As I write the votes – yesterday was polling day – are still being counted. But we already know that the campaign to be London’s new mayor has been…intriguing.
In the red corner Sadiq Khan, representing the Labour Party promised a crackdown against terrorism, whereas the blues’ Zac Goldsmith has pledged to build 50,000 new homes a year in London. Not quite what you might expect from politicians Left and Right!
But this campaign has gone deeper than policies and manifestos. It’s been a visceral head-to-head between a working class, son of a bus driver, Muslim social democrat against an Eton-educated, son of a billionaire Jewish Eurosceptic.
(For the sake of impartiality, democracy and electoral etiquette, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP and the Green Party have been allowed to put in an appearance – but it hasn’t really made any difference.)
The Tories describe Khan as ‘Corbyn’s man’ but that might not have done him any harm. Whereas Boris decidedly didn’t play the role of political father to Zac – perhaps his patrician nostrils were attuned in advance to the likelihood of losing.
Come teatime today and it shouldn’t be too early to tell.
“London Mayor Boris Johnson” by David Holt London is licensed under CC BY
