RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Why is Sadiq Khan, the World’s Worst Mayor, getting a knighthood? My lengthy lunch in London exemplified all the things flawed with the way in which Left-wing lunatics attempt to destroy our lives

Looks like my knighthood’s got lost in the Christmas post again this year. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

Even if they were daft enough to offer me one – which they won’t, quite rightly, not in a million years – I wouldn’t accept. I’m a confirmed subscriber to the Marx-ish view of the world: I have no desire to belong to a club which would have me as a member. Unlike the faux, multi-millionaire, woke luvvies at the Groucho Club, in London‘s Soho, who apparently didn’t get the original memo.

And yet. All those assorted, virtue-signalling, anti-privilege (especially ‘white’ privilege) privileged Lefties are gagging for a gong.

National treasures, the lot of ’em.

So, bugle-blasts all round, step forward Genghis Khan, London’s two-bob chancer of a mayor who is, according to leaks, about to become ‘Sir’ Genghis, in recognition of his contributions to ‘public service’.

I’ve heard of Taking The Knee, but this is ridiculous.

But here we are. ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer, super-annuated, gold-plated, pension-underwritten son of a toolmaker (I don’t know whether he ever mentioned it), is about to confer a knighthood on the World’s Worst Mayor (curiously, another complete-and-utter, taxpayer-bankrolled ‘yuman rites’ lawyer) who just happens to be the son of a bus driver – or was it a conductor, I forget?

I hate you, Butler!

On that basis, the late, great Dusty Springfield missed out on a damehood. She was the Son Of A Preacher Man.

You won’t find ‘Sir’ Genghis, on the Number 18 down to Euston, like Ian Dury’s dad.

Man of The People that he is, he’s chauffeured around town in a £350,000 armour-plated Range Rover, courtesy of another ‘Sir’, Mark Rowley, an equally-useless, and almost the worst-ever, (‘Lord’ Hyphen-Howe apart), Commissioner of Scotland Yard.

And that’s when his Plods aren’t investigating politically motivated ‘non-crime hate incidents’ or giving a police escort to ghastly, violent, racist, anti-Semite (sorry, pro-Palestinian) headbangers.

Sieg Heil!

There’s no danger of Genghis travelling on buses, reading the graffiti about slashed seats and fares.

Still, That’s Entertainment.

So forgive me for going into outrage overdrive. But at this time of the year, I just want to hear people laughing and having a good time.

(That’s enough old songs – Ed. Most of your readers have never heard of Southside Johnny, let alone the Asbury Jukes.)

Forgive me, too, for littering the top half of this column with italics, caveats, commas and parentheses.

Tell us what you really think, Rich.

So let’s start again. The Southside Johnny lyric is what I live by. I really do just want to hear people laughing and having a good time, never more so than at this time of year.

What gets in the way of that is Big Government, personified by tuppenny-half-penny technocrats like the dismal, out-of-his-depth, waste-of-space Kentish Town, pretend-Gooner from Guildford, tosseur Starmer and the ghastly, self-obsessed Genghis Khan.

Here’s a for-instance . . .

On Friday, we were heading into Town for a festive lunch. Gentlemen at a, er, Gentlemen’s Luncheon (which will probably be made illegal in the next few years). Ladies assembled at a well-known venue for Ladies Who Lunch. Then one up The Coal Hole in the Strand on the way home.

From the kick-off, all went smoothly. The Uber to the Tube station turned up on the button.

Then the Tube train, which was supposed to leave after two minutes, was ‘taken out of service’ 20 minutes later. So we all shuffled across to the train sitting at Platform Three. And sat there for another eternity, because of ‘signalling ishoos’.

When we eventually landed at Covent Garden, there were notices and announcements that we should take firm hold of our personal possessions – handbags, gladrags, mobiles phones, etc. – because ‘Thieves operate in this area’.

On the way home – treble mulled-wines all round – our rattler to the end of the Piccadilly Line ‘terminated at Arnos Grove’.

Of course it did.

So we got off and decided to have one up the Arnos Arms, where I used to drink when we lived there 40-odd years ago.

It was a revelation.

A once-shabby, 1930s, old-fashioned, road-house boozer off the North Circular Road, transformed by private investment. The staff were fabulous. The place was packed with young people laughing and having a good time. That could have been us, the weekend after the Ricky Villa Cup Final Replay, with the kids in a pushchair. One of them, at least.

The Uber we called to take us home was there in no time, immaculate, 15 quid plus a tip. Bob’s your mother’s brother – or, in my case, cousin.

It dawned on me. Everything good about last Friday was down to private, independent endeavour.

Everything rubbish was down to Genghis and the Starmeramas, who think the State should run our lives. No coppers at Covent Garden, only thieves? Really?

As the Tube rolled across the bridge where it goes above ground after Bounds Green  I noticed the gridlocked North Circ, even though Two Jags had bought up every house 25 years ago for a road widening scheme, which still hasn’t happened.

So ignore Ginge Rayner’s – this year’s Two Jags – ‘pledges’ to build hundreds of millions of affordable homes for Afghans – or, after today, all the Syrians Pixie Balls-Cooper can’t fit into her loft.

I don’t want to make it too metro-centric, but my London is like your town, city, county, too.

Everywhere is now run by Left-wing lunatics. Starmeramas’s latest Transport Secretary – whoever that is, after the dopey bird with the Burgundy barnet was taken out and shot – has just put the mental-cases at Extinction Rebellion in charge of roads.

Give me strength.

I read a story yesterday which said that Birmingham – our Motor City, which I love like I love Detroit and where I spent some of the greatest days of my career covering British Leyland – is going to slap 20mph signs at Spaghetti Junction and all points north, west, east and south.

Red Robbo..did he die in vain?

I also read at the weekend that last year something like only 220 new-born children (identifying as male) in Britain were christened (can we still say that?) Richard.

About 7,500 were called (not christened) Muhammad, or variations thereof.

I’ll get my coat. I suppose a knighthood’s out of the question . . .