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Sketch: Thinkin’ about leavin’ the EU? Sadiq Khan's doin’ the explainin’ for remainin’

The Gettin Down with the Kidz Referendum Drive comes to a Eurovision tribute building in east London  

Tom Peck
Parliamentary Sketch Writer
Thursday 26 May 2016 11:31 EDT
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Mayor of London Sadiq Khan gettin down with the kidz at Second Home, East London
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan gettin down with the kidz at Second Home, East London

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Day Two of the EU Referendum’s Down With The Kidz drive and anyone who’s anyone was walkin, cyclin, tubin, hoverboardin or just generally headin down to east London “tech hub” Second Home to hear from London’s brand new son-of-a-bus-drivin Mayor what they’ve just been electin.

Whether Second Home was meant to look like a three-storey dedication to a Latvian futuretroelectropop Eurovision entry is uncertain, but it certainly helped. Once you’d registered in reception with the teenage daughter from The Jetsons peering out from a gap between two sheets of corrugated iron lovingly corniced in translucent orange plastic, it was straight in to the central space to take a seat in one of about 150 chairs of which – I do not exaggerate – no two were the same.

Second Home is the brainchild of former Treasury spad turned “tech guru” Rohan Silva. It is, according to itself, a “Creative accelerator – a workspace and cultural venue for thinkers, makers, artists and entrepreneurs.”

There they all were, staring into their Macbooks, clamped into their Beats by Dre’s, twiddling their iBeards, eating their smartcroissants and drinking their driverless coffee.

To the uninitiated, it is hard to work out what “tech guru” Silva’s contribution is to this great hive of creativity beyond sticking some plant pots to the walls and charging £350 a month for wifi access. Though it can’t be denied he's “entrepreneurial”.

In the very near future, it is predicted that robots might be smart enough to rent out a building in east London, stick plants on the walls and charge £350 a month for wifi. In fact, early trials are already showing signs of success but the first prototypes have thus far refused to write newspaper columns calling themselves “tech gurus” when all they’ve done is stick plants to the walls and charge £350 a month for wifi.

The trick in these places is trying to work out who’s doing it ironically. The bloke in the polished metal T-shirt and cartoon torturer’s spectacles who got up to introduce the Mayor appeared to be deadly serious. This was an outfit that had clearly spent weeks in the planning stage and was not merely the consequence of having come straight from playing second synth in a Babylon Zoo tribute band.

It could be argued some people here are trying a bit too hard to be cool. You could, if you wanted, draw attention to Second Home’s website, secondhome.io, it’s vowel-only domain name the result of it having been registered in the British Indian Ocean Territory. Whoever knew consecutive vowels were so rad? Old MacDonald was ahead of his time.

Anyway. The response to the Government’s youth-engagin, awareness raisin, vote registerin campaign has not been good. Every political journalist between the ages of 18 and 32 has been angrily bloggin about how patronisin it is, apparently unaware that it’s not directly aimed at people who write about politics for a livin.

In any event it was too late to get Sadiq Khan to go off message on the g-droppin front. When it comes to doin the explaininin for remainin, there's no one more entertainin.

“Thank you for comin to this amazin space this mornin,” he began, his tie wisely off. “Remainin is the best way we can be true to our British values. Learnin languages. Cultural exchanges. Fundin. Studyin. Workin abroad. Crackin the glass ceilin.”

When the room had emptied, out came a young woman in a floral jumpsuit and a haircut straight from the Galactic Senate. It looked like was her job to stack chairs. Not easy when all 150 are completely different. Useful if you're looking for a metaphor for a federalist superstate though.

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