Zoe Williams is correct: those on the far right do not care about Sadiq Khan’s record as mayor (Is Sadiq Khan a good mayor of London? Let’s not pretend the far right cares, 26 February). In fact, they don’t really care about Khan. He is simply a man whose religion is easily demonised, whose political allegiance is anathema, and whose minority-ethnic identity they know can be exploited to arouse prejudice. He is, in other words, an instrument through which to galvanise those they hope will grasp at these straws as an explanation for their impoverishment over the past two decades.
But he is also a gift to prejudice at a time when racism is experiencing renewed buoyancy from a wave of populist political refuseniks pining for a lost Eden, which once preserved a right to speak one’s mind regardless of its harmful consequences. So Lee Anderson and his supporters want to focus on intentions, a manoeuvre they hope distances the man from his actions such that offence becomes a matter of perception rather than fact.
