The French have a history of taking to the streets in large numbers and engaging in all sorts of protest related activity when they are displeased with the actions of their government. They are currently protesting vehemently about plans by French President Emmanuel Macron to raise the retirement age and these protests have been both nationwide and extremely violent.

The British however tend to just ‘tut tut’ at egregious behaviour by government and not engage in serious protest nor direct action, preferring instead to voice their views via the ballot box. However the blogger Longrider has pointed out that the arrogant behaviour of Greater London Mayor Sadiq Khan, might be making the British a lot more like the French. I can see why as in Khan we have similar arrogance as we’ve seen in the French President when he ignored consultation results that showed that Londoners did not want the Ultra Low Emission Zone extended.

Longrider quoted from a Daily Mail article about Londoners taking direct action against ULEZ cameras and added his own comments.

Longrider quoted the Daily Mail which said:

Opponents of London’s ULEZ expansion have launched a guerilla war against the very cameras that will be used to police the controversial scheme.

Shopping bags and cardboard boxes have started to appear over the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras set up by Transport for London (TfL) across the capital.

More than 300 ANPR devices have been recently installed, while a total of 2,750 are due to be added in time for the official ULEZ expansion launch date on August 29 later this year.

A box placed over a camera by one vigilante was had the words ‘stop electing idiots’ printed on its side.

Longrider commented on these actions by saying:

In some cases, they have gone further, damaging or removing them completely. While I abhor vandalism as a principle, in this case we have a dictatorial Mayor who is acting outside of his authority, who pre-empted the consultation and then ignored the results. A man who is determined to remove the right of citizens to drive around freely to satisfy his own twisted ideology. When peaceful means do not work, then yes, direct action may become necessary. And, no, this does not mean that I now agree with Extinction Rebellion.

It’s the ignoring the wishes of those who elected him that are the key point here. People would have probably been perfectly willing to work within the law and within the political structures to stop the ULEZ extension, but Khan made that route impossible by ignoring the results of a consultation that didn’t go his way. I’m with Longrider on the deploring vandalism thing but Khan has ignored the wishes of Londoners to not have a ULEZ extension which means that other forms of fighting back against this project will start to emerge.

Longrider added:

Firstly, the ULEZ principle needs to be abolished in its entirety, closely followed by elected mayors. The role of mayor should be nothing more than ceremonial, opening libraries and such, so a member of the council can take the role as was always the case before this insane practice took over. No one person should have this level of power, because as we have seen here, it will be abused. And can we run Khan out of town on the end of a pitchfork, please?

I agree with Longrider on the issue of ULEZ. The principle needs to be abandoned. It is little to do with cleaning the air and everything to do with control and revenue raising. Also at one point I could see a point in regional elected mayors who could steer their areas to development and prosperity, but this is not how they’ve turned out. Elected mayors as Longrider says has concentrated power into far too few hands and in some cases, such as with Khan, hands that really should not have that level of power. Longrider’s argument against elected regional mayors is a good one and I can see now how they are an affront to the idea of democracy. Too often with these regional mayors you get a situation where they are elected on very low turnouts of potential electorates which means that small groups of motivated extremists can get their man or woman in post and institute policies that are to the detriment of the majority. Looking at Khan and many of the other examples of other locally elected strongmen, I find I can no longer support the idea or principle of elected mayors with excessive amounts of political power.

If there’s any lesson to be garnered from what is happening in London is that when politicians shit on the people from a great height, some of the people will be angry enough to want to fling some of the shit back at the politicians. Maybe Longrider is correct and that Britons are going a bit ‘French’ and if that is the case then it may make for a very interesting political world to come.