Mayday?
May 5, 2008 9:41 pm LondonZoe Williams wrote a piece in The Guardian on the day of the London Mayoral election, about Boris Johnson - presumably in order to mobilise the vote against him. She says we make two mistakes about Boris:
- That he is a nice guy (”he is not a nice guy”), and
- He despises (all) people who are not of his class because
he is a snob.
Williams contends that Boris is racist, homophobic, and out of touch with Londoners:
doors, in clubs that only just let women in, let alone plebs, in
restaurants that don’t have prices on the menus, in the Regency offices
of magazines whose only distinction is that all the staff are shagging
each other. They disappear to the country at weekends, then come back
muttering on Monday about how the poor generate litter. That is not
London. I’m not going to do some New Labour drum-roll about creativity
and youth and multiculturalism, since we don’t need it.
We know what
London is. Boris is not London.”
I had been concerned to discover that the candidate had given up drinking alcohol for the duration of the campaign; but as as soon as the votes were cast, he had returned to his old ways. It struck me that perhaps this, and not the unseen hand of his Conservative minders, was the reason for the marked change in the tone of his behaviour during that time.
Other than venting her personal feelings about him, Williams backs up only a couple of points empirically, and therefore comes across somewhat partisan. These are augmented by a selection of anti-Boris viewpoints from a rollcall of Londoners in and out of the public eye. In fact, if you weren’t to scroll to the bottom of the page, you would miss the most compelling argument, which is both empirical and non partisan: Boris’ words themselves. Perhaps these are what worked on those people I know who were successfully mobilised by the article. I’ll leave you with the words of our new mayor:
- On his arts role
“Look, the point is … er, what is the point? It is a tough job but somebody has got to do it.”
· On being appointed Tory Arts spokesman, 2004
- On stag hunting
“I
remember the guts streaming, and the stag turds spilling out on to the
grass from within the ventral cavity … This hunting is best for the
deer.”
· From his book Lend Me Your Ears
- On Africa
“No doubt the AK47s will fall
silent, the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the
tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big
white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.”
· In 2002, on Tony Blair’s visit to the Democratic of Republic of Congo, Daily Telegraph
Tags: London, mayoral election, Boris
