Did I dream it? Or was it on telly?
It’s roughly two years since I moved away from London, and it appears — to paraphrase Ripley from Aliens — that IQs have dropped sharply since I’ve been gone. Seriously London… Boris Johnson?! What the hell is that all about? Did they open the polling booths at 2am and you all voted in the midst of a late-night ketamine binge? Or is this some kind of subversive plot to discredit the tories in the long-run; y’know, let them wreck your town and hopefully it’ll stop them wrecking the country…? If so, then let me be the first to say that I admire the nobility of your sacrifice.
But the thing is; that’s not what happened, is it? What happened is that Londoners turned out in relatively large numbers to support Boris Johnson because they think he’s the best person for the job of running their city. I’m sorry, I need to say that again because it’s still not sinking in… Boris Johnson is now running London.
That’s just mad.
The only reason everyone knows Boris Johnson far better than they know Patrick Cormack (Tory MP for South Staffordshire, in case you’re wondering) is because Boris Johnson is the blithering idiot MP who can be relied upon to act like a fool on telly. It’s not his rapier wit that gets him on Have I Got News For You? It’s the inherent absurdity that this upperclass twit actually holds a position of power. He’s there to laugh at. And it’s funny because he’s only one MP out of hundreds, and the only people voting for him are the wealthy residents of Henley.
Until now. It’s really not funny any more, London. You’ve voted for a man who has pledged to “scale back the congestion charge”. Let’s not mince words here, he wants to make it easier and cheaper to drive a car into the city. In a world of record oil prices, of a potential peak in production, a world in which Climate Change threatens catastrophic consequences; you’ve given the job of running Europe’s largest city to a man who actively seeks to encourage private car use? You fucking idiots!
Most sensible Londoners agree, Boris Johnson is a tosser…. but we voted for him, because we wanted to get rid of Ken Livingstone and Labour. We should accept that he was elected and let him get on with the job. The joke is certainly on his critics.
May 4th, 2008 | 6:00pm
by The Armchair
His upper class twit schtick reminds me of Reagan’s bumbly old uncle act. If people feel their a bit cleverer than you, they don’t feel you can be deceiving them. (And in a Britain run by Labour, the party of spin doctors and the fucking lies that took us to war, feeling like a leader won’t lie is understandably highly prized right now).
Thing is, it is just schtick. I find it hard to believe that someone who went to Oxford on a scholarship and became president of the Oxford Union is stupid.
Whilst the individual appears to carry more genuine power with the Mayoralty of London than with say, the American President, you’ve still got to ask the same question – who’s really running the show? Who is the team behind the mascot?
May 5th, 2008 | 11:31am
by merrick
Armchair, I actually think the joke is on all Londoners and not just his critics. Unfortunately it’s just not a very funny one.
Merrick, on the one hand there’s clearly more to Johnson than just his bumbling schtick. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that stupid upperclass fools with money and connections can get into Oxford. Also, while I actually respect his chosen area of study; “The Classics”; I’m not entirely sure that the ability to secure a degree in Latin, Ancient Greek, Roman Poetry and historical conjecture necessarily means you have the management skills to run one of the world’s largest cities.
In fact, from the little I know of Johnson, he quite clearly doesn’t possess those skills unlike (for all his myriad faults) Ken Livingstone who — it turned out — was a surprisingly accomplished manager. Johnson will be a disaster for London and his election is a backwards step globally on issues such as transportation policy and Climate Change mitigation (yes, globally, because a success in an influential city like London will be copied elsewhere).
May 9th, 2008 | 9:55pm
by Jim Bliss