The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and his four deputies submitted themselves to a public grilling last Tuesday. The State of London debate was chaired by James O’Brien and broadcast live on LBC. ‘I will endeavour to speak as little as possible,’ quipped the garrulous radio host who maintained his line of larky, locker-room banter throughout. ‘Sadiq Khan and the deputies,’ he said, ‘It sounds like the most rubbish band of all time.’ And he ribbed the mayor for ‘dancing like a crazy man’ at the premiere of Abba Voyage in the East End. Clearly a tight and cosy friendship there.
Khan opened with a sermon about how ‘humbled’ he felt by his re-election as mayor last year. He boasted that knife crime, gun crime and burglary were all falling in the capital, although he didn’t tell us which crime survey supplied this surprising data.
The first questioner asked Khan to tax any car attempting to cross the Thames.
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