I think I fancy Boris
No, I don’t really. But that is the title of this amusing video, first spotted by Conservative blogger Iain Dale:
While I can see this actually going down well with a certain type of Boris-supporter (primarily the ‘I don’t usually vote, but I know that Boris bloke off the telly and he seems a laugh’ type), I think it’s safe to assume the titular sentiments are ironic.
According to Sam Coates of Times Online, the Boris campaign team hate it, so that’s a good enough reason for me to post it on this blog, anyway 
The Times mentions suspicions about the video, in a news item:
The Livingstone campaign denies any connection to the video, made by a group which calls itself TRSG. The high production standards have raised suspicions that the video has been financed professionally.
Unfortunately, as we’ve experienced ourselves at StopBoris.org, if you oppose Boris and have half-decent standards in what you produce, people are very quick to decide that you must have been funded by the Livingstone campaign.
These days you need very little in the way of budget or equipment to meet reasonable production standards. Thanks to a donated domain and webspace from a sympathetic (but otherwise unrelated) party, StopBoris.org has been put together on a budget of £0.00, for instance.
Making a video does require some expenditure beyond making a web site, but not a great deal. It still mostly comes down to whether you can be bothered to invest a bit of time in something, and what sort of standards you’re prepared to settle for when you do.
(After all, last year a musician-cum-journalist showed how little you could make and promote a pop record for using modern technology, and his project included a very professional-looking music video which was at one point YouTube’s most watched in the world. And one of his biggest costs was a licence to film in Westminster – not something I suspect the Boris-fancier will have bothered applying for.)
We didn’t have to code StopBoris.org to meet Web Accessibility Initiative standards or use valid XHTML, but we did because we believe in those things as a minimum standard for any web site.
Ultimately, we didn’t even have to set up a web site, or a blog: we didn’t have to do anything, because we’re not being employed (or leant on, or encouraged) by anyone to do anything.
So on balance I reckon ‘I think I fancy Boris’ has indeed been made by a lone maverick, or a handful of mavericks, putting a few days’ work into something in the hope of affecting the Blond Buffoon’s chances.
One reason I believe this is that it was posted onto YouTube by someone who’s been a member for several months and posted two previous, completely unrelated, equally off-the-wall videos, made to a similarly decent standard, suggesting that this is just what he gets up to as a hobby from time to time.
I’m sure that won’t stop people digging to find out whether there is any evidence linking him to Ken Livingstone’s campaign but, assuming there isn’t any, I hope the apparent lack of a link might convince people that sometimes, there really are some of us who are just campaigning against Boris of our own volition, in our own time, without any link to any other candidate’s campaign, and without any financial reward.
Because not having to see the city we love suffering four long years of a Boris Johnson Mayoralty would be a perfectly adequate reward in itself.