go hungry.

Who has added over 100 miles of cycle lanes and planted more than 100,000 trees to improve air quality.

And who has delivered the ULEZ, ultra low emission zone, expansion not because it was easy but because it was right.

I bumped into Julie Redmond as she was delivering leaflets. She seemed baffled that anyone could still be in support of Sadiq Khan.

Perhaps that is because the people of Camden know exactly where to look to understand the rise in knife crime, and exactly where to look to see ambitious, principled government.

SIMON LICKERT
Chair of Hampstead and Highgate Constituency Labour Party (Interim)