There was a big crowd gathered in Embankment Gardens as I limberly (after my physio) ambled to work. Big crowd. Saw a few big furry microphone things, cameras and a lot of milling. And there, in the midst of all this, was the little black-n-white character that is our mayor of London. Sadiq Kahn. Black suit, white shirt, no tie. He either has 20 black suits and 100 white shirts, or he has one of each and a washing machine.

And although I’m not quite on Trump’s level, I am not a fan of Sadiq. Ok, you can be worthless and ineffectual, but at least make the right noises. When I saw the interview, on the news later on, he was asked a question about whether he was ‘doing enough’ following the weekend when 4 ‘kids’ were killed. 3 knifed, one shot. His response was how sad he was for the families, devastating effects, blah, blah, blah. Ok, said the journo, but ARE YOU! THE FUCKING MAYOR!! DOING ENOUGH TO COMBAT THESE TYPES OF CONSTANT CRIMES?!?!?! Well, to lose a child, or a brother, in these circumstances… I can only offer my deepest sympathy… blah, blah, fucking blah.

I love the idea of having a muslim mayor of London, but not that one. Nothing to do with him being a muslim, everything to do with him being a plonker.

And to represent London means you represent one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. If I ever remake Mary Poppins, I’d make ‘Burt’, Dick van Dyck’s chimney sweep character, Polish or Croatian. Yet its really that ‘changing face’ of London that really upsets, I feel, the Donald Trumps and Katie Hopkins of this world. But we can laugh at this ‘spat’ between Trump and Kahn as childish, stupid or more sinister as we please. Kahn feels politically pressurised by his Party to be as anti-American as decency (if not stupidity) allows and Trump has odd views about Muslims as he does about most things. So a right wing Islamaphobic President and a left-wing Mayor of Pakistani origins are never gonna be BFFs.

Like it or not, England is now multi-cultural. But the Conservative Party isn’t. As one wit said ‘diversity in the Tories means Magdalen and Charterhouse’. So whilst the rest of the country and mostly the capital increases its racial diversity profile, the Conservative party doesn’t. It remains the party for rich old white men. And really, even though I would vote for them tomorrow (ABC rule: ‘Anyone But Corbyn’) I feel they really need to address this. To avoid being seen as even more ‘out of touch’ than they currently are.

On Sunday I spent some time telling Joey all about Brexit.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx