THIS WEEK ON THURSDAY millions of Londoners will cast their votes in the Mayoral elections, a fixture deferred by a year thanks to the rona. It appears that the incumbent will comfortably achieve another term, leaving us with the prospect of four more years of elementary virtue-signaling, project postponements, losses, vanity white elephants - and surely another double-digit increase in Sadiq Khan’s own PR budget.
More depressing is the reason why he’ll win. He won’t win because he’s a good Mayor (he is most certainly not), or because he’s improved outcomes for the lives of young inner-city residents, many of whom are black and poor. Whilst climate change and what appears to be his own crusade against has been a regular social media platitude, no evidence exists of any mitigation. Similarly, he talks about science being racist - but he has made no visible effort to improve access to Muslim or black women. Every single day his Twitter feed rages at some perceived or selectively phrased injustice; every single day it becomes clearer that there is not a single beneficiary to this kind of squealing. Sadiq Khan has no vision, no talent, next to no charm or charisma and apparently, no real motivation (save for Twitter). When he wins on Thursday, it will be on the basis of racial solidarity alone.
Only Jacob Zuma outmaneuvers Khan when it comes to the worst value-for-money politician in recent history. Khan has failed on Crossrail, failed famously on policing, failed on housing, failed on congestion, failed on stupid ideas associated with congestion and negotiations with unions. Thanks to Khan, London is at the point of being dirtier and more dangerous than at any point in his predecessor’s two terms. We spent much of 2020 obsessing over some appalling mayors - Jenny Durkan in Seattle, Ted Wheeler in Portland, Lori Lightfoot in Chicago and Bill de Blasio in New York. When it comes to incompetence, Khan outperforms the lot.
The only interesting thing about Thursday is the role Keir Starmer is being forced to occupy (some argue that he’s the worst leader of the Labour Party since Jeremy Corbyn).
Starmer infamously took a knee post the death of George Floyd last year - a stunt that did not appeal to Labour’s depleting heartlands. He is a lockdown enthusiast competing with the worst of them: after some unconvincing performative defiance on the subject of vaccine passports, he relented. Whilst he has been saved from election scrutiny by the emphasis on the Prime Minister’s consort and her taste in interior decor, no better measurement of his leadership to date exists than his encounter with a publican in Bath. It is no secret that neither Starmer nor Khan are popular in the north - fundamentally because Labour supporters there don’t do woke politics. They respond to Alan Johnson’s, not critical race or grievance theories.
All of which position London as oddly abandoned by both major parties. The Conservatives have made no effort to propel candidate Shaun Bailey; true Labour lurk behind Khan, wretchedly, knowing that their own foundations and Khan’s wokeism are fundamentally irreconcilable.
Of course, it need not have been this way. In 2016, then Conservative Mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith, along with his elections advisor the Australian Lynton Crosby, made a dreadful error of judgment. Their failure to observe the convergence of radical Islam and wokeism in London, and the forces that enabled it, meant that when Goldsmith accused Khan of fraternizing with terrorists (with a tenuous grasp of the facts related to these encounters), the smell of racism flooded the city. Khan was gifted a meal ticket he continues to dine out on.
If he repossessed buildings belonging to Transport for London or the Greater London Authority for Somali refugees to live in luxury, at least there would be some basis of a constituency. If he repurposed City Hall into a spaza shop for Bangladeshi women to manage, reasons would exist in some shape to explain support. But he doesn’t. He is manifestly useless, awaiting his reward on Thursday for being that way.