Is Sadiq Khan a good mayor of London? Let’s not pretend the far right cares | Zoe Williams

From Trump and his supporters to the meatheads' on GB News, Khan has been under attack ever since he was elected in 2016. Facts don't come into it

My kids have this stunt that I fall for every time: they ask me a question they know I'll answer in an incredibly long, unbroken monologue, and they can zone me out until I've finished. It is the equivalent of putting me in a playpen. They have been doing it since they were small - What dog will you have when you're old?" - and have refined it over time: What exactly happens in Heathers?"; What's wrong with having a single tax rate for everyone?"

So yesterday, I got: Is Sadiq Khan a good mayor?" In normal times, I would have talked about how all politicians shout a good game on housing, but so few of them build anything, and how Khan has broken the mould on that, though he has been frustrated in the speed of his endeavour by what they call challenging market conditions", when they mean, since the Liz Truss disaster". I'd have mentioned his Hopper fare, which lets you get on as many buses as you like within an hour for a flat fare, and how that is quite a subtle piece of policymaking, directed at people on low incomes, but not so rigidly as to need means-testing. Maybe I would have mentioned that it speaks to a politician's ambient popularity when people generally call them by their first name.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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