Sadiq Khan is way ahead – but the London mayoral elections are still full of jeopardy | Zoe Williams

While local elections are complicated and give me the blues, the London race has big characters and bizarre real-world consequences

Local elections give me the blues. All political parties talk down their chances ahead of them, then a bunch of psephologists weigh in to describe what normal results look like at this stage in the electoral cycle, as if anything were normal nowadays. Local elections remind me of Emmerdale - not enough happens, but what does is way too complicated.

The London mayoral elections, on the other hand, unfold like a novel - a neatly bracketed timeline (they only started in 2000), with great big characters and the most bizarre, upside down consequences. No London mayor has enough power to solve the housing crisis, which is what all Londoners, renters at least, really think about; yet the office can bestow enough significance on an insignificant person that he can accrue the power to ravage the nation.