As Sadiq Khan frolics on billionaire pal’s gas-guzzling superyacht, Ulez is uncovered as a money-maker on the expense of hard-working Londoners

From Tilak’s Substack

Tilak Doshi

In a damning indictment published in the Daily Mail on Wednesday, researchers at the University of Birmingham have exposed the futility of expanding London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez), concluding that the scheme has brought no tangible benefits to London’s air quality.

Analyzing data before and after the Ulez launch in August 2023, which imposed a daily levy of £12.50 on older vehicles across Greater London, the study found no statistically significant drops in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) or particulate matter (PM2.5) levels. This revelation strips Khan’s project of any semblance of environmental benefits and exposes it as yet another attack on ordinary drivers. Ulez embodies the corruption of science in the service of profit exploitation and class struggle.

The Ulez Expansion: A Timeline of Overreach

Ulez’s origins date back to 2019, when Khan launched the program in central London, ostensibly to curb emissions from diesel and petrol cars and trucks in order to improve respiratory health. By 2021, it spread to the north and south county roads, attracting 3.8 million residents. The mega-expansion across Greater London in 2023, where pollution was even less of a problem – 1,500 square kilometers and nine million people – sparked anger that manifested itself in protests and sabotage.

This was no mere policy change; It involved the punitive imposition of burdensome taxes and fines on the car-dependent masses.

The London “Blade Runners” – a reference to the dystopian film – emerged as folk heroes in this resistance. Armed with tools from angle grinders to foam fillers, these activists have destroyed over 4,500 Ulez surveillance cameras since March 2023. Videos on

This revolt reflects broader European resistance to green mandates, from peasant revolts to voter revolts against eco-zealots. Mayor Khan touts Ulez as a lifeline against “toxic air”, claiming NO2 and PM2.5 have been reduced by 46% and PM2.5 by 41% since its introduction. But these figures are based on dubious counterfactual models, i.e. hypothetical assumptions about what “would have happened” if Ulez had not been deployed, rather than on real evidence.

The Birmingham study echoes previous findings from Imperial College: after 2019, PM2.5 has barely changed and NO2 has fallen a meager 3% – hardly the salvation promised.

London’s air has improved dramatically over the decades, thanks to a combination of deindustrialization, cleaner fuels and better internal combustion engines – not Khan’s greed. DEFRA data shows that pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, PM10 and PM2.5 have declined sharply since 1970, making Ulez’s marginal impact invisible given current trends.

The shady foundations of “No Linear Threshold” science

At the heart of Ulez is the No Linear Threshold (NLT) model, which is borrowed from radiation risk and applied to air pollution. It is assumed that every bit of pollutant, down to almost zero, causes damage. This extreme metric has led to WHO guidelines that classify even trace amounts of PM2.5 as deadly.

Such an approach to “security” has more to do with a belief in a human-hostile deep ecology, in which human presence can only distract from a pristine, untouched nature.

The Ulez Plan is a scientific sleight of hand that is turning into pseudoscience that threatens the economy and livelihoods. Nobel laureate John Clauser calls it a “dangerous corruption,” echoing climate and Covid hysteria – both of which stoke fear to justify centralized state control.

Far from being rigorous, the WHO’s assessments are based on arbitrary thresholds that are not supported by sound epidemiology. Studies report thousands of premature deaths from pollution, but ignore confounding factors such as poverty or lifestyle choices that are associated with the deaths they count. Real toxicological evidence points to the potential of hormesis – low doses can even benefit health – but the NLT standard remains and supports policies like Ulez.

Khan’s team invokes it to demand “social justice,” arguing that the poor suffer most from dirty air. But as Ross Clark noted in the Spectator, the dates don’t add up; Tube stations like Hampstead, which are deep underground, have port air 30 times worse than roads and yet escape scrutiny.

Worse, the mayor’s office funds its own research by commissioning reports from Imperial College that conveniently confirm Ulez’s virtues. Emails obtained by the Conservative Party under the Freedom of Information Act showed that Professor Frank Kelly of Imperial College London and Shirley Rodrigues, deputy mayor for the environment, appeared to be working together to “fight back” against other research published by the same university that did not support Ulez. The Conservatives accused Professor Kelly and Mr Khan’s office of a “shockingly cozy relationship”.

