Khanthoods 

It’s good to finally achieve closure, particularly on traumatic experiences, and Britain certainly got that earlier this week. Up until Tuesday, the least-deserved Knighthood in history was still something of a debate. Was it Sir Chris ‘the government may have overstated the danger of Covid’ Whitty? How about Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair – a man so evil, his face appears to be undergoing a reverse Dorian Gray effect? Or perhaps your money was on Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile – the one-man grooming gang, unrestrained by the compassion of radical Islam?

Thankfully, those lightweights can now be put to bed. ‘Sir’ Sadiq Khan, Britain’s most treacherous Knight since Lancelot got caught giving Guinevere one in the King’s bedchamber and tried to convince King Arthur he was performing the Heimlich manoeuvre, puts them all to shame. 

Awarded a gong by His Majesty King Charles III at Buckingham Palace for ‘political and public service’ (which is just about vague enough to incorporate ‘destroying the nation’s capital’), Khan was dubbed on the shoulder with nowhere near sufficient force to do any real damage.  

Celebrating with his customary self-deprecation, Khan posted on X: “The London promise: if you work hard, and get a helping hand, you can achieve anything.” Presumably he left out the kicker due to word count: “If you effectively sit on your arse and take selfies at the opportune moment, a Muslim Mayor will never get kicked out of London”. 

That’s not to say of course that Sadiq Khan hasn’t achieved anything during his three terms as London Mayor, On the contrary, he’s achieved a great deal – it’s just I don’t think any of it is particularly worthy of a Knighthood. 

Let’s consider some of the Mayor’s greatest hits: 

• The Notting Hill Stabfest: London is home to a third of the nation’s knife crime, with an offence committed every 30 minutes. Khan has been ignominiously accused of having ‘completely lost control’ of London’s streets by the victims’ families, but this is of course unfair. The Mayor is clearly desirous of attracting a much larger proportion of the nation’s knife crime to the capital, but there’s only so many murders you can get through at the Notting Hill Carnival. Perhaps if they made it a monthly event? 
• Consistency: One of the qualities most desirable in a leader is the ability to stand by your principles, irrespective of the direction the wind is blowing in. In this regard Khan was particularly impressive back in March 2020 at the onset of Covid, when he declared there was “no risk in using the Tube or buses or other forms of public transport or going to a concert.” It was naturally only three weeks later that his stance had morphed into “stop Tube travel or more will die”.  
• Giving the public what it wants: Knowing what your voters want is a key attribute of genuine leadership, and it’s here that Khan is worth his weight perhaps not in gold, but certainly in slag. Only last month Khan called for the decriminalisation of cannabis, on the basis that ‘drug laws are damaging police relations with ethnic communities’. While thus far he has been unsuccessful, rumours at City Hall are that if Khan can get past this hurdle, he will move to decriminalise stabbing, as that would further ease community relations and cut down significantly on police paperwork. 
• Housing crisis, what housing crisis?: While he talks a good game on housing, Khan has been accused of misleading voters, as affordable housing in the Capital has hit a record low. But then, when the vast majority of your voters get put up in four-star hotels upon arrival in mainland Britain, what’s the problem? 
• The war on whitey: Bravery is clearly in short supply these days, but Khan is not afraid of standing up when it matters – particularly in fighting the scourge of whiteness. Way back in 2016, Khan was the first to notice that there were too many white men on the board of Transport for London: “Thirteen of them are white men. Thirteen!” He said. Next up, it was white, bikini-clad models on the underground (Khan naturally has no problem when the models happen to be black), and white, working-class men who Khan insists on featuring exclusively in his misogyny campaigns. Best in show however, came back in 2023 when the Mayor’s official website published pictures of a white family, claiming they ‘did not represent real Londoners’. 

I could go on all night, but suffice it to say that if you think Sadiq Khan is a worthy recipient of a Knighthood, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Gaslighting the public is clearly the central tenet of the Starmer administration, but seeing as we’re all taking the piss – why shouldn’t the following get a gong too? 

James Corden, singlehandedly obviating the need for assisted dying legislation by testing the public’s will to live. Unpublished research seen by The New Conservative suggests that phone calls to The Samaritans quadruple whenever fatso is on the box. 

Gary Lineker, for services to political neutrality. 

Salman Abedi, whose pro bono pyrotechnics helped turn a Manchester evening into a night nobody will forget. 

Greta Thunberg, the patron saint of lost causes, who manages to be wrong on absolutely every issue while claiming victimhood in the process. 

James O’Brien, living proof that you can survive for years with a strangulated hernia and still lecture the nation on LBC.

Please include yours below, and The New Conservative will do our best to lobby on your behalf. 

Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West and The Frank Report, which you should probably subscribe to.

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(Photograph: National Archives, OGL v1.0OGL v1.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

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