I'm voting for Sadiq Khan, but that doesn't mean I'm supporting Jeremy Corbyn's leadership

Only in 2020 will Labour's drubbing at the polls inoculate them against lurching to the left

A vote for Khan will be regarded by Jeremy Corbyn’s media spinners as a vote of confidence in Corbyn's leadership (Getty)

Why I’m voting Khan; well actually Pidgeon. That is to say Caroline Pidgeon. I know it’s not an ideal name for a politician, especially in London. Just imagine the headlines if she actually made it to City Hall:

“Pidgeon Flies In to Face Fresh Crisis”

“Pidgeon Acts in Trafalgar Square Planning Row”

“I Will Not be Shot Down – Pidgeon”

But the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London does have some sensible policies, not least the idea of lower Tube and bus fares of an early morning – and I have a certain vestigial tribal loyalty to the Lib Dems. I can’t help it.

As with many other London voters, though, the real question is where your second choice goes in that circumstance, given that Caroline has a relatively modest chance of winning the contest. That means choosing between Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith. I may be the only person in the capital, apart from his own family, who does not hold Goldsmith’s family background against him. I don’t think he has ever pretended to be anything other than a happy rich boy, and so he is. It wasn’t his fault that the late Sir James Goldsmith, nicknamed ‘Goldenballs’ by Private Eye, which the old boy had sued on a number of occasions, was such a successful businessman, and Zac isn't responsible for how Sir James made his money (partly from Marmite, for trivia lovers), and what he did with it.

I think Zac has some good polices too, and not so very different from Pidgeon's or Khan’s if truth be told. No one, for example, wants to expand Heathrow, easily the most effective option for the UK as a whole. It’s not the Mayor’s decision, though, which is just as well. More to the point, Goldsmith and his team did, however, go over the top with the wheeze of digging out every appearance Khan had ever been involved in to find some loony tunes extremists to smear him with. The implication was just absurd – that Khan somehow approved of people who would want to blow up the very buses and Tube trains Khan is shortly to find himself in charge of, and the murder of anyone who gets in the way. Absurd and offensive. We should take it as read that all the mainstream candidates for Mayor of London are against terror and extremism, and leave it at that – a non-issue.

On the other hand, I also thought that right now might be an ideal moment to elect a Mayor of London with a Jewish background. Goldsmith hasn’t made anything of this, which is right, but it is a fact and it would be a standing rebuke to the current fashion for blaming and punishing the (non-existent) “Jewish lobby” for things that happen in the Middle East. Or worse. Then again, voting for someone just because of their background is really as bad as voting against someone because of their background, so maybe we should just forget about all that, eh?

Which brings me to antisemitism and the Labour Party. A vote for Khan will be regarded by Jeremy Corbyn’s media spinners as a vote of confidence in Corbyn's leadership. It will be seen as an endorsement of his belated response to the scandal of anti- Jewish sentiments expressed in crass terms by a few Labour activists. That is bad, too. But the real test of Corbyn's leadership, if he makes it that far, will be at the 2020 general election. It is at that point that Labour will receive a drubbing at the polls and its once-every-40-years inoculation against lurching to the left. It is at that point, sadly and not before, that Labour can be rebuilt again, a full quarter-century after Tony Blair last made them a readily electable party of government.

As in 1983, Labour’s leftists must be given no excuses, and an electoral disaster would deflect from the emotional spasm that they had last year. So, in a way, voting for Khan to keep Corbyn in office is, long term, the best way to save the Labour Party from its own follies. A vote for Khan is a vote for sanity.