Proving the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day, Sir Sadiq Khan has finally ended up on the right side of a debate. The London mayor has picked a fight with the Soho Society, a ludicrously obstructionist residents group which recently voted to lobby Westminster City Council against all new licensing applications for bars and restaurants, including renewals. It’s hard to think of a more obscene example of Nimbyism than this.
If New York is the city that never sleeps, London is the city that is comatose by midnight
It prompted Khan to post this on social media: ‘Complaining about nightlife when you *checks notes* choose to live in Soho is like living in South Kensington and complaining about the museums. Or moving to Hackney and grumbling about creatives. Living in Richmond and hating green space. It’s all getting a bit silly, isn’t it?’ On reading the mayor’s words, a strange feeling came over me: did I actually find myself agreeing with Sadiq Khan for once?
Few groups embody the extent to which Britain’s planning and licensing laws favour vested interests more than the Soho Society. If you’ve ever found yourself in the West End later than half past ten in the evening and struggled to find anywhere for a nightcap, blame the Soho Society. For decades they have objected to almost every application to extend licensing hours, making it almost impossible to enjoy a late-night drink outside of a casino, nightclub or private member’s club.
Then, last month, the society voted to object as a matter of policy to all new bar and restaurant licence applications in Soho, as well as licence renewals and applications to operate beyond 11 p.m. core hours. Such lunacy was too much even for Khan, who described the group’s decision as ‘bad for London’ and promised to use new licensing powers to be granted to him by the government to help ‘protect venues’ and ‘extend London’s late-night offer’.
But while I welcome the mayor’s Damascene conversion to Yimbyism, I can’t help wondering: what’s taken him so long? From housing to licensing, Khan has been pathetically weak for more than a decade now. According to the mayor’s own official assessment of London’s housing need, the city requires around 66,000 new homes a year. The true figure is even higher if you use the government’s standard method, at around 88,000. And yet in 2024-25, only 4,170 new homes were started, down 72 per cent on the year before.
Given all of that, you might have thought Sadiq Khan would have spoken out when plans for close to a thousand new homes on a brownfield site in Peckham were recently rejected, but no. Or that he’d have publicly supported Barnet FC’s proposed new stadium, which would have seen the club return to the area it’s named after. Again, silence. Instead, those plans were rejected on the grounds that traffic, noise and matchday disruption would increase.
But perhaps most pathetic of all is Khan’s abandonment of the capital’s hospitality sector. If New York is the city that never sleeps, London is the city that is comatose by midnight. It speaks volumes that the mayor’s most notable contribution to London’s nighttime economy was the appointment of comedian, BBC broadcaster and member of a ‘queer nightlife collective’ Amy Lamé as Night Czar, for which she was paid an eye-watering £132,000 by the end of her term. And yet, during her eight years in post, the capital was overtaken by Liverpool and Birmingham in terms of night-time transactions. And it’s still almost impossible to get a pint in central London, much beyond 10.30 at night.
So while Khan’s outspoken criticism of the Soho Society is welcome, it is the laziest possible example of a principled stand. Anyone can see the absurdity of people who choose to live in London’s West End complaining about its nightlife. The real challenge is taking a position where competing local interests are more nuanced. London’s development needs have been under-served for years, and until we have a mayor who is prepared to upset large swathes of his voting base, nothing will change. Khan’s last-minute conversion to Yimbyism is too little, too late.
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