The Richmond Park MP ran a borderline racist and completely phoney campaign.

On both the Right and the Left, there are big personalities with strong opinions who will not hesitate to whip up racial tensions for their own benefit.

But the Nigel Farages, George Galloways and Ken Livingstones of this world can at least go to bed at night satisfied that they believe most of the things they say and are true to themselves.

Zac Goldsmith however, won’t even be able to do that.

The billionaire environmentalist who twice won the former Lib Dem stronghold of Richmond with a refreshingly positive campaign had a personality transplant when attempting to win the London mayoralty.

It was like David Cameron and Lynton Crosby (do we have to call him Sir Lynton now?) talking through Zac’s body.

His opponent, Sadiq Khan, was slimey, scripted and a man whose campaign was based on the politics of envy (seriously Sadiq, how many times do you have to tell us you’re the son of a bus driver). I’m still not sure why Labour didn’t choose Tottenham MP David Lammy, who would have brought new ideas and a wave of positivity to London’s contest.

But now it doesn’t matter because Sadiq Khan has won without lifting a finger.

London may be a Labour-leaning city, but Khan was such a poor candidate that it wouldn’t have taken more than a pinch of niceness and an opponent who looked the slightest bit genuine to beat him.

Zac Goldsmith was even selected by the Conservatives to provide both of those attributes. Instead, he will go home and, I hope, be embarrassed with how he has behaved the last few months.

In London’s race to the bottom, he won hands down.

Goldsmith’s whole campaign had one theme. Sadiq Khan, as a British Pakistani, must be an extremist.

If UKIP had run such a toxic campaign, there would be outrage, not least from Cameron, Goldsmith and their cohorts. It simply begs belief that they thought they could pull the wool over the eyes of the capital with their sneering establishment form of racism, poorly disguised as a genuine concern for our security.

With four days to go until the election, Goldsmith wrote an editorial in the Daily Mail pleading with voters not to hand London to ‘a Labour party that thinks terrorists are its friends’.

Nobody in their right mind can take that seriously. As if David Cameron’s patronising and negative campaigning in election after election isn’t bad enough, Goldsmith took it to a new low in a city that was never likely to respond positively to it.

Contrast that with the positive campaigning of the Scottish Conservatives under Ruth Davidson who were rewarded with a 15% increase in support and their best ever result.

The basis for Goldsmith’s negative campaign was that Khan had previously shared a platform with extremists, which actually means debated with them. By definition that means he had a different point of view.

If Goldsmith cannot see the benefit of a prominent Muslim figure debating with conservative Islamic groups and tackling their views head on, rather than letting them go unchallenged, then he is probably the one lacking judgement and unfit for public office.

Never before have I seen the Right of British politics endorse no-platforming in such a big way.

Since my university days, I always saw that as a trait of the Left, shutting off debate because they wished for their views to go unchallenged. Yet suddenly this is how the Conservative Party is behaving for its own petty political benefit. Their fake outrage is cringeworthy.

From now on, the party needs to leave the no-platforming to those pathetic individuals who deleted half their Facebook friendlists the day after the General Election for daring to vote for the country’s most popular party – the Conservatives.

As for Zac Goldsmith, he needs to dust himself down, lay low for a while and then consider what he wants to do next. If he ever wants a political career in high office, he would do well to be true to himself and never again read from the David Cameron/Lynton Crosby Negative Campaign Bible.