Ulez could mark the end of the road for Sadiq Khan

The metropolitan bohemian Withnail, played by Richard E Grant in the film Withnail & I, is so appalled by life away from inner London that he declares: ‘We’ve gone on holiday by mistake.’

Among the metropolitan bohemians who run the Tory party in the capital, the selection of Susan Hall as mayoral candidate was regarded with similar abject horror. Only in their case the sentiment was: ‘We’ve chosen a real Conservative by mistake.’

One of their usual more-liberal-than-the-liberals types was supposed to have glided to the nomination. But Dan (Daniel Korski) and Moz (Mozammel Hossain), called up from the open-necked shirt brigade of smooth talkers, both self-immolated during the campaign. The last person standing was Hall, a woman in late middle-age from Middlesex, that outer-London land of white vans and light industrial estates.

Worse still, she was an out-and-out right-winger who spoke up for people accused by Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan of being from the ‘Far Right when the campaign against his Ulez