The story of UK taxis over the last decade is not a morality tale about good cabs and bad apps. It’s a structural story. We built a market that rewards scale and liquidity on one side, and burdens local accountability on the other. The result is the great displacement: highly vetted, accessibility-capable taxis losing ground to lighter-touch pre-booked services that can roam across borders and arbitrage rules. Capping numbers won’t fix that. Changing who gets the work will.
