I have long believed that Sadiq Khan may be one of the best politicians in the country by a substantial distance.

Not because he has done a particularly good job as Mayor but instead owing to his exceptional skill at self advancement.

Sir Sadiq (soon to be ennobled, itself a damning indictment of our honours system) is an ambitious man, with a ruthlessness toward his rivals that would make Machiavelli blush.

His memory is more selective than that of any politician I can readily bring to mind. Political dishonesty is an art, and he is among its more accomplished practitioners.

Recently, in an interview with a national newspaper, he extolled the many self-professed virtues of his Mayoralty.

Astonishingly he claimed that ‘nobody’ talks about the Ulez anymore – the ruinously expensive emissions scheme that drove tens of thousands of Londoners to scrap their cars.

Thousands more now fork out the daily charge, while praying he does not press ahead with his beloved pay-per-mile scheme.

Those plans, lest we forget, he set out himself in his exceedingly dull book, Breathe, in which he casts himself as the saviour of a city apparently mere moments from collapse.

Yet somewhere between his musings on how London’s new utopian splendour has blossomed under his rulership, he appears to have forgotten something rather more grave.

He has forgotten the grooming gang scandal and his shameless denial it was even happening, or ever had.

This newspaper has tirelessly exposed the scale of the grooming gang scandal in our capital, an epidemic of sexual violence against children that demanded, at the very least, the full attention of the man who runs the city.

Sir Sadiq gave it nothing and when challenged repeatedly he looked away for months. Then, when the national broadcaster picked up this paper’s investigation, he had the gall to pretend he had cared all along.

For Sir Sadiq the only issues worth pursuing are never ones that advance this great city, our capital, and the people who call it home.

Only when there is a direct electoral benefit to him does it become something of interest or a matter to be pursued with zeal.

It is on that basis, and that basis alone, that I have no hesitation in declaring the soon-to-be peer the greatest politician of his generation.

Arrogant, ambitious, and shamelessly devoted to the only cause he has ever truly served: himself.