Sadiq Khan's £83K African Odyssey proves 1 thing - and YOU'RE paying for it

There are a great many ways to fritter away £83,000 of the public purse. One could, for instance, repair a few Peckham potholes, fund a couple of Clapham coppers, or, dare one suggest it, keep a few bob back for the electricity bill.

Mr Khan however prefers the grander gesture: the fine hotel, pressing the flesh with African royals, and the selfie at thirty-thousand feet. Khan's "trade mission" to Africa came with the steep price tag of around £16,000 a day, a left a carbon footprint roughly equivalent to setting fire to the entire Transport for London timetable.

Eleven staff trailed in the man's wake as he gallivanted from Lagos to Accra to Cape Town, dropping the hefty tab off with the taxpayer, each leg justified to "bang the drum for British business" (God knows what that means). At this rate would it shock anyone if we found our the drum in question was gold-plated and monogrammed with the engraved initials "SK"?

Our Mayor is, of course, a man utterly bewitched by his own reflection. The sharp suits (including a fluorescent green number he one wore to swan over Millenium Bridge), the solemn expression and the endless announcements of global leadership. Sadiq moves through public life in a manner akin to a press release brought to life, all poise and piety.

This is the mayoral messiah who bans cheese adverts from the tube to save out waistlines, and taxes your car to spare our lungs, before hopping aboard a business class flight to lecture Africans about climate change. And his eyewatering vapid itinerary reads like a student union debate day.

It's pretend politics, globetrotting to Cape Town for a few handshakes, a bilateral and a meaningful conversation or two, and then back again. The bill? A mere £68,000 just on flights, and a further £11,000 on accommodation. Not forgetting around £2,800 on the food bill. Having been to South Africa, where a decent steak and a flight of beers will set you back about £6, one daren't ask where he was dining.

City Hall, with an unnerving straight face, insists that the trip was all in the name of economic growth. A convenient euphemism for the expansion of one's own photo album.

Yet the question remains, growth for whom? London's economy remains mired in red tape and stagnation, with the capital's transport network resembling something akin to a Soviet tram museum.

But the Mayor finds time in his busy schedule for a four day safari of self-congratulation.

Even the carbon accountants must be feeling weak at the knees, as his jaunt saw hundreds of tonnes of carbon emissions pumped into the atmosphere, several times the amount an average British family produces in an entire year. I'm pretty sure I heard the ozone layer breathing a sigh of relief when his jumbo taxied down the runway.

All this from a man who lectures motorists on their moral duty to buy eclectic cars!

And now, in a twist bordering on farce, Mr Khan has flown off again, this time to Brazil for COP30 where he doubtless will deliver another sermon on the manifest evils of air travel. The spectacle would almost be considered delicious if it wasn't so expensive. Sadiq Khan's hypocrisy is almost something of an art form.

He decries the expansion of Heathrow, despite travelling like a frequent-flyer. He insists London must lead the fight against climate change, but seems to do quite a lot of that insisting on the runway.

Londoners could be forgiven for wondering when the Mayor last led anything other than a publicity tour. This trip was not about trade, as Mr Khan is not a trade ebony, it was about theatre, a man desperate to prove himself an international statesman when his own city is crumbling.

Crime rates are climbing, housing is out of reach for many, and public transport is getting worse and more expensive. But still the Mayor flies business class to lecture the developing world about carbon emissions.

There is something faintly tragic about it all, a man with global ambitions mistaking motion for progress and applause for achievement. And well the bill lands, it will, as ever, be addressed to the people of London.