The pay-to-play dynamic reeks of bias. When the policymaker funds “science,” objectivity disappears. Independent studies, such as those from the University of Birmingham, reveal the emperor’s nakedness: no air quality wins, only economic problems.

Tax extortion: The real driver behind Ulez

If not health, then what? Follow the money. According to FOI requested data, Ulez has racked up over £70m in fines alone since its launch in 2019, despite Khan insisting it is “not about making money”. Transport for London (TfL) faces a £15 billion deficit and Ulez is helping to make up for this deficit by imposing fines on the vulnerable. In the first year of expansion, the company made a net profit of £450 million, much of this due to the £180 fines for non-payment, which hit low-income drivers hardest.

Tradesmen – plumbers, electricians – face ruinous costs for non-compliant vans; Mothers transporting children, as well as the elderly and disabled, are stranded without affordable transportation options. The sparse public transport outside London adds to the hardship. While Ulez wages war on the poor with its highly regressive taxes, the elites in their electric Teslas or high-end cars see no problem in maintaining their luxury beliefs.

Khan, co-chair of C40 Cities, preaches “climate justice” for the global south while squeezing London’s working and middle classes. C40 says it is focused on “fighting the climate crisis and advancing urban policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks.” Khan’s 2024 book “Breathe: How to Win a Greener World” sounds as hypocritical as most of the mayor’s other statements on “green” things. But the mayor’s hypocrisy collapses in the face of his lifestyle. While Londoners pay for an aging diesel car, Khan enjoys a birthday party on a £268 million superyacht – a gas-guzzling behemoth with a carbon footprint that rivals car fleets – owned by his billionaire friend and tycoon.

How do you advocate for “social justice” aboard a superyacht deck? It’s a stark reminder: rules for you, but not for me. Ulez fits the entire repertoire of actions in the war against British drivers: low-traffic neighborhoods, encroachments on cycle paths, high parking charges, speed limits of 20 miles per hour, putting up bollards and planters to restrict car traffic overall, and experimenting with zoning restrictions for 15-minute towns – all of which curtail freedom among green people pretexts.

London traffic speeds at 8-20 miles per hour, comparable to the speed of Roman chariots on the streets of Londinium, a regression over two millennia attributed to climate alarmism. Khan’s plans for London are in line with the World Economic Forum’s vision to reduce the global car fleet by 75% by 2050. In this coming neo-feudalism dreamed up by WEF technocrats, the 25% of remaining cars will be reserved for the ruling philosopher-kings and their apparatchiks.

The human toll

Over the years, with the introduction of stricter environmental regulations for motor vehicles, millions of perfectly functioning cars, vans and trucks end up in the scrapyard, and owners who are already in trouble find that they need a new bank loan to buy another vehicle just to go to work and pay the bank back for the last vehicle. Ulez’s regressive bite is profound: Gig workers, small businesses and families teeter on the financial edge as they pay bills that are becoming astronomical due to ever-increasing energy costs driven by subsidies and costs of green policies.

A 2017 study, free from green ideology and focused on health impacts, provided an estimate of the social costs of air pollution from cars in the United Kingdom. “Social costs” here refer to costs that include the health damage caused by car pollution. The amount for each car was found to be £25 per year or less. In other words, just two entrance fees to the Central London ULEZ would cover the social costs of this pollution for a whole year.

This reflects the follies of the Covid era: low-fatality risks are inflated to sow fear and undermine freedoms. Climate “science” is following suit with the “no linear threshold” model as a new pseudoscientific dogma. But as global air quality trends over the last half century show—smog was eliminated in Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York City in the 1970s—this hysteria is unwarranted. Lifespans extend and health improves without green interference.

Ulez is not a rescue for respiratory diseases; It is tax evasion disguised in corrupt science and a punitive attack on drivers. As London’s Blade Runners symbolize, resistance is growing. While Khan frolicks around in his pal’s superyacht, the average London driver is choking on fines. It’s time to demolish London’s Ulez building. The Daily Mail exposé, which reinforces longstanding criticism from skeptics, calls for accountability.

Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is the energy editor of the Daily Sceptic. He is an economist, member of the CO2 Coalition and former Forbes contributor. Follow him on Substack and X.

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