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Hello and welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast and in this week's episode we'll be talking about Red London,

just how badly will the Tories do in the upcoming local elections, and why do people love Sadiq Khan?

We'll also be asking, is Macron's political honeymoon over?

And finally, we'll be looking at what happened to the romantic ideal of the Grand Tour.

First up, as national headlines are dominated by Jeremy Corbyn, local labour candidates are

preparing for victory in London's upcoming local elections.

Will Heaven, the spectator's managing editor, writes in this week's cover story that London

is turning red. He joins me now, along with Andrew Gilligan, senior correspondent at the

Sunday Times,

who also writes in this week's magazine about Sadiq Khan.

And I'm also joined by Pippa Kira, the deputy political editor of The Guardian.

So, well, you say in your piece that the Tories are bracing themselves for disaster.

What have they got to fear exactly?

I think they've got to fear a kind of double whammy in London, which is that you've got centrist labour supporters who think that by voting for labour, they're basically supporting Sadiq Khan. He's also got

Corbinistas who are highly motivated and could come out in big numbers. And that's something

that I think the Tories have never seen before. And that's why they're so afraid.

How important is Corbyn in all of this, do you think?

He definitely is a key factor in the seats which the Labour Party is most likely to win,

which are the Tory tramvert, the Crown Jules, if you like,

in the Tory Crown of local government in London, the Wandsworth, Westminster and K&C.

There's obviously Barnett as well, which I'm not sure you just quite describe as a Tory crown jewel, but nevertheless is the most likely to go to labour.

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