I’m not surprised Zac Goldsmith lost – his campaign was a catastrophe

Zac Goldsmith has spent much of the past few weeks telling us that the London mayoral vote ‘will be very close’. But it wasn’t, in the end: he lost by a fairly large margin. Some political campaigns are failures; others are simply tragedies, and Zac Goldsmith’s falls into the latter category. As I found out when I spent some time on the campaign trail with him.

The candidate himself is an amiable enough soul, though his thin CV and past business failures scarcely qualify him to stand up as the candidate of enterprise against what he classes as the ‘divisive’ figure of Sadiq Khan.

Khan seems dim and slippery and could have been beaten by the right sort of Conservative candidate, especially after the new Islington-based Labour leadership cabal declared jihad against London Jews. This raises the question: who at Conservative HQ really thought it was a good idea to present to multicultural London as successor to an Old Etonian mayor with star quality another OE — with none? Notwithstanding some voters’ anxieties about the people Khan has shared a platform with over the years, was that really do-able in London these days?

The absurdity of the proposition first became obvious to me when, against initial resistance from the Zac media operation, I joined the campaign in Romford market on St George’s Day.