The Mayor of London Enters the Bullshit Cinematic Universe

It’s a slate-gray Tuesday morning in January, and Sadiq Khan is marching through Camden Market trailed by a caravan of officials, press officers, and the hulking presence of his Metropolitan Police protection unit.

The mayor of London bustles with a sleeves-rolled-up, CEOish energy. The 53-year-old is short—famously so—but bantamweight trim, sharp-suited but approachably tieless. When he pauses in front of a row of arcade claw machines to take questions from local media, he answers fast, in full sentences—lawyerly and reasonable—dropping his “t”s and “g”s in a way that was once a popular affectation of British politicians but which in Khan’s case is authentically South London.

In contrast to the shambolic upper-classness of his predecessor in City Hall, Boris Johnson, Khan is something of a throwback: a politico of the Tony Blair era. But the questions show how much has changed. The subjects are a jarring mix of the hyperlocal and the geopolitical: Can he comment on a fatal bus crash in Victoria? How will he help small businesses through the cost-of-living crisis? Should a “Chinese” transport company be allowed to run the Elizabeth Line? What is his view on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza?

Khan hangs around for an hour, swapping affable banalities with traders and colleagues—on vegan food, vinyl records, dogs—and recording a video to announce a new policy on small business funding. It’s a routine stop; mundane, even. Khan’s banter with jewelry designers and record stall owners has a scripted feel, the gentle fictions of small politics. It’s a sharp contrast to the Sadiq Khan discussed on social media and on the conspiracy-inflected right-wing channels that dominate political coverage in the UK.

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