I know we go on about Keir Starmer being lucky in his opponents, but is any politician in the world luckier than Sadiq Khan?
If you're interested:
Thanks! I do think Khan's a drag on Labour's vote in the city and comparing these two polls suggests I'm right. He's certainly never outperformed what you'd expect from 'human with a Labour rosette' and is arguably now underperforming.
Khan is the face of a few difficult policy decisions (ULEZ & TfL pricing in particular) which don't seem to have any impact on the Labour parliamentary vote polls.
And on some of those things Khan doesn't really have much freedom to do otherwise (both the ULEZ expansion and the fare increases were pretty much dictated by the government as part of the Covid support). You can argue he could have done better at avoiding blame, or better at selling the necessity of the changes, but it's not necessarily true; sometimes you just have to take the lumps. In any case, it's not clear any hypothetical other Labour Mayor of London could have weathered it better.
I'm 100% going to vote for Khan anyway, to be clear!
My issue with him is that I feel like he lacks distinctiveness. Other than the hopper fair, what policies has he really brought to the table? He did manage to eventually get rid of Cressida Dick, which was good. And I'm happy with the expansion of bike lanes and LTNs (I'd like them to go further), but those were pretty much baked in by his predecessor or enforced by the Government. On the negative side, there was Silvertown, a disaster waiting to happen which he could've prevented.
Obviously, the mayoral role is pretty powerless, but he could use the soapbox better, IMO.
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