“LUNN’S a grey sea,” mumbles Sadiq Khan in his curious speaking style.
Listen carefully and you realise he is actually trying to say: “London is a great city.”
Well, so it was, until this political midget took over from breezy Boris Johnson as Labour Mayor in 2016.
It seems a lifetime ago now, but we were still basking in the glory of the London Olympics.
Our fabulous capital was a magnet for global business. Titans of industry and showbiz glam swarmed to live and work here.
Tourists skipped Paris and Berlin for a selfie in “Lunn”.
Since then, it’s all spiralled downhill with truculent Mayor Khan presiding over a grimy, dangerous metropolis where knife and gun crime is rampant and drug gangs roam free.
A litter-strewn city which rips off its citizens with exorbitant taxes and spiteful penalties for daring to drive on its roads.
A once-proud capital which grinds to a halt every weekend while police act as crowd marshals for anti-Semitic bullies.
I make no apology for returning to my campaign to dump dreaded Khan.
Even the despicable desertion of Tory MP Dan Poulter to the Starmer Party pales in political significance beside this historic opportunity.
Quitting his party in disgust might have been portrayed by Poulter as an honourable decision.
Secretively plotting to join the enemy, probably in return for a peerage, is unforgivable.
Poulter’s pretext, that the Tories have become “the party of the nationalist right” while “Labour can be trusted to run the NHS”, is laughable.
As a part-time NHS doctor he will know that although Labour invented the shambolic NHS, they have blocked every attempt since to make it work.
Poulter’s desertion could even backfire against Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Instead of sitting at home, grassroots Tories who exploded with anger over the weekend might turn out for Thursday’s local elections and give “Sir Shifty” a poke in the eye.
And where better to make their point than the “Grey Sea of Lunn”?
Khan is no shoo-in. Half the voting population think he has done a rotten job as mayor
Khan is no shoo-in. Half the voting population think he has done a rotten job as mayor.
Support has collapsed since he spread his hated Ulez tax across the whole of Greater London, snaring nine million people and anyone who drives a non-compliant car across its borders.
London’s black cab drivers who navigate a daily minefield of road closures and gridlocked streets will vote against Khan.
“Nobody I know will vote for him,” says cabbie Grant David, star of The Sun’s Never Mind The Ballots politics show.
Tory candidate Susan Hall, Khan’s formidable critic on the London Assembly, is now only a few points behind.
With a likely low turnout, that gap melts to insignificance and makes Khan vulnerable.
So just for one day, put aside your disenchantment with national politics.
This time your vote could actually make a difference. Ex-PM and two-term Mayor of London Boris Johnson has already dared to dream.
“Imagine your elation at the news,” BoJo writes in the Daily Mail. “It’s round about midnight on Friday, and the cameras are crossing to City Hall, London, where the votes have finally been counted.
“They have canned Khan and put Sadiq à la poubelle [in the garbage bin]. You find your eyes almost watering with joy. No more Ulez and no more of the sinister pay-per-mile project.
I make no apology for returning to my campaign to dump dreaded Khan
“You listen to the shock of the media, the funereal tone of some of the broadcasters, and you jump out of your chair, and rush around the room, beating your chest with excitement.”
I’d join that celebration, Boris.
So, taxi drivers of the world unite! Grumpy Khan has made your lives a misery, blocked the roads, shut off your short cuts and declared war on motorists.
Ulez and congestion charges are costing drivers £27.50 a day before they’ve earned a penny.
There are 21,000 black cabs in London.
If they turn out on Thursday to ferry friends and family to the ballot box we’ll all be able to beat our chests on Friday night.
What better way to celebrate the Spring Bank Holiday than toppling this tinpot town hall tyrant?
A TORY suicide squad is plotting to use Thursday’s likely town hall bloodbath as a pretext for toppling Rishi Sunak in favour of sword-wielding Commons leader Penny Mordaunt.
This would be a fatal error on two counts. A fifth leadership meltdown in eight years would simply confirm the Tory party as a headless chicken racing to extinction in ever-decreasing circles.
And pet cat fanatic Penny would accelerate the process by defending her deluded and no longer fashionable claim that “trans men are men, trans women are women”.
