I find it hard to get too worked up about who wins the London Mayoralty on 1 May. I live c.600 miles away on the beautiful Ayrshire coast so I don’t have a vote and I’ve read very little about this election that actually references what either man would do for London. I like both men because I'm always drawn to the rebellious eccentrics in politics and have a theory that whatever their flaws both would make a better fist of things than more traditional politicians. All the press comment seems to be proxy Labour v Tory debates and character assassinations of both men (which, given their history, doesn’t call for a particularly accurate shot). Yasmin Alibhai-Brown provides a perfect example in today’s Independent – “Londoners would be mad to vote for Boris”
Yasmin’s piece will be familiar to anyone who’s been following this race – its part of the ‘OK, he’s an amusing buffoon but don’t be taken in, he’d destroy London’ canon that many commentators on the left are now contributing to. All the references are there, his suspect race references, slips and gaffes at every turn and the wider shift in political fortunes his victory might herald. And of course Ken’s happy familiarity with homophobic misogynistic Muslim clerics, off-the-cuff anti-Semitic quips and Olympic proportioned cronyism don’t merit a mention. To be fair Yasmin does acknowledge the deep flaws in both men but she never quite offers up a robust explanation for why Londoners would be ‘more’ mad to vote for Boris – but then again that’s not strictly what her headline says!
Being a lazy blogger-type rather than a seasoned journalist I haven’t researched this but I’ll bet the precedent here is probably pieces warning about the disaster Ken would become in the first Mayoral election in 2000 and urging Londoners to support the official Labour candidate Frank Dobson. The maverick tag sat as comfortably on Ken in the late 90’s as it does now Boris and even Blair once predicted Ken would be ‘an absolute disaster’ as Mayor. In reality there’s been some good and some not-so-good but surely only a partisan fool would describe his eight-year tenure as a disaster? Given the parallels here the anti-Boris mob will need to do far more to persuade Londoners that ‘disaster’ is anymore a likelihood here.
So no lengthy expositions of the merits of any candidate from me – just a plea that the rules in assessing each candidate’s worthiness of office are applied the same across the field.
Yasmin’s piece will be familiar to anyone who’s been following this race – its part of the ‘OK, he’s an amusing buffoon but don’t be taken in, he’d destroy London’ canon that many commentators on the left are now contributing to. All the references are there, his suspect race references, slips and gaffes at every turn and the wider shift in political fortunes his victory might herald. And of course Ken’s happy familiarity with homophobic misogynistic Muslim clerics, off-the-cuff anti-Semitic quips and Olympic proportioned cronyism don’t merit a mention. To be fair Yasmin does acknowledge the deep flaws in both men but she never quite offers up a robust explanation for why Londoners would be ‘more’ mad to vote for Boris – but then again that’s not strictly what her headline says!
Being a lazy blogger-type rather than a seasoned journalist I haven’t researched this but I’ll bet the precedent here is probably pieces warning about the disaster Ken would become in the first Mayoral election in 2000 and urging Londoners to support the official Labour candidate Frank Dobson. The maverick tag sat as comfortably on Ken in the late 90’s as it does now Boris and even Blair once predicted Ken would be ‘an absolute disaster’ as Mayor. In reality there’s been some good and some not-so-good but surely only a partisan fool would describe his eight-year tenure as a disaster? Given the parallels here the anti-Boris mob will need to do far more to persuade Londoners that ‘disaster’ is anymore a likelihood here.
So no lengthy expositions of the merits of any candidate from me – just a plea that the rules in assessing each candidate’s worthiness of office are applied the same across the field.
1 Comments:
You have provincial charm C. I do not see what you object to in the character of Boris Johnson though,. It is the inability of the supposed Liberal to recognise what Len Livingstone is that makes me despair of them.
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