What a difference abstaining makes
Earlier this evening I was watching a recording of Boris rambling and talking over an unimpressive interviewer on BBC London.
The interview dated back to last November, and it was the Boris we know and fear. Bumbling and incompetent, he would shout down his interviewer to finish whatever meandering point he was stumbling towards at the time, no matter how unworthwhile the point turned out to be. It was less cringe-making than his interview on the Andrew Marr show in February, but only because the interviewer was not a hard-hitter and just let him walk all over her rather than challenging him. Marr desperately tried to maintain some kind of coherence in his interview and looked like he didn’t know whether to cry, laugh or just smack Boris around the head by the end of it, as Marr inched ever closer to the edge of his seat to plead desperately for Boris to reach the end of his sentence.
Anyway, by a strange coincidence, less than an hour later I was watching Boris on this evening’s BBC London programme, being interviewed by the same presenter as before. I could have suffered from a sense of déjà vu, were it not for the fact that Boris has had one hell of a makeover in the past few weeks.
Looking at the date of that Andrew Marr appearance, I wonder if that was the straw that broke the Conservative camel’s back, actually. Cameron and co must surely have been watching that through the gaps between their fingers, egging on the clock towards the end of the programme, and really must have been thinking, “This can’t go on.”
And so it seems they determined it wouldn’t. Boris has been told to stop drinking completely until after 1 May, and has clearly spent what time his friends in the media let him have out of the spotlight being intensively coached in being a politician, rather than a clown.
Of course, there is no substance underneath the new exterior. Tonight’s interview was notable, like Boris’s manifesto, for how little information was actually imparted through it. If lesson number one was “Don’t be a clown”, lesson number two was evidently “Don’t tell anyone anything about what you’ll actually do if you’re Mayor”. Very politician-like, but not very helpful to anyone who wants to pick a candidate based on policies. Which is of course perfect for a campaign with no worthwhile policies to offer.
The trouble for London is that, if elected, Boris won’t be able to stay off the drink for four years, he won’t be able to keep the serious politician act up for four years, and he won’t be able to avoid making policy decisions and doing the serious business of being Mayor of London for four years. So don’t fall for the current “I’m serious after all” act: what you saw in November, or even in February, is what we would get in Mayor Boris, not the character he was acting out tonight.
March 25th, 2008 at 23.12
So you want all of London’s social and administrative problems summed up in trite little soundbites, do you? Or do you prefer the answer favoured by NuLab ministers, whatever the question - “We will be looking at ways of addressing the ishoos through delivery of a programme of stakeholder consultation reports bla bla”
Boris’s problem is that he has a head full of good ideas but, being of a wordy disposition, can’t get them out fast enough. The quickfire interview comes of an age when everyone is expected to produce instant feelgood answers. Those who cannot understand the workings of an expansive intellect write it off as “bumbling” or “disorganised”. But which would you rather have at the top - a disorganised genius or an organised idiot?
As for the rest of this and the preceding post, it is all based on speculation. IF he doesn’t stay off the drink, IF he can’t be serious all the time… No substance at all.
March 25th, 2008 at 23.55
Soundbites are all Boris has been able to offer lately. If you follow his media appearances as closely as I have been, you’ll have heard him trotting out the exact same lines on all the different programmes he pops up on. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard him make the 20-years-out-of-date point that he is the only one of the main mayoral candidates with experience in the private sector of keeping costs down. (It shows how out of touch he is with the modern public sector if he thinks cost-cutting isn’t a top priority, especially in local government, where the gearing effect, capping and acres of negative publicity mean that every last penny on Council Tax is agonised over by finance managers.)
So no, I certainly don’t want soundbites, but they’re all Boris is giving in this campaign. What I would have liked from the interview tonight was any idea of any of his policies, or a straight answer to any of the questions put to him.
And to answer your question, neither the disorganised genius nor the organised idiot is appropriate, but in an all-powerful job making day-to-day decisions in a fast-moving city, organisation has surely got to be one of the more important characteristics to have. And since I don’t think many of the candidates on offer in this election are idiots, that puts most of them ahead of Boris, who’s certainly no genius.
As for the speculation, it’s just as much speculation to assume he will be able to keep up his proper politician act for four years. I have seen decades of imbecilic behaviour and anecdotes from all those who’ve worked with him, not to mention his own current campaign manager thinking it remarkable that Boris hasn’t made any gaffes yet when “he might be expected to make eight a day”. (Oh, and admitting Boris has “little grasp of policy”, which rather contradicts your fantasy that he has a head full of the stuff.)
Incidentally, why do you keep commenting on posts here? It just seems a strange thing to do, for someone obsessed by the idea that Boris is in some way competent and worthy of being Mayor, to loiter around an anti-Boris web site commenting on everything posted. I mean, I’m quite happy to contradict anything you say, but it just seems a bit of a waste of time if you’re hoping you might somehow knock our campaign off course by giving us some sort of moment of revelation where an argument you put forward suddenly convinces us to vote for Boris!