Dear Londoners — How was your weekend? Mine was spent dodging crowds of NFL fans on the Tube, after the Indianapolis Colts beat the Washington Commanders at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday. A fascinating thing about sport in the capital these days is how international it’s become. Not just because our own Premier League football teams have become global brands, but because we’re getting curious about sports that have historically been less popular here. Sometimes it’s the result of international Londoners bringing their passions; Australians who went out to bars at 4am last Saturday to watch the AFL final can attest to that. Or else it’s a reflection of a pop culture moment – the Canadian TV show Heated Rivalry has been credited with increasing recent attendance at ice hockey games in Britain.
A booming sports scene can be a massive boost for a city. Last year the Mayor’s office compiled a report finding that just six major sporting events delivered £230m for London’s economy in 2024. But as the weekend reporting from our sister paper the Manchester Mill has highlighted, a city’s entanglement with sports teams and their backers can also raise eyebrows. Now the Manchester City scandal is reverberating beyond the Etihad Campus, all the way to Westminster. It could have knock-on effects for London too, with officials reportedly warning the UK government that the latest ruling could impact Abu Dhabi’s willingness to commit to other big projects in Britain.
It all goes to a bigger, perennial question: where does the money come from? And where should it come from? As ever, we’ll be digging into those questions in our coverage of the capital. But for now, here’s your Monday briefing.
Is a pub shut by an Asif Aziz-linked company about to be saved?
It’s been over a year since we first brought you the saga of the China Hall, a beloved Bermondsey boozer bought up and subsequently shut down by a company called Hamna Wakaf. The firm turned out to be linked to controversial billionaire developer Asif Aziz. We exclusively revealed how it was just one of 29 pubs companies Aziz had taken over across London, using a network of shell companies, registered in the tax haven of the Isle of Man. The new owner’s attempts to turn the China Hall into flats, without getting planning permission first, got them in hot water with the government’s Planning Inspectorate, which ordered the company to turn it back into a pub.
Andrew Kersley
That was 2024. Since then, nothing was done by Hamna Wakaf to follow through on those orders, and the semi-converted pub sat as a disused shell. Now, according to an update from the CAMRA campaigners who’ve been trying to save the pub and local councillor Colin Boyle, Southwark council took the company to court. The unlawful residential units have now finally been stripped out, and all that’s left is for the company to turn the venue back into a pub. And when it does reopen, rest assured we’ll be among the first through the doors.
Free Nelson Mandela (from conversations about the Holborn and St Pancras by-election)
It’s by-election week in Holborn and St Pancras, with devout Starmerite and Camden council boss Sagal Abdi-Wali hoping to succeed her mentor and beat Zack Polanski in the race to become the area’s new MP. More on that very soon.
But one unexpected dividing line in the Greens vs Labour bunfight has been the political scene of apartheid South Africa. No fewer than three South African bigwigs are slugging it out on both sides of the Sagal vs Polanski divide. In Polanski’s corner, former ANC politician and founder of the Camden People’s Alliance Andrew Feinstein (who won 7,000 votes in Holborn and St Pancras the 2024 elections) has teamed up with South African investigative journalist Paul Holden (author of The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney, and the Crisis of British Democracy) to try and thwart Abdi-Wali’s campaign.
Staunchly in the Abdi-Wali camp is Martin Plaut, the veteran BBC journalist and Labour Party activist who was heavily involved in the Labour Party’s anti-apartheid efforts. “They’re completely obsessive,” he told The Londoner, of Feinstein and Holden’s machinations against Abdi-Wali. “He and Paul came with a view that entrenched elites are corrupt and brought that to the UK,” Plaut continued. “They think there’s a direct correlation between what happened in South Africa and what’s going on in the UK.”
While we’re on the subject of the by-election, why are the Green Party distributing leaflets disguised as independent newspapers?
This story is free to read. You just need to sign up to join The Londoner's mailling list. And why wouldn't you? You'll get our journalism in your inbox the second we publish, keeping up to date on this and all our stories. No card details required.
Already have an account? Sign In
