The battle is on and it’s anyone’s guess how long it will last. Uber on Friday announced that it had officially appealed Transport for London’s decision last month to scrap its licence to operate in the city.

For anyone who has even the vaguest idea of how dominant Uber is globally, and how critical London has become as a market, this will come as no surprise at all. An estimated 3.5 million people use Uber in London, and around 40,000 people are licenced to drive here. Uber needs London. And London at least thinks that it needs Uber just as much.

Take a look at the last three weeks. In the minutes after TfL broadcast its shock decision on 22 September, an online petition to save the ride-hailing behemoth in the capital was launched. It garnered hundreds of thousands of virtual signatures within hours and the figure has since ballooned to above 860,000.

As I scrambled to report on the most salient lines of the day, I glanced at a flurry of incomings texts. “Sign the petition”, one friend living in central London threatened, “or I’ll never go for dinner with you in east London again”.

Uber loses licence to operate in London - reaction highlights

As an ideological experiment, it was fascinating to watch.

You could almost see how conflicted some young, liberal professionals had become. Would their love of bashing capitalist corporates and calling out the Silicon Valley billionaires eclipse their appreciation of a company that has done so much to democratise transport? It was tricky, indeed. But the balance – for many – was tipped in favour of convenience.

And so Uber has become a lifeline for wealthy millennials, lazy city workers and pub-goers too tipsy to make the last train. In its short, turbulent life it’s entered our vocabulary as a verb as well as a noun. It’s a weekend staple. A emblem of our one-click, instant-delivery, cyber-dependent existence. Some have suggested that abolishing Uber would deal a sharp blow to the disabled, elderly and others who struggle to navigate the Tube. Even Theresa May – arguably preoccupied with heftier negotiations – has called TfL’s decision “disproportionate”.

It’s hard to image that Londoners will let the company vanish from their streets entirely. But there’s no doubt that a ton of work still needs to be done.

As I argued in a column this summer, the sharing economy, of which Uber is a poster child, relies on trust in order to function. Humans are not hardwired to care about the collective good. We’re inherently selfish and want to maximise our own resources. And that is why regulation is so tantamount.

Uber needs to be trusted again and perhaps the only way it can do that is by proving that it is willing and able to pedantically comply with the rule of law.

One of TfL’s concerns related to Uber’s use of secret software known as “greyball”, which the company apparently built to avoid regulators. It’s since insisted that such technology was never used or considered in the UK for the purposes cited by TfL, but it needs to move beyond even having to refute allegations around secret technology cloaked in funny code names.

Uber controversies Show all 4 1 /4 Uber controversies Uber controversies June 2017 Travis Kalanick resigned from his position as CEO of Uber in July of this year, after a tumultous period for the company. A sexist workplace culture was exposed by a damning internal report, leading to heightened pressure on the CEO and consequently to him taking a leave of absence in June. A week later he was forced to resign after losing the confidence of the board of investors AFP/Getty Uber controversies June 2017 Indian police escort Uber taxi driver and convicted rapist Shiv Kumar Yadav following his court appearance in New Delhi on 8 December, 2014. An Uber executive, Eric Alexander, was fired in June of this year after reportedly obtaining the records of the rapist's victim, with the intent to cast doubt on her account of the incident. She later sued the company for defamation and violating her privacy rights Chandan Khanna/AFP Uber controversies May 2017 The company were ordered to pay up to $45 million dollars back to New York based drivers, after taking too much in commission over a two and a half year period. “We made a mistake and we are committed to making it right by paying every driver every penny they are owed, plus interest, as quickly as possible,” said Rachel Holt, Uber’s regional general manager in the US and Canada, to the Wall Street Journal Getty Uber controversies December 2016 Uber's self-driving cars were ordered to be removed from the roads by a Californian car regulator, after being spotted skipping traffic lights. Uber insist that the incidents were "human error" rather than a design flaw. The New York Times later refuted this in an article claiming the autonomous technology had in fact failed Youtube/KTVU

It needs to distance itself from its maverick founder, Travis Kalanick, who quit in June amid messy accusations of fostering an “asshole” culture that tolerated sexism and misogyny. I think Uber’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, is the right man for the job, but it won’t be an easy ride.

Matthew Taylor, the author of a government review into employment culture and the sprawling gig economy, told me earlier this month that he thinks Uber had tried to become so indispensable that regulators would be unwilling to crack down on its practices. In that regard it has failed. Regulators have shown their teeth and it better not push its luck.

Uber needs to descend from its ivory tower and come to terms with the truths and requirements of the real communities in which it operates. It needs to understand that often those communities are cultural worlds away from its Silicon Valley home.

Kalanick, it seems, was slow to see the error of his ways. The price he paid was his leadership.