• LOOKING at the electoral map of voting Londoners was a thoroughly heartening experience.

Red London represented a supreme outcome especially in the fact of a sustained and savage attack on the Labour Party by a largely right-wing press and media.

More troubling for Londoners was the political position taken by the London Evening Standard.

Owned by a Russian billionaire and edited by an embittered Tory cast-off, the Standard devoted many of its eve-of-election pages to a muscular support of the current Tory Party and a denigration of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party’s manifesto.

As part of its attack the Standard felt able to include a nasty personal dig at the vulnerable and evidently ill Diane Abbott.

The Standard purports to be the voice of Londoners and likes to see itself as a campaigning force in its support for worthy causes such as homelessness, food banks and more recently the horrific Grenfell Tower fire.

Londoners in their rejection of the Conservatives are smart enough to make the political connections between the capital’s social ills and the heartless economic policies of the current government.

In this respect the Standard would appear to have wrong-footed itself, displaying a huge gap in perception between itself and its readers.

The social media has demonstrated a growing scrutiny and opposition to the outrageous bias and lies of the likes of the Mail, The Telegraph and The Sun. Perhaps that needs to be extended to the Standard.

SAM PADMORE
Bloomsbury, WC1