Outside of libel, obviously.
I’m getting worried, you see. I know that polls can’t be trusted (poor old Neil Kinnock must still internally cringe), but the race for the Mayor’s office is becoming dangerously tight. The position has only been back in existence since 2000 and to be honest in that and the 2004 election there was never any real threat to Ken Livingstone.
Red Ken, the uber-Londoner, hard-line lefty, passionate newt farmer, former leader of the old GLC and self-styled scourge of Maggie Thatcher. He was always going to romp home either as an independent or back inside the Labour fold because, well, he’s Ken and none of the others stood a chance.
Frank Dobson, indeed.
But now, somehow - God only knows how - we’ve gotten ourselves into a situation where not only is there a challenger (which is actually a good thing) but it’s this idiot:
Boris bloody Johnson. I’m struggling with the fact that Johnson is actually being taken seriously in this election, but even worse people, normal liberal minded people, are starting to talk as though he’s already won.
Okay. Let’s clarify something before we go any further. I won’t be voting for Boris, but I’ve also never voted for Ken either. I didn’t live in London in 2000 and in 2004 my first choice was the Green candidate, Darren Johnson (I can’t remember who I voted for as my second preference, but I think it was the IWCA candidate.) I think Ken’s leadership of the city has some serious problems - most notably a severe case of cronyism at the GLA. There’s also been a resurgence of the complaints from the eighties that Ken’s policies are all about making Ken look good. I’ve made a couple of not very well disguised suggestions before that he may, possibly, have gone power-mad, but on the whole I think he’s done a good job. Perhaps some new blood would be a good thing, but (please God) not this man.
I remember seeing Johnson some years ago on Have I Got News For You and thinking “what an idiot”. And this is one of the important things that people forget: we’re all laughing at him, not with him when he makes a loveable-buffoon-like appearance on the telly.
“Oh, look. It’s only Boris Johnson. What comically ludicrous, yet totally unacceptable thing for a politician, is going to say today?”
My problem isn’t so much with his policies (although I disagree with a lot of those too), but rather the person behind them.
Oh, all right. Lets have a quick look at the policies shall we?
Crime: This is the big one for Boris and yes, he’s right. Twenty-seven teenagers were killed on the streets of London in 2007; twelve so far this year. Gang-culture and the ridiculous post-code wars need to end. How do you do that? I don’t know, but I’d look at cracking down on drugs, knives and guns being bought into the city and then trying to improve the livelihoods of those on the poorest estates who are most likely to get caught up this.
Boris’ answer? Put four hundred and forty extra policemen on the buses. Now, I don’t know about everyone else but generally speaking I don’t feel that threatened on the bus. I know that people have been killed on the bus (for example Billy Ward on the N159 in Croydon last year or Richard Whelan on the 43 in Islington in 2005), but there are more dangerous places in the city. Buses are well lit, there’s generally other people about. For most people I know who have been mugged (including myself), it’s happened in that dark little alley near your house that you’ve nipped down loads of times and nothings ever happened.
The places you feel comfortable.
He’s right in principle, although every single other candidate recognises this too, but I don’t see any solutions in his policies.
Transport: Looking at Boris’ website the four hundred and forty police for the buses also crop up in this section. I don’t know why - are they supposed to be driving the buses too?
He’ll also scrap the bendy-buses and then launch a competition to design a new route master for the twenty-first century. A plan he’s quoted as costing £8,000,000 and which industry experts value at £114,000,000. Slight difference there. Now, again this is just personal experience, but as much as I liked the old route masters and, yes, they were iconic, they were also fucking ancient. I lost count of the number of times I had to bale out of a broken down 36 in Camberwell.
Plus, when Beck lived out the front of the New Cross bus garage the three hours they spent warming up made the glass in all the windows vibrate. At four in the morning it sounded like a small earthquake. You couldn’t stall the thing; if the driver took his foot off the accelerator they stopped and wouldn’t start again. I don’t have a problem with bendy-buses.
The train and the tube system needs overhauling, apparently. Again - does it? The only way I can see to make the system run better is take some of the people out. I think in the time I’ve been living in London it’s gotten better. Certainly on the overland out of darkest SE4. When I first moved down the trains were guaranteed to be at least twenty minutes delayed, over-crowded or simply cancelled. But back in 2001 Connex had their licence to operate the system revoked and the new company Southern does a good enough job.
When I worked in Highbury my commute involved the overland, the Northern Line and the Victoria Line. In three and a half years I can remember being late once. The Northern Line runs every 2-5 minutes - can you really, safely, fit an extra service in? Now later running trains I would support, but there’s no mention of that from Boris.
Of course it’s worth remember that whilst Boris prats about on his bike pretending to be eco-friendly he was also the motoring correspondent for GQ magazine and, I suspect, gets a bit of a sexual thrill out of Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
No real surprise, then, that he’s planning on reforming (scrapping?) the congestion charge. Again, sorry but I think the c-charge works - and I’m a driver. Let’s remember that it only really covers a very small area and only operates Monday-Friday seven till six. You can even drive right through the middle on a special free route (no, I didn’t know that either until checking the operating hours today). It covers an area with the greatest concentration of tube stations and pedestrians in the whole city. There are plenty of reasons as to why you don’t need to drive into the west end - and if you do, and I have done, it works brilliantly. There’s no-one about.
I also don’t think that it causes problems around the perimeter either. If you’re saying it does then you might as well start blaming the snails pace of the south circular on it, or the inevitable three mile queue to get through the Blackwell Tunnel every morning and evening.
Besides traffic has generally got worse around the whole country in the past few years. A few years ago it typically took two hours five minutes to drive from Brockley to Birmingham. Now it usually takes two hours thirty, two hours forty and I’m as likely to get stuck on the M40 outside High Wycombe as to spend ten minutes crossing Vauxhall Bridge.
Okay, for those living inside the zone it can be a bit pricey, but, come on, if you can afford the £1,385 monthly rent on a one bed flat in Chelsea or £1,560 for the same in the Barbican AND you own a car which for some reason you have to drive to work because you’re allergic to the other people on the bus then, frankly, my sympathy is limited.
The Environment: Suddenly Boris has come over all green and world caring. He wants low emission zones introduced (sorry, Boris, it already covers ninety-five percent of London) and he wants to protect our parks and promote recycling.
This is blatant electioneering. This is a man who’s publicly opposed the Kyoto agreement (“when Bush says no, he’s doing what’s right not just for America, but for the world” Lend Me Your Ears p318) supports Nuclear power over renewable energy sources (“we need an alternative and one that doesn’t just involve crucifying our landscape with wind farms.” Have I Got Views For You p83) and has voiced the odd doubt as to the existence of climate change at all!
Housing: This one’s too easy. His website says “we need to work in partnership with councils to increase the number of affordable homes.” In one of his own books he says “how can you stop the market from asserting itself, as it always will, and tempting the owners to eventually achieve the real value of their property?” (Friends, Voters, Countrymen p74) In other words, affordable housing? Waste of time.
Poking fun at Boris’ policies is quite fun, but it doesn’t get to the real problem. The policies are, of course, not actually written by Boris - and neither are Ken’s or Brian Paddick’s (err, written by themselves, that is, not by Boris; that’d be too strange) - but by nameless drones in party central office. Boris’ job is to stand up there and appear slightly comical.
Here’s the real problem guys. It’s not what he’s saying now, but what he’s said in the past. When he hasn’t been so guarded, when he’s been a little more candid. When the real Boris has come out.
Let’s just quickly tackle his claims to be working class (have you heard him?). Okay, so his grandfather may have been an immigrant from Turkey, escaping the 1919 revolution, but last time I looked Ataturk was in support of the people and it was the aristocrats who were running for it. How can an Eton and Oxford educated, member of the Baliol crème-de-la-crème toff drinking club possible relate to a city the biggest problem for which is, arguably, a massive disproportion in the distribution of wealth? How is someone who managed to get his own name wrong on national television supposed to grasp that?
How can the leader of a multi-cultural city with international standing like London have said some of this stuff?
“It was mesmerising… to stand in Baghdad and look at the contrast between the Americans and the people they had liberated. The Iraqis were skinny and dark, badly dressed and fed. The Americans were…taller and squarer than the indigenous people, with heavier chins and better definition. They looked like a master race…” (Lend Me Your Ears p1)
“Whenever George Dubya Bush appears on television…I find a cheer rising irresistibly in my throat. Yo Bush baby, I find myself saying…just you tell all those pointy-eared liberals where to get off.” (Have I Got Views For You p260)
“[Lib-Dem’s are] a minority that possess a characteristic human psychological deformity.” That’ll be ideal for working within a mixed GLA then. (Have I Got Views For You p90)
“Both the minimum wage and the Social Charter would palpably destroy jobs.” (Lend Me Your Ears p104)
“[the welfare state’s] excessive disbursements that warp honest people.” That’s everyone on benefits joining the Lib-Dems then. (Lend Me Your Ears p412)
“It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair…is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he’s shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop the hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will break out the watermelon smiles to see the big white chief.” (The Daily Telegraph 10/01/2002)
I’m sorry. How does he get away with that? Not once, but twice:
[In Uganda looking at Unicef work he turns to the Swedish staff and their black driver and says:] “Right, lets go and look at some more picaninnies.” (The Observer 05/10/2003)
Let’s not stop there, though. Let’s see what he thinks of South Africa:
“The minority tyranny of apartheid would be followed by the majority tyranny of black rule.” (Lend Me Your Ears p464)
“The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge anymore… the best fate for Africa would be if the colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.” (The Spectator 02/02/2002)
And China?
“Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase.” (Have I Got Views For You p277)
“A sweet faced Chinese air stewardess [is] standing over me… ‘Oh!’ said the stewardess flummoxed, ‘velly solly.” (The Spectator 04/01/2003)
And finally: “Labour’s appalling agenda encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools.” That one doesn’t even make sense. (The Daily Telegraph 03/08/2000)
Let’s not forget he’s also had a pop at New Guinea, the Dutch, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, the Koran and the EU and conspired with an old school chum and convicted fraudster to have a journalist beaten up.
There’s three possible outcomes if you elect Johnson.
1) Not a lot happens. He gets elected and runs the city rather boringly. (Personally I don’t see this happening, but I have to concede it is a remote possibility.)
2) He really is a complete and utter idiot. It’s not an act to make him more endearing. The world laughs at London until Bolton, Mexico and Denmark form an alliance after a typical Johnson tirade and declare war on us.
3) It’s all an act and then the stuff that’s accidentally slipped out is allowed to come to the fore. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath he’s even more right-wing than anyone imagined.
Actually, that final option sounds vaguely familiar. Slightly comical, right-winger is elected in the spirit of change and a ’he can’t really be that bad, can he?’ Now, when was it?
Oh, yeah. Germany, 1933.
Not that for a single second I’m comparing Boris Johnson to Hitler or anything…
Small Print:
All Johnson quotes taken from the Compass Publication ‘Boris Johnson - A Member of The Hard Tory Right’ and referenced as there. You can download the complete document here:
http://www.compassonline.org.uk/publications/item.asp?d=290
Johnson’s appearances on ‘Have I Got News For You’ can mainly be found on YouTube including the moments when he gets his own name wrong and discusses conspiring to have a journalist put in hospital. Follow this link:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=boris+johnson+have+i+got+news+for+you&search_type=
Johnson’s policy details were lifted from his own website:
http://www.backboris.com/
In the interest of fairness here’s Ken Livingstone’s website:
http://www.kenlivingstone.com/policies/overview
Here’s Brian Paddick for the Liberal Democrats:
http://www.brianpaddick.org/
And Sian Berry for the Greens:
http://sianformayor.org.uk/
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