Evening Standard comment: Sadiq seeks to speak for the City on Brexit

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The Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has suggested that the Prime Minister, Theresa May, should delay triggering Article 50, effectively kickstarting Britain’s divorce from the EU, until after the French and German elections next year. That way, he feels, the countries’ leaders will be less inclined to talk tough in order to court favour with their electorates and will, instead, be inclined to take a more co-operative and mutually beneficial stance. It’s obviously a sensible course — except that the drive to expedite divorce proceedings does not come from Mrs May but from François Hollande and, to a lesser extent, Angela Merkel. It is they who want to conclude the issue as soon as possible.

Still, it is right and proper that Mr Khan should be engaged with the question, since he represents London and in particular, the interests of the City. And even though he is a Labour mayor he has quite rightly sought to protect the City. It will help morale in the financial sector that the Mayor is a visible and prominent champion of its post-Brexit interests; the settlement we strike with the EU on financial services is perhaps the most crucial element of the entire Brexit deal. Mr Khan must here make common cause with David Davis, the minister with overall responsibility for Brexit.

It also does Mr Khan no harm in his party that he constitutes an altogether independent centre of power from that of the official Labour leadership. At a time when the official Opposition seems to have excluded itself from the business of scrutinising legislation and holding the Government to account, it is salutary that the party has at least one representative who exercises actual power and does it responsibly and in a non-partisan fashion. It will be interesting to see how this plays at Labour’s party conference in October. Mr Khan’s own prospects can only be advanced by his inclusive approach to the mayoralty.

Dealing with drones

The prospect of parcel delivery by drones, aided by artificial intelligence, is undeniably exciting but most of us will feel an element of foreboding too. The prospect of the air above our heads being peppered with small flying objects does raise hopes for less congested streets but also fears about what may happen if things go wrong. Ed Leon Klinger, the co-founder of a Clerkenwell company, Flock, which creates software to analyse potential obstacles in the path of drones, tells this paper today that we can look forward to drones operating on scheduled routes and times in the busiest parts of the city. At present, there are tough no-fly rules in London which bar them flying within 150 metres of congested buildings.

Yet Amazon is working with the Civil Aviation Authority on the delivery of parcels by drone, including operations beyond the line of sight, obstacle avoidance and the possibility of one person operating several drones. Drones are part of our future normal way of life but what matters is that the legal and regulatory environment in which they operate should be established at the outset, to minimise concerns over safety and privacy. There may need to be a separate regulatory body to ensure that this happens. As Mr Klinger observes, drones can and do fall out of the sky: let’s prepare for the unexpected now.

Holidays on the rails

Hard on the heels of the RMT strike on Southern, the union announces a seven-day strike on Eurostar, including the bank holiday weekend. So those passengers who were thwarted getting to work may now be stymied going on holiday too. Is it too much to ask that the RMT remembers that it is meant to serve passengers, not punish them?

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