SYSTEMS / POWER
The Mayor Who Cannot Govern the City
London elects one leader.
Power remains scattered everywhere else.
Sadiq Khan is one of the most recognisable politicians in Britain.
When crime rises, he is blamed. When housing targets are missed, he is blamed. When a nightclub closes, a road is congested, a protest causes disruption or the Underground struggles, his name enters the argument.
It creates the impression that London is governed by one powerful executive sitting above the entire capital.
But London does not have one city government.
It has a Mayor and Greater London Authority, 32 borough councils, the City of London Corporation, the Metropolitan Police, national government, academy trusts, NHS bodies, planning authorities, licensing committees and a network of organisations exercising different parts of public power.
The Mayor stands in front of that system without commanding all of it.
Political responsibility is concentrated in one visible office. Executive authority is scattered throughout the state.
This is not an argument that Khan is powerless. He controls important organisations, spends substantial money and makes decisions carrying real consequences.
The question is whether those powers resemble what the title “Mayor of London” leads the public to imagine.
Two Mayors.
Two Kinds of Power.
A Strategic Authority
The Mayor sets strategies and controls selected London-wide organisations, but must negotiate with separate governments and institutions.
London’s mayor inherits a negotiation.A Municipal Executive
The Mayor appoints commissioners and directs a unified city administration delivering major municipal services across five boroughs.
New York’s mayor inherits an administration.A Mayor of Strategies
The Greater London Authority was created in 2000. It was not designed as a conventional municipal government replacing London’s boroughs.
It was layered above them.
The Mayor produces London-wide strategies covering transport, spatial planning, housing, policing, economic development, environment, culture, fire and resilience.
He also controls or oversees Transport for London, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, the London Fire Commissioner and mayoral development corporations.
These are substantial powers.
But the Mayor does not run most everyday municipal services across London.
London-Wide Strategy
- Transport for London
- Strategic planning
- Police priorities and oversight
- Fire governance
- Selected housing programmes
- Economic and environmental strategies
Everyday Government
- Local planning decisions
- Licensing
- Council housing
- Social care
- Waste collection
- Local roads and environmental health
Khan can publish a strategy supporting nightlife while a borough adopts a licensing policy working against it.
He can set a housing target without operating the planning departments deciding most applications.
He can be blamed for rubbish he does not collect, schools he does not run and councils he cannot command.
What Khan Controls—and What He Does Not
Transport
TfL, fares, buses, the Underground, the Overground, strategic roads, taxis, congestion charging and ULEZ.
Planning
The London Plan, strategic targets and intervention in certain major applications—but not most everyday planning decisions.
Policing
Strategy, priorities, budget and accountability through MOPAC—but not direct operational command of officers.
Housing
Strategies, targets and funded programmes—but delivery depends on boroughs, developers, landowners and national government.
Education
City Hall can coordinate and fund initiatives, but the Mayor does not operate a unified London school system.
Local Services
Waste, social care, licensing, local roads, libraries and environmental health largely remain with councils.
A Budget Is Not Fiscal Power
Billions on a spreadsheet do not equal billions available for the Mayor to spend however he chooses.
City Hall announces a multibillion-pound consolidated budget because the figure includes the entire GLA group: TfL, policing, fire services, City Hall programmes, development corporations, capital investment and borrowing.
That is not a giant discretionary fund sitting on the Mayor’s desk.
Much of it is committed to salaries, pensions, debt, contracts and existing services. Some comes from fares. Some is borrowed for approved capital projects. Some arrives through grants restricted to particular purposes.
Khan can make significant choices inside that framework. He cannot casually remove billions from Underground operations and redirect them into social housing, nightlife policing or social care.
London Cannot Freely Fund London
The Mayor’s principal revenue levers include a mayoral council-tax precept, a share of retained business rates, TfL fares, congestion and emissions charges, commercial income, nationally regulated borrowing and government grants.
That is a narrow collection of tools for a capital producing such a large share of Britain’s economic activity.
- Set the GLA council-tax precept
- Set many TfL fares
- Operate road-user charges
- Allocate GLA-group budgets
- Borrow within statutory limits
- Spend approved government grants
- A London income tax
- A London corporation tax
- A general London sales tax
- A redesigned property tax
- A land-value tax
- Unlimited municipal borrowing
Even council tax is not a London tax designed by City Hall. The Mayor adds a precept to an antiquated national system he cannot fundamentally reform.
Business rates are equally revealing. London generates vast commercial-property revenue, but national government controls the framework, valuations, reliefs, retention and redistribution.
The Mayor controls where portions of London’s money are spent. Westminster controls the system through which much of that money reaches him.
This is dependency disguised as devolution.
