Gavin Newsom

How to ruin a city

Why would you choose to make a city crappy? Plenty of cities don’t have much going for them. But when they do, it takes a certain amount of skill to actively wreck them. Take London, for instance. Anyone in charge of our capital needed only to maintain it, if not improve it. Yet in almost a decade as mayor, Sadiq Khan has overseen a decline which is obvious to any resident or visitor. That first sign of rot – the tolerance of minor crime – is everywhere. It might be graffiti on the Tube. Or it might be the fact that it is risky to hold a mobile phone in

Why Elon Musk is right to leave California

Not long before Joe Biden finally accepted defeat, Gavin Newsom, the 56-year-old governor of California, was on the stump for him in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, shirt undone two daring buttons, sleeves rolled up, silver hair gelled just so. Newsom, who is now being mentioned as Kamala Harris’s running mate, models himself on Bill Clinton. People who’ve worked with him say he practises Clintonian gestures in the mirror, though the look he’s achieved is more Harley Street gynaecologist. How can Gavin Newsom sleep knowing he’s encouraged children to think of their parents as the enemy? ‘If Donald Trump succeeds, God help us, we will roll back the last half-century,’ Newsom told