00:00Mayor Kahn, thank you so much for joining us at the Bloomberg City Lab event in Madrid.
00:04What message have you brought here to share with your fellow mayors?
00:07Well, firstly, the Bloomberg City Lab is fizzing with ideas.
00:10You've got more than 100 mayors there, those from the NGO, those from the private sector.
00:15And the theme of my speech today and the event I took place in was to discuss AI.
00:23We've announced today, Bloomberg Philanthropies, a new mayor's AI forum.
00:30Ten cities across the globe, five continents.
00:33We represent 100 million people.
00:36And we'll be working with the big tech companies, the AI companies, national legislators, businesses, to ensure AI works for
00:45us.
00:45The way I describe it is there are three groups of people.
00:50AI evangelists, who just think that's amazing.
00:53There are nothing to worry about at all, rose-tinted glasses.
00:56AI alarmists, just doom and gloom.
00:59AI is bad.
00:59It's a boogeyman.
01:00Be afraid of it.
01:01Or what I am, which is an AI realist.
01:04I understand there are huge advantages, huge possibilities, but also recognize there are some disadvantages.
01:11There are some perils we've got to navigate our way through.
01:13But the great news is cities are going to work together under the auspices of this mayor's AI forum to
01:21make sure it works for us.
01:23Turning to the topic of climate change, we've seen a lot of governments kind of backsliding on their climate change
01:29promises.
01:30Where do you think things stand when it comes to climate change?
01:33Is this something that you feel you absolutely still are committed to combating?
01:37Well, there's good news of this bad news.
01:40Look, President Trump in his second term is very similar to President Trump as he was in his first term.
01:46He walked away from the Paris Agreement, very unilateralist, doesn't accept man-made climate changes happening,
01:54almost punishing those of us taking action to address the climate emergency.
01:59That's the bad news.
01:59The great news is you've got some great mayors in America, great governors in America,
02:04really stepping up into the breach across the globe.
02:08The C40 group of mayors, 96 mayors from New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix, to Lisbon, London, Freetown, Dhaka, Cape Town,
02:19working together to turn this crisis of climate change into an opportunity.
02:24What do I mean?
02:24Can we use this as a way of creating new green jobs?
02:28Who's going to make the solar panels, the wind turbines?
02:31Who's going to plant the trees?
02:33Who's going to install the electric vehicle charging points?
02:35Who will make the electric vehicles?
02:37How do we turn the crisis of air pollution into clean air,
02:43making sure that people across the globe are breathing clean air?
02:46I'll give you an amazing stat, which is across the globe,
02:49more people die because of air pollution prematurely than tobacco.
02:54In London, we've reversed it with the world's largest clean air zone,
02:59with the largest number of electric taxis in Europe.
03:03And great cities across the globe, including America, great states in America, are also being bold.
03:09When we think about issues that a lot of cities are facing,
03:13housing is clearly an issue that is across the board for large cities.
03:18It's something that you've been trying to tackle.
03:20Some of your critics say that you haven't delivered on some of the promises that you've made.
03:24How would you rate how you're doing?
03:26And what do you think have been some of the biggest obstacles to building more housing?
03:31Obviously, everyone wants more housing, but what have been some of the obstacles with this state?
03:36I think in London and other great cities, we face a housing crisis.
03:40Why?
03:40Because people want to live in our cities.
03:42That is a good thing.
03:43There are some cities, by the way, I don't want to embarrass my name in them,
03:46where people are leaving the cities.
03:48That is a bad thing.
03:49So the pulse of our city is good.
03:51People want to move there.
03:53But you've got to plan for that growth.
03:54So the great news is up until the pandemic, we had completed more homes than the 1930s.
04:01And we had built more municipal homes than any times in the 1970s.
04:05The challenge we've had is a perfect storm.
04:07The pandemic, the consequence of Brexit, construction, inflation, still has gone up by 50%.
04:14Concrete has gone up by 44%.
04:15We've had an awful fire in London where a tall building, Grenfell, 72 people lost their lives.
04:21We've brought new regulations to address that.
04:23That's increased the cost of housing.
04:27But also, the previous government had awful economic policies, which meant interest rates went up.
04:33The great news is working with the Labour government, the new government, we're addressing this issue.
04:39And I'm really confident we will have, over the course of the next year and the next few years, record
04:44numbers of houses built.
04:45In the short term, this government is supporting us to bring in legislation to improve the quality of accommodation,
04:51to give us more security of tenure.
04:54And I'm really confident that London will lead the way when it comes to good, genuinely affordable, good quality housing.
05:01You've said it would be folly for the Labour Party to get rid of the current Prime Minister.
05:06But how do you see him surviving when you look at what's playing out just even today in London?
05:12Look, when you speak, as I do, on a daily basis to chief executives, to people who want to invest
05:18anywhere they can, to angel investors,
05:21one of the things they're crying out for when it comes to where to invest is certainty, is stability, is
05:27calm.
05:28We have that in the UK with Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
05:31We have a five-year parliament.
05:34We're approaching the middle of that parliament and you have hiccups.
05:38And the rhythm of government is, you're not going to say popular the entire five years.
05:42I remember during President Obama's midterm, in his first term, the shellacking he received in the midterms.
05:49And so it's similar to that when those watching from America.
05:53I'm confident, though, that Keir's got the right values, the right policies, the right team to take us through this
05:59temporary bad weather he's facing,
06:02to lead us in the next half of this parliament.
06:04And we'll start seeing some of the fruit of the seeds he's planted in the first two years.
06:10There will be a test of everyone, including the Labour Party, in the local elections next week.
06:18How do you think some of these things that are happening within the party are going to play out in
06:22the elections?
06:23So, our May and the 7th elections are almost like a midterm election.
06:27So, historically, when there's been a Labour government in the midterms, the council elections, Labour does less well.
06:34I'm hoping that doesn't happen this time because we've got some great Labour councils delivering housing, delivering youth services,
06:41supporting communities, investing in their parks, investing in their libraries.
06:45I still have to wait and see, but it's going to be a tough election for Labour.
06:49I think that's priced in.
06:50And that's one of the things I'm hoping my colleagues in parliament have cool, calm heads and realise we've got
06:57five years to deliver in terms of the national government.
07:00The peroration, the peak, is towards the end of that five years.
07:03And we don't want to panic if we do badly on May the 7th.
07:06And I'm hoping the polls aren't as accurate as they've been in the past.
07:10First, how concerned are you about losing seats, in particular to the Greens, and what's the message that Labour can
07:16give to voters in the week that we have to go until the election?
07:21I think the evidence from the last two years of this Labour government, the last 10 years of my administration
07:25as the Mayorys,
07:27we are the people on the side of ordinary Londoners and those across the country to address the cost of
07:31living crisis.
07:32We're bringing in generational change when it comes to rights for renters, rights for workers.
07:38We've supported those with young children in terms of free childcare.
07:43I've brought in nutritious free school meals for those at primary school below the age of 11.
07:48So over the next couple of weeks, my job and the job of other Labour politicians and activists is to
07:53remind people in London and across the country
07:56the change the Labour government, working with the Labour mayor and Labour councils have made.
08:01I understand why people may want to protest, whether it's green or whether it's on the right reform.
08:07Protest doesn't improve people's life.
08:09Public service, the right values, the right policies does.
08:14You could have change that is good and change that is bad.
08:17Fighting for one of these other parties that will lead to change, I would say bad change.
08:21Did you ever think you would see a party leading nationally in the polls in the UK that is advocating
08:26for mass deportations?
08:29Well, that's not what the Labour government is advocating.
08:31That's what the main opposition reform...
08:32Correct, correct.
08:33...is advocating.
08:33They're leading in polls currently.
08:35I've just spent time with Prime Minister Sanchez of Spain, an example of a progressive national leader,
08:42educating people in this country about the benefits of lawful migration,
08:47the benefits that migrants make, healthy migrants make.
08:52And our job as progressives is to explain to people why they're having challenges with lack of decent health care,
08:59lack of decent housing, lack of decent education.
09:01It's not because of integration, it's because successive governments haven't delivered.
09:05I think there are two types of politicians, those that play on people's fears and those that address fears.
09:11And I think reform, like President Trump, play on people's fears.
09:17What they've done is they've brought into the mainstream views that were on the periphery.
09:20And what President Trump has done is he's enabled these views on the periphery to become mainstream views.
09:27And the reform party in the UK, led by Nigel Farage, are what I call the poor man's version of
09:33President Trump and MAGA.
09:35I read somewhere that you speak regularly with the New York mayor.
09:39What do you talk about?
09:40Listen, I think Zoran's doing a great job as the new mayor of New York.
09:45This guy is charismatic, he is young, he's good-looking, so of course I hate him.
09:52Mayor, thank you so much for joining us.
09:54It's a pleasure.
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