His hopeless behaviour began shortly after he became mayor for the first time, when having supported the Thomas Heatherwick Garden Bridge project during his election campaign, he turned against it for local political reasons, and succeeded (if that is the right word) in scotching a project which was popular with the public, and which undoubtedly would have become one of the prime tourist attractions in Europe, let alone London.

At the time, and in the face of extraordinarily biased reporting and criticism of the project, I warned that this political position would not only wreck the idea of a garden crossing (at a location first envisaged in the historic Abercrombie plan for London in the 1940s), but would generate an atmosphere in which it would become increasingly difficult to deliver any new river crossing at all.

I regret to say this is precisely what has happened. Excellent proposals to build two pedestrian/cycle bridges, one between Rotherhithe Park and Canary Wharf, the other from Nine Elms to Pimlico, have both bitten the dust. Even worse, the mayor has failed utterly to produce a strategy to re-open Hammersmith Bridge, closed for many years because of inadequate repair and maintenance, to normal traffic. Instead it can only be used by those on foot, or via the mayor’s favourite transport mode, the bus.

Hammersmith Bridge ©Images George Rex

This has resulted in huge increased traffic pressure on other bridges in west London. The mayor doesn’t care, and is oblivious to various proposals for a replacement or relief bridge (including a fully worked design by Foster & Partners), presumably because he thinks the people who would most benefit are not Labour voters. Unfortunately, when the then Labour government invented the role of London mayor, it did not set a two-term limit, which means that unless a brilliant new candidate emerges as a result of a Conservative initiative (forget it), we will be saddled with the Great Khan’t for the foreseeable future.

In case you thought it was just bridges that he objects to (having encouraged people to spend millions of pounds on proposals), consider his latest triumph: the abandonment of the ‘Sphere’ project in Stratford, east London, by the American Madison Square Gardens group. This project, designed by Populous as the next iteration of a similar building recently opened in Las Vegas, would have been the most high-tech entertainment venue in the world, a glitterball of extraordinary photogenic impact, seating 17,500, which would have attracted millions of visitors.

What happened to this project is an example of cynicism, procrastination, incompetence and what looks like a death-wish in respect of encouraging investment in what is supposed to be the world’s greatest city.

The planning application for the giant project was submitted in 2018 after protracted negotiations, and at that time benefiting from a warm welcome from Mayor Khan, blathering on about wonderful international investment etc. The biggest objector to the proposal, ironically, was another US company, the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which runs the O2 Arena (recently upgraded by Populous!), and claimed, absurdly since they are different sides of the Thames, that the Sphere would cause congestion and general chaos. What AEG really meant was: ‘We have a monopoly, and although fine American capitalists, we despise the idea of competition.

Other objections included tired nonsense about building homes on the site instead, construction noise and other kitchen sink moans. Despite all this, the planning authority, the London Legacy Development Corporation, granted permission in early 2022, so already a massive delay for the project. Incredibly, it took another year before the next delaying factor reared, when the government ‘called in’ the project for potential public inquiry. The inquiry never happened; using his own planning powers, Mayor Khan, citing local objections about ‘light pollution’, blocked the development in autumn last year. The Secretary of State for Levelling Up (or Dumbing Down), Michael Gove, then stepped in to block the mayor’s refusal by calling a public inquiry.

Gove needn’t have bothered, since the MSG group withdrew the application, commenting that they had no wish to be involved in a city where planning resulted in political football disputes rather than due process.

So there you have it: London Khan’t make it. As a London I strongly object to the way that people like Khan and Gove are undermining a rational planning system, instead playing politics where the victims are people who have spent millions of pounds and many years of work trying to contribute to a once-great capital.

Had London’s leaders, historically, had the same attitudes as Khan, we would have had no Tower Bridge, no Royal Albert Hall, no wobbly bridge, no County Hall, no Battersea Power Station . . . Khan is not a London leader, he is a small-time party politician self-promoted beyond his competence.