Central government can restrict a grant, refuse a new revenue power or attach conditions to a financial rescue. The political consequences still land on the Mayor because Londoners see him standing in front of the service.
A Wider Tax Base.
A Clearer Administration.
New York’s mayor is not financially sovereign. The city remains constrained by New York State, the City Council, federal funding, debt rules and balanced-budget requirements.
But New York City has access to a much broader municipal revenue system, including property taxes, a city personal-income tax, sales taxes, business taxes, fees, grants and municipal borrowing.
The mayor proposes the executive budget and directs an administration delivering schools, policing, sanitation, housing enforcement, fire services and other everyday functions.
Neither city is sovereign.
Only one mayor resembles the executive leader most people
imagine.
Targets Without Housing Power
Housing is where the illusion of mayoral authority becomes particularly obvious.
Khan publishes strategies, announces programmes and sets targets through the London Plan. When those targets are missed, the response is predictable: the Mayor promised homes and failed to deliver them.
But who controls the housing system?
Sets strategy, targets and selected funding programmes.
Determine most applications and operate council housing.
Decide when consented projects remain financially viable.
Control whether land is released and at what price.
Controls national law, grants, taxation and Right to Buy.
The Mayor can fund affordable housing through programmes supported substantially by central-government grants. He can negotiate, establish strategic targets and intervene in certain major planning applications.
He cannot command 32 boroughs to build. He cannot force private developers to construct every consented home. He cannot control mortgage rates or provide himself with an unlimited housing budget.
And he cannot abolish Right to Buy.
That exposes the contradiction at the centre of English housing policy.
Governments speak continuously about housing shortages while maintaining a system designed to transfer publicly owned homes into private ownership.
Councils are told to increase supply while existing public assets continue leaving the sector.
Some sold council homes eventually return to the rental market—except they are now privately owned and can cost the public more through housing support or temporary accommodation.
The state sells an asset at a discount. Social-housing stock declines. Waiting lists increase. Replacing the property costs more than the receipt generated by its sale. The replacement arrives years later—or never.
Scotland ended Right to Buy in 2016. Wales ended it in 2019. England continues operating the policy.
London’s Mayor cannot decide that the capital will protect its remaining council stock by following Scotland or Wales. That decision belongs to Parliament and national government.
Westminster controls the housing system.
City Hall inherits the housing target.
A target creates the appearance of power because it attaches a number to a politician.
But a target is not land. It is not planning permission, construction capacity, investment or a replacement for the council home that national policy allowed to be sold.
The Public Sees One Mayor
The system repeatedly produces the same political result.
Whitehall controls the principal tax system and much of the funding. Boroughs deliver many everyday services. Independent institutions retain operational authority.
The Mayor announces the strategy.
Because he is the only politician elected by the whole of London, he becomes the recognisable face of the final outcome.
This arrangement is politically useful to almost everyone except the public.
Central government can deny resources while blaming mayoral priorities. Boroughs can blame City Hall strategy. City Hall can blame borough delivery. Operational organisations can point to budgets and statutory limitations.
Every institution can explain its own limitation. Nobody must own the combined failure.
London’s Mayor Is Stronger on Transport
Mayoral Control
TfL gives the Mayor substantial direct influence over buses, the Underground, the Overground, fares, taxis, strategic roads and road-user charging.
State Control
The subway and much of the regional transport system sit under the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where New York State and its governor hold the decisive institutional influence.
New York’s mayor is not universally stronger.
Khan’s clearest executive power is transport.
What Can the Mayor Actually Do?
Is he permitted to act?
Does legislation give the Mayor the formal authority to make the decision?
Does the organisation answer to him?
Can the Mayor appoint its leadership and direct the machinery required to deliver?
Can he raise the money?
Can City Hall create or change revenue without seeking permission or funding from Whitehall?
Visibility Is Not Authority
Sadiq Khan has real power.
He is powerful over TfL, London-wide transport, strategic planning, police priorities and oversight, fire governance, mayoral development corporations and selected housing and economic programmes.
He is considerably weaker over schools, social care, local licensing, waste collection, most local roads, most council housing, everyday planning, independent taxation and operational policing.
New York’s mayor controls far more of the machinery normally associated with governing a city: departments, commissioners, schools, sanitation, policing and executive administration.
But New York’s mayor remains constrained by the City Council, New York State, federal law and the courts—and has less direct control over the subway than Khan has over London transport.
The problem is not simply whether Khan uses his existing powers well or badly.
The deeper problem is that Britain presents him as the leader of London without providing a government capable of governing London as one city.
City Hall receives targets without controlling every delivery body. It receives budgets without comprehensive fiscal independence. It receives responsibility for services whose money, rules or operations remain elsewhere.
London has a mayor powerful enough to blame—but not powerful enough to govern the whole city bearing his name.