London Mayor Sadiq Khan Calls for UK to Rejoin EU’s Single Market

Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, speaks at a "Labour In For Britain" pro-remain campaign event
Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

London’s leftist mayor and arch-Remainer Sadiq Khan has called for the United Kingdom to ignore the democratically expressed will of the people and rejoin the European Union’s Single Market.

Rather than focus on the violent crime wave that has characterised his tenure in office, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has once again decided to relitigate the 2016 Brexit referendum and call for the UK to rejoin the EU’s Single Market.

While he said that he could not speak for the entire Labour Party he said that the left-wing opposition should be campaigning to rejoin the trading bloc, LBC reported.

“I believe we should. Spot on,” Mr Khan during the annual State of London debate, saying that he believes the decision to leave the European Union was the “biggest piece of self-inflicted harm ever done to a country.”

The statements came amid the ongoing dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol which essentially kept the British country inside the EU’s Single Market ostensibly to prevent the need for border checks on the island of Ireland. However, the British government has argued that EU red tape, regulations, and bad-faith implementation have effectively cut off Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

This week, the government in Westminister won a vote to have a second reading of the protocol re-casting, meaning that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government may be able to tear up the agreement by the end of the year.

Mayor Khan is not alone in his call to reverse the will of the people and scrap the results of the Brexit referendum. Indeed, even Tory Party bigwig Tobias Ellwood made the same demand earlier this month.

Ellwood, who is seen as one of the chief challengers in the House of Commons to the leadership position of Boris Johnson, said that in order to confront the cost of living and inflation crises, the UK should rejoin the Single Market under the Norway model, in which the country is not directly governed by Brussels but still has an agreement on the free movement of goods and people.

The Commons defence select committee chairman said that “radical thinking” was necessary and that “all these challenges would disappear if we dare to advance our Brexit model by rejoining the EU single market”.

It is dubious, however, if Remainers would be content with such a deal and would not later push for the UK to fully rejoin the bloc. It is also unclear how willing the European Union would be to accept the UK on Norway-style terms.

Meanwhile, Sadiq Khan was criticised on Wednesday by Minister for Policing Kit Malthouse in the House of Commons, accusing the leftist mayor of  “falling asleep at the wheel” in dealing with the rampant crime in the British capital.

Saying that Khan has “let the city down”, Malthouse said: “Teenage homicides in London were the highest they’ve ever been in the last year and 23 per cent of all knife crime takes place in London despite It having only 15 per cent of the UK population.

“The mayor must acknowledge that he has profound questions to answer, he cannot be passive and continue as he has, he must get a grip.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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