Member-only story
“Mind the gap” isn’t a buzzword masquerading around the Underground — it is the epithet for life on the Underground or ‘on the tube’. You should be minded to judge the gap between your face and a sweaty armpit, between your eyes and another set, and obviously, to complete the phrase, “between the train and the platform”.
“Mind the gap” is more real, and honestly more exciting, when the minders on the platform say it, rather than when it booms through the loudspeakers. Shaming hordes of middle aged men and women trying to make a dash for it at Bank station must feel good!
Transport for London (TfL), which runs the tube along with buses, the overground and cycles, needs to mind the financial gap. Ridership plummeted 90% once lockdown was announced. The world’s oldest underground network, which carries 4 million passengers a day, was dealt a death blow as businesses shut and office workers stayed home. TfL was hours away from running out of money before the Tory government stepped in with a ‘many strings attached’ £1.6bn bailout package.
Boris Johnson’s personal mistrust of London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan aside, it should never have come to this. The Tory party’s old dream of privatising…
