Daniel Wild is a former Conservative political adviser who advised on the 2024 general election and party leadership campaigns. He is now a director of St Michael Advisory and helps run Conservative Business Network.
At the height of summer, I decided to brave Battersea Power Station for lunch with a friend. Passengers from an overcrowded Northern Line train piled into the gates like sardines, and, as usual, I was in a rush to get through and make a break for the stairs. As I got ready to tap my card and deliver my £3 to Mayor Khan’s TfL, I noticed a man standing close behind me, ready to accompany me through the barrier.
Not in a kindly, chaperoning way, you understand, but to piggyback on my fare. Usually, I’m only privileged enough to watch people push through the barriers, but this time I was getting a live demonstration. So, I stopped dead and offered for my fellow traveller to go ahead. He did not.
Instead, he lingered to wait for the next unsuspecting traveller, which prompted me to raise my concerns with the six, on-duty TfL staff standing not two metres away. They said “we can’t do anything.” Five of them returned to their jovial conversation, and the sixth returned to their phone to what looked like an intense round of Candy Crush.
My response to them is very much the message of my comment today: what is the point?
Just this week, upon exiting the humid Bakerloo line, I watched two young men drenched in designer clothes push through the barriers, eating fast food from a chain where you can’t so much as breathe without spending £20 a head. They were met with a subtle glance from the TfL worker, who was deep in his phone. Given the pricey food and what looked like thousands of pounds’ worth of apparel, it clearly wasn’t a financial decision. So, what is it? Ignorance? Arrogance? Or simply the by-product of a regime in London that doesn’t care about people who work hard and pay their way?
And this is no victimless nuisance. TfL admits fare dodging costs it at least £190 million a year, and possibly as much as £211 million. That’s more than the £168 million it expects to raise from this year’s fare rises. In other words, those of us who tap in are paying more to cover those who don’t.
On the Tube, one journey in every twenty now goes unpaid. According to City Hall Conservatives, the rate across the network has more than doubled since Sadiq Khan took office, while prosecutions have roughly halved since before the pandemic.
This is the reality across London. Picture a new graduate living in what is more like an HMO than a house share. They’re getting hammered by the taxman and prepping another low-cost meal to save cash, then shuttling on a roasting hot Tube to and from work to see someone push through the barrier with no urgency or concern at all, because they know nothing will happen. What is the point?
The social contract in the capital is utterly broken. Hard-working people pay into a welfare system that should be a safety net, not a free ride, then get the privilege of watching others push through a Tube barrier, skip out of a supermarket with a bag of food or hotwire a rental bike.
Young professionals could be the floating voters of this city, if any party bothered to fight for them. The Conservatives have given young Londoners little reason to listen in recent years, but the issues they care about are right in front of us. Every borough from Barnet to Wandsworth has small offences piling up across its daily life, and people are crying out for someone to be on their side. Whoever the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London turns out to be, they must put tackling these day-to-day injustices at the forefront of their campaign.
On fare dodging, that means gate upgrades, and real enforcement powers for the people on the gates, not just a show of force at Westminster whenever the journalists are watching. That would help keep costs down for those of us who pay our way.
But it must be part of a fresh offer to young people, or they will lose faith altogether. Fairness at the barrier means little if the rest of the deal is still rigged against them. Make our streets cleaner and safer, so that walking home from the station doesn’t feel like a gamble. Build homes and build them now, so that a decent salary buys more than a box room in a shared flat. And modernise our Tube system so the daily commute stops feeling like a punishment for going to work.
Enforce the rules and make the rewards real. Dare I say, bring “hope in every heart” to every hard-working Londoner.
Because right now, they’re all asking the same question: what is the point?
It’s time for the Conservatives to answer that.
Daniel Wild is a former Conservative political adviser who advised on the 2024 general election and party leadership campaigns. He is now a director of St Michael Advisory and helps run Conservative Business Network.
At the height of summer, I decided to brave Battersea Power Station for lunch with a friend. Passengers from an overcrowded Northern Line train piled into the gates like sardines, and, as usual, I was in a rush to get through and make a break for the stairs. As I got ready to tap my card and deliver my £3 to Mayor Khan’s TfL, I noticed a man standing close behind me, ready to accompany me through the barrier.
Not in a kindly, chaperoning way, you understand, but to piggyback on my fare. Usually, I’m only privileged enough to watch people push through the barriers, but this time I was getting a live demonstration. So, I stopped dead and offered for my fellow traveller to go ahead. He did not.
Instead, he lingered to wait for the next unsuspecting traveller, which prompted me to raise my concerns with the six, on-duty TfL staff standing not two metres away. They said “we can’t do anything.” Five of them returned to their jovial conversation, and the sixth returned to their phone to what looked like an intense round of Candy Crush.
My response to them is very much the message of my comment today: what is the point?
Just this week, upon exiting the humid Bakerloo line, I watched two young men drenched in designer clothes push through the barriers, eating fast food from a chain where you can’t so much as breathe without spending £20 a head. They were met with a subtle glance from the TfL worker, who was deep in his phone. Given the pricey food and what looked like thousands of pounds’ worth of apparel, it clearly wasn’t a financial decision. So, what is it? Ignorance? Arrogance? Or simply the by-product of a regime in London that doesn’t care about people who work hard and pay their way?
And this is no victimless nuisance. TfL admits fare dodging costs it at least £190 million a year, and possibly as much as £211 million. That’s more than the £168 million it expects to raise from this year’s fare rises. In other words, those of us who tap in are paying more to cover those who don’t.
On the Tube, one journey in every twenty now goes unpaid. According to City Hall Conservatives, the rate across the network has more than doubled since Sadiq Khan took office, while prosecutions have roughly halved since before the pandemic.
This is the reality across London. Picture a new graduate living in what is more like an HMO than a house share. They’re getting hammered by the taxman and prepping another low-cost meal to save cash, then shuttling on a roasting hot Tube to and from work to see someone push through the barrier with no urgency or concern at all, because they know nothing will happen. What is the point?
The social contract in the capital is utterly broken. Hard-working people pay into a welfare system that should be a safety net, not a free ride, then get the privilege of watching others push through a Tube barrier, skip out of a supermarket with a bag of food or hotwire a rental bike.
Young professionals could be the floating voters of this city, if any party bothered to fight for them. The Conservatives have given young Londoners little reason to listen in recent years, but the issues they care about are right in front of us. Every borough from Barnet to Wandsworth has small offences piling up across its daily life, and people are crying out for someone to be on their side. Whoever the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London turns out to be, they must put tackling these day-to-day injustices at the forefront of their campaign.
On fare dodging, that means gate upgrades, and real enforcement powers for the people on the gates, not just a show of force at Westminster whenever the journalists are watching. That would help keep costs down for those of us who pay our way.
But it must be part of a fresh offer to young people, or they will lose faith altogether. Fairness at the barrier means little if the rest of the deal is still rigged against them. Make our streets cleaner and safer, so that walking home from the station doesn’t feel like a gamble. Build homes and build them now, so that a decent salary buys more than a box room in a shared flat. And modernise our Tube system so the daily commute stops feeling like a punishment for going to work.
Enforce the rules and make the rewards real. Dare I say, bring “hope in every heart” to every hard-working Londoner.
Because right now, they’re all asking the same question: what is the point?
It’s time for the Conservatives to answer that.