Sadiq Khan has trolled Laura Kuenssberg for “creating a sense of jeopardy” during the London mayoral election in May.
Speaking in City Hall, the London mayor made light of rumours swirling around before the election results were announced suggesting that Hall had pulled off a near-miraculous victory over Khan.
While most of the unsubstantiated claims were being fanned by right-wing nobodies, Kuenssberg jumped on the bandwagon at one point prompting the rumour mill to go into overdrive.
“What’s going on in the London Mayoral race? No votes have been counted yet, so hold on to your hats… but it is clear tonight that the race is much much closer than some polls had suggested…”
A comfortable win
Khan, the Labour incumbent, ended up beating his Tory challenger, Susan Hall, by a margin of more than 11 per cent, taking 43.8 per cent of the vote and growing his share of support by 3.8 per cent on the last election.
Touching on the rumours during a recent speech, Khan said:
“We’ve got a change of political leadership in Scotland in Holyrood, in Cardiff, in Westminster, but not — as you’ve heard — in City Hall yet. It was a record-breaking, history making landslide victory. Could I thank Laura Kuenssberg for a tweet the night before for creating that sense of jeopardy?”
“You can sometimes be a pain in the arse”
Ouch. The Labour politician went on, nodding to attendees present from other media outlets:
“All of you, in the job that you do, have to go through the trouble of fact checking, have to go through the trouble of giving us the right to reply and also the trouble of giving coherent, sensible commentary and critique — something your competitors on social media don’t have to do. Your role is incredibly important and it won’t be taken take for granted. You can sometimes be a pain in the arse — but that’s the price you pay for living in a democracy.”