Much as it seems pointless and counter-productive to get caught in a mud-slinging arms race of negative campaigning, the US Democratic primaries appears to show that whilst Hillary’s tactics may not have won her the nomination, those tactics have probably kept her in the race, by pushing down Obama’s support, for longer than she might have otherwise survived.

Still, I can’t bring myself to countenance endorsing the tactic of fighting fire with fire, and retaliating to lies with bigger and better lies of one’s own..

Perhaps I’m doing a Kinnock here, but I don’t think the approach of this campaign was fundamentally wrong. I think that the campaign did not publicise itself well enough (every time I tried to get any publicity in any remotely mainstream media outlet I was ignored, with Dave Hill of the Guardian being the sole exception), and the other half of the blame lays with events far beyond my own control, i.e. the wider events and issues in the Mayoral election, the better publicised anti-Ken movement (spearheaded by the Evening Standard), the huge turnout Lynton Crosby encouraged in the suburbs, etc.

The anti-Boris voting level was huge, just not as huge as the pro-Boris (anti-Ken?) voting level. So maybe we had an effect, but not as much of an effect as our rivals.

I think the main difference I would make if there were to be a ‘next time’ would be more publicity. In particular, I wish I’d thought of doing a song/video sooner as it missed a bit of media interest in videos like the “I think I fancy Boris” one that preceded it. But I can’t seriously contemplate the idea that if I’d made a video a bit sooner than I did it would have changed the result! Ah well.

The things we had to go through…

If you reach just one person… :P, to be honest the inquiry was probably motivated quite selfishly by my enjoyment of the stop Boris campaign. (although this site have annoyingly got me listening to Kate Nash.)

Of course, you ‘cannot be responsible for external sites’ so to speak, but it does create a certain impression. I think therefore you have misunderstood my point [probably my fault] about examining his background, business acumen, competence for management etc. - my point is not that you DIDN’T do these, but that you should ONLY have done these.

But if you think that is what you did stick to, then that is fair enough. I don’t profess to be a huge fan of Boris Johnson’s approach to the environment, but the fact is that his public image is of one who ‘gets on his book’, and does something practical, even if he doesn’t support the Kyoto