“The fairy lights of a Christmas market twinkled through the windows while tourists shuffled along the south bank clutching cups of mulled wine, oblivious to the heated debate going on inside the chamber. The mayor had been summoned, along with the head of Transport for London Mike Brown and its planning director Richard de Cani, to explain themselves to the Greater London Authority’s Oversight Committee over the murky genesis of the proposed garden bridge. And Boris, chief bridge booster, was getting increasingly hot under the collar.”