What can Laurence Fox hope to achieve with his bid for London mayor?

As if the politics of the Western world wasn’t well past parody already, this weekend sees Laurence Fox throwing his hat into the ring to be London’s next mayor. Before I start making fun of this idea, let’s try and give Mr Fox the benefit of the doubt.

The London mayoral contest, which should have been put out of its misery last May, has been dragged into 2021 on account of the coronavirus crisis. The extra year hasn’t made the contest any more inviting to those of us who live in the capital. We still have an incumbent Labour mayor who is a disappointment on every possible level, but who is up against such a terrible flock of competitors, re-election is all but in the bag for him.

The Tories chose very poorly in Shaun Bailey. A Brexiteer and proper conservative type, he’s so wrong for London it’s almost comic. The left-wing press has had a field day flagging up every time Bailey goes off-piste, which for the record is fairly often.