Nigel Farage has predicted some outer London boroughs will want to hold referenda in future to decide whether they want to remain part of the city. The Reform UK Leader said there was a “very real debate” to be had over whether some of these boroughs should split from the capital.
The bold notion to remove some fringe boroughs from the remit of the Greater London Authority (GLA) was first posed by Alan Cook after he became Reform’s first directly elected council member in London last year.
Mr Farage discussed the idea of a GLA split himself when meeting Cllr Cook and other Reform supporters and candidates in Bromley this week. Speaking from the pub garden of the Bird in Hand in Gravel Road on April 8, he said: “Sitting in here now with all these blokes in the pub, does this feel like London? Not to me it doesn’t.
“Go further out to where I was born in TN16 3AA, it’s sheep farms. How is Sadiq Khan the Mayor of that? There was this massive land grab that happened in ’65 and I think there are some really serious reconsiderations of it.”
The GLA’s predecessor was the Greater London Council (GLC) and when it formed in 1965 it created the 32 London Boroughs that we still recognise today. When Greater London was established, parts of Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent and Surrey were all absorbed and made part of the capital.
Mr Farage thought the 2023 decision to expand ULEZ to cover all of London had made residents in car-reliant boroughs such as Bromley, Bexley and Havering rethink whether they wanted to remain in the city. He thought many residents, especially in Bromley, would want to rejoin Kent.
Mr Farage slammed the ULEZ expansion and said: “For zero environmental benefit, all we have done is we’ve basically taxed the poor. I don’t pay ULEZ because I’ve got a big income and a nice new car so I’m exempt, but my next door neighbours that are nearly 80 can’t afford a new car and they have to pay £12.50 [a day].
“It’s monstrous. It’s absolutely monstrous, a tax on the poor introduced by Sadiq Khan in Greater London and I think that’s led to the debate getting bigger and bigger.”
The Reform Leader thought if there was a sudden referendum in their area, 90 per cent of Biggin Hill residents would vote to return to Kent. Cllr Cook said it was an idea many in Biggin Hill had discussed with him, feeling hard done by with the ULEZ expansion as there isn’t even a train station there.
When asked whether Reform London Mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham would push for the GLA split if elected in 2028, Mr Farage said: “I won’t predict what she’s going to say, but I think there is a possibility of the outer London boroughs at some point in the next few years having a referendum on deciding on what they want their future to be.
“If she beats Khan, they might feel differently here. But I repeat the point, this does not feel like London, it never did and the same goes for Havering and Dagenham and hey, what about the old county of Middlesex? That was literally abolished. I promise you this is a debate for the future, and a very interesting one.”
As it has never occurred before, there is no existing legal mechanism that would allow for a London borough to split from the GLA. It would require an Act of Parliament for any borough to do so.
London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan dismissed the notion when Cllr Cook first suggested it last year. His office said he would continue to work “tirelessly” for every single one of the capital’s 32 boroughs.
