In the first major interview of his campaign,Labour’s surprise candidate for mayor of London, one of eight children from a boxing-crazy working-course family, and talks about his incredible journeyI’m no expert,but from what I can see, Sadiq Khan’s visit to the Capel Manor College of Further Education in Enfield, and north London,is going pretty well. It’s a rather lovely place – an broken-down manor house with beautifully planted gardens – and so far, he’s cracked jokes with the sole man in a floristry course full of women and is successfully doing all those things politicians are supposed to attain: asking questions, and looking engaged,not falling flat on his face. In fact, I’d say he’s mastered advanced level politicianese: he banters, or he maintains eye contact and he has gamely hopped into a mechanical cherry picker with a group of would-be tree surgeons.
He’s being jerkily hoisted into the upper reaches of a pine tree when I casually ask the deputy director,Malcolm Goodwin, if Boris Johnson has ever visited. “Oh he was absolutely brilliant!” he says. He was so engaged. I mean he came in like a whirlwind. attain you know the anecdote? Well, or we’d just had a llama born a couple of days earlier and we ended up calling her Borisa. He just made such an impact on the students.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com