Sadiq Khan is wrong about DSEI

This week Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said a stupid thing. I appreciate that this is hardly a ‘stop the press’ moment. Such an event is hardly unprecedented. Like most politicians, our mayor is not immune from putting his diminutive shoe in his great big gob. It has happened before. It will certainly happen again.

Commenting on the DSEI defence and security expo to be held in Docklands next week (September 9-12 at ExCeL), London’s mayor claimed the biennial event would offend asylum seekers, was ‘inappropriate’ given events in Gaza, and should be axed.

What stands out about this particularly dim-witted utterance (compared to the mayor’s many others) is the sheer number of levels upon which it was stupid.

Firstly, if he was really concerned about upsetting asylum seekers he probably shouldn’t help generate publicity for DSEI by briefing the press on his controversial, provocative views.

Everyone can tell Comic Con is on each year because of the hordes of costumed fans thronging to ExCeL on the DLR. By contrast, DSEI is a relatively low-profile, professional event attended by grey-suited business executives, trade officials and senior military officers.

Unless a particularly hapless refugee happened to be walking past the Royal Docks and saw the frigate HMS Iron Duke docked next to ExCeL, nobody would really know it was happening. I venture to suggest that London’s asylum seekers are more upset by the protests outside their hotels than they are by a business conference on the other side of town.

Secondly, it seems odd that the mayor would want to advertise his political impotence like this. Afterall, he is supposedly London’s most powerful politician, elected with a mandate from 6 million voters.

If he really wanted to prevent DSEI from happening, he could. DSEI is a high-security event so can only go ahead with the support and co-operation of the Metropolitan Police. One call from the mayor – who is also the elected Police & Crime Commissioner for London – and organisers would be forced to make other arrangements.

Thirdly, the mayor’s view is economically illiterate.

A 2025 study estimated that DSEI generated around £30 million for the economy. If DSEI did not happen in London then I am sure that Birmingham, Manchester or any other UK city would be happy to play host instead, depriving the capital of much needed cash from the estimated 30,000 people that attend every other year.

Even if we accept the tenuous idea that asylum seekers are upset and offended by DSEI, I rather expect that London’s tourism and hospitality businesses would be appalled and aghast at the mayor’s apparent eagerness to turn away paying guests.

More widely, the UK defence and security sector’s economic contribution is significant. In 2023 alone the UK won defence contracts worth £14.5 billion (an increase of 39 per cent on the previous year), supporting thousands of highly skilled STEM jobs.

At the same time that Sadiq Khan was furiously virtue signalling his opposition to DSEI, Prime Minister Keir Starmer was in Scotland to celebrate the sale of new frigates to the Norwegian Navy – a deal worth £10 billion for the UK. It seems unlikely that the PM shares the mayor’s views that defence exports are optional, offensive or undesirable.

The mayor is only speaking out to get some press attention, probably to distract from the economy-crippling impact of looming tube strikes that he has conspicuously failed to stop. The mayor is, of course, entitled to his opinions. Indeed, that freedom of speech and the democratic principles that elect him to office every four years are protected by that same defence industry gathering at ExCeL that he is so contemptuous of.

That is the real story of DSEI: allies and partners meeting to trade the technologies that keep us all safe. In a world filled with too many threats, terrorists and tyrants, we should take pride in the fact that British firms lead the world in making and exporting those vital systems that help to maintain an all-too-fragile peace. You’d have to be pretty stupid to have a problem with that.

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James Ford was an adviser to Mayor of London Boris Johnson between 2010 and 2012.

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