On June 26, 1996, whilst taking a well-earned break between sporadic lectures and frequent debauchery, I found myself in central London watching England flatter to deceive whilst being beaten by those pesky Germans. Post-match, we came across the obligatory Trafalgar Square riot. My aim was to cross the square and then disconsolately stumble home across Westminster Bridge toward the glorious Newington Butts estate, Elephant and Castle.

I skipped past a car with foreign plates being tipped over by a mob. The inhabitants, an elderly Finnish couple, no doubt enjoying a silver gap year, looked terrified as they contemplated booking a relaxing week away next year in the Dordogne.

Akin to the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan, thousands of intoxicated football ‘fans’ charged like demented lunatics hitting anything they could lay their hands on as the police, visibly outnumbered, attempted to restore some semblance of control. Attempting to be somewhat avant garde, it happened that I had a disposable camera secreted on my person. I began to drunkenly snap away. One goon was clubbing another with a road cone which, in any other situation, qualified as comedy gold. Just as I clicked, I was kicked on the side of the head. The force of the boot put me fully on the deck where I was used as a doormat by a gang of fellow England fans, gawd bless em’. Coming to, my head bled and the side of my body was stamped with bovver boy imprints. I managed to stumble away down Whitehall more red, than white and blue, as families hurriedly crossed the road to avoid me.

Now fully sobered up, I stopped by Parliament Square and hailed down a black cab. The driver cutting to the quick, asked "Where you going guv?" I replied "Elephant and Castle". He responded: "I don’t go south of the river" before speeding off. This process repeated three times before I lumbered home.

I recalled this tale of yore whilst digesting the Uber licence revocation story this week. It is the first newsbite since the referendum where passions are feverishly high and public weight of opinion is evenly split. In the red corner: TfL, GMB (the black cab driver’s union) and, standing 5ft 6 inches: Sadiq Khan. In the green corner, your average Londoner and Uber: the new kid on the block. Uber is what black cabs could have become. After decades of overcharging customers and earning a handsome living (in north London), they missed the market demand and, like all slovenly business models, didn’t evolve. Uber spotted a gap and went for it. The cabbies continued to treat customers like cash cows, believing Uber would disappear into the sunset. They didn’t. Uber, in a small way, broke down the class system. Black cabs, unless it was an emergency, were generally frequented by the moneyed elite. The rest of us took buses. Uber levelled this playing field and, scorned, the cabbies took umbrage.

They misguidedly based their anti-Uber narrative on targeting the drivers as ‘sex attackers’. This is despite one of, if not the, most notorious sex offender being a black cabbie at the time of his offences. John Worboys, known as the black cab rapist, was convicted in 2009 for attacks on 12 women. Police believe the true number of victims far exceeds 100. He would target drunk women, then spike Champagne he had in the cab, rendering them unconscious, before attacking them with wanton depravity.

Discounting the lack of checks made by fellow black cabbies such as Worboys, the cabbies continued their verbal assaults on Uber drivers. This shifted somewhat in recent years toward licensing in a concerted attempt to force Uber out business. With union power growing in certain areas, diminutive yes-man Khan forced through the banning of Uber last week. Despite his left-wing credentials, he is seeking to put 40,000 low-paid, mainly immigrant workers, onto benefits and force average punters back into black cabs they can’t afford. The bad press about Uber has put some off, but many have signed the petition to reinstate their licence: at the last count with 600,000 signatories.

So, the result is thus: After Khan, who, co-incidentally, accepted £30,000 toward his mayoral election fund from the GMT, ‘bans’ Uber on safety grounds. No doubt Khan may now stand to receive free cab rides for life whilst working class drivers are forced to claim from the state to which they were once net contributors. Meanwhile, single females will, not being able to afford black cabs or travel back to south London, then be forced to take unlicensed mini cabs and put themselves in danger. Khan he get away with it? Uberter believe it. Never underestimate the power of the little man, especially when the mayoral re-election funding meter is running.