Sadiq Khan is spinning his plan to build on London’s green belt as a “radical change of approach”, but it’s nothing of the sort. It will have a very limited impact on housing starts during this mayoral term and may only add to the political heat around house building, says James Ford

Margaret Thatcher famously said that “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t”. As lessons in honest political communication go, what we might henceforth call ‘Thatcher’s Law’ is pretty fundamental. Last week, when the Mayor of London announced his decision to allow developers to build on the capital’s green belt, he felt compelled to describe the move as “a radical change of approach” about which he “needed to be honest with Londoners”. By applying Thatcher’s Law, we must conclude that if Sadiq Khan is telling people he is being radical and honest, then he is actually being neither of those things.

Rather than being “honest with Londoners”, Khan is actually pulling the wool over their eyes. He is trying to spin a spectacular U-turn as something bold and brave. Building on the green belt was previously a red line for the mayor. During his first run for City Hall, Khan told the Economist he was committed to protecting the green belt and one of his first planning decisions was to veto a green belt scheme for a football stadium and housing in Bromley. Whilst the green belt gets no mention in Sadiq’s most recent manifesto just weeks after his re-election last year

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