Peter Torgersen Sullivan

Londoners are being held to ransom. Again. Eight more Tube strikes announced. Eight more days of disruption. And once again, it's ordinary hardworking Londoners who will pay the price. Tube drivers earning MORE THAN £76,000 A YEAR will bring London to a standstill over changes to working patterns that TfL says are entirely voluntary. That's hundreds of millions of pounds in lost productivity, businesses losing customers, workers unable to get to their jobs and an economy that desperately needs growth being brought to a standstill. But behind those enormous figures are real people. And that's what makes me so angry. It's the single mum who has to leave the house at 5am, desperately trying to find another way to get to work because she simply cannot afford to lose a day's wages. It's the elderly Londoner who has waited months for a hospital appointment, only to find that getting there has become an ordeal. It's the young apprentice who's just started their first job, terrified of arriving late and letting their employer down. It's the small business owner who has put their life savings into opening a café, only to watch the tables sit empty because customers stay home. And it's the parent who gets home two hours late, missing bedtime with their children because their normal journey has descended into chaos. These aren't inconveniences to be brushed aside. These are people's livelihoods, their families, their health and precious moments of their lives that they will never get back. As a Londoner and mum of teenagers who rely on the Tube to get around London, when the Tube shuts down, I'm the one who has to work out how they're going to get where they need to be. That means expensive Ubers or rearranging my entire day to drive them myself. Why should Londoners have to put up with this? We all have frustrations with our jobs. We all wish we earned more or worked fewer hours. But the rest of us don’t get to hold an entire city to ransom when we don’t get what we want. For years, Labour and the Conservatives have allowed this situation to continue. The unions threaten strikes, politicians negotiate, taxpayers pick up the bill and the whole cycle starts again. Meanwhile, Sadiq Khan can travel around in his taxpayer-funded Range Rover while ordinary Londoners are left stranded. And now these strikes threaten to hit London in the run-up to Christmas, when our shops, restaurants, pubs and small businesses should be enjoying one of their busiest periods of the year. Londoners work incredibly hard. They pay extraordinary amounts in rent, taxes and transport fares. The very least they should expect is a public transport system they can depend on. The cost of living keeps rising, yet the service Londoners depend on can be withdrawn whenever the unions decide to walk out. We cannot keep allowing disputes over working arrangements to bring one of the world's greatest cities to its knees. This is a warning to RMT. When you demand too much, people start looking for solutions to write you out. And automation is that solution. I will not let our capital be controlled by militant unions. London is a global capital. It deserves a world-class transport system. And I’m running to give control back to Londoners. Not Lord Khan. Not City Hall. And certainly not the RMT. Labour won’t stand up to the unions. The Conservatives never did. Well I will. It's time to modernise the Tube. It's time to automate. And it's time to put Londoners first.