Boris the puppet
It seems the colourful character protruding from the front of the book Ken took to the Time Out hustings isn’t the only puppet called Boris.
The Tory Troll’s analysis of today’s in-depth Boris coverage in the Guardian is spot on. Among the revelations:
Boris Johnson was effectively chosen as the Tory candidate by The Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley.
Boris’ minders are being paid on a commission basis. The fewer the gaffes, the higher the pay.
Boris admits that even he is intimidated by his minders.
Lynton Crosby is paying a PR company to ’round on journalists who fail to portray Johnson in a flattering light.’ Hmm does that sound familiar to you?
It all gives further evidence of how tightly managed Boris is being at the moment, which is all very well for a campaign but can’t possibly last for four years, particularly not when his Crosby-imposed drinking ban will end after the election. So we’re being asked to elect someone we won’t actually be served by in office if he wins. How dishonest; how Crosby.
(Don’t forget, Lynton Crosby’s renowned for his BNP-like campaign tactics of simply saying whatever it takes to get elected, no matter how untrue it may be: when working in Australia he falsely claimed that immigrants had thrown their children overboard from a boat, in order to stir up anti-immigrant feeling and get his right-wing employer elected. It worked.)
The front-page Guardian article (the first one of the two linked above) details how Boris has raised (and presumably spent) about a million pounds, most of it going on campaigning in the outer boroughs. The mayoral election spending limit is £400,000, but Team Boris spent a small fortune before the official campaign period kicked in, so they’ve been able to get around that restriction without too much difficulty. I seem to remember reading that Ken has struggled to raise even as much as the spending limit.
Will Boris manage to buy the election? It depends which opinion poll is right, really – a new one came out today suggesting a lead for Ken, but Boris had that same lead in a poll on Monday, and several other polls have shown just a handful of votes between them, in both directions. The result really could go either way, and every single vote counts, so it’s vital that we make the best use of our votes to stop Boris!