All right, only two candidates have a cat in hell’s chance of winning, but let’s look at the runners and riders in all their glory
A London mayoral election looms, then. It isn’t “important” in the usual sense of the word – being mayor of London, a position with little actual political power, basically just involves doing sad eyebrows on the news when something bad happens in the city and making unconvincingly jovial hand gestures while opening a school or bridge. But mayor of London is an important role for London itself, giving it the validation it constantly craves. Despite being the biggest city in the country by an unsustainable margin, and despite being regularly listed as among the top 10 cities in the world, it constantly needs to be reassured: “You’re not just a load of Prets and swaths of developer-erased history! You’re a good city! Hey! Stop crying!” The regular appointment of a glamorous-sounding role serves to do exactly that. London needs the “mayor of London” more than it actually needs a mayor of London, if that makes sense. For some reason, 20 entire people are in the running to do this non-job.
Realistically, it’s only going to be one of two of them – the incumbent mayor, Sadiq “no tie for me, thanks – I’m a bus driver’s son!” Khan, or Shaun “the only man in history who spent his mid-20s sofa-surfing and signing on and somehow came out of that radicalised into the Conservative party” Bailey, polling at 41% and 28% respectively. (It’s not really a contest; Khan will win.) After that there’s a grey wedge of serious-but-let’s-be-honest-about-it parties – the Liberal Democrats, Animal Welfare party, the Greens and the Women’s Equality party – then a handful of independents who all have the same forgettable energy (I just feel like David Kurten is really used to saying, “No – we’ve met before!” at his friends’ garden parties) and who all, for some reason, had £10,000 spare for a deposit and the impulse to cheerfully lose it. Also in the running: Laurence Fox, Ukip’s Peter Gammons (yes) and Count Binface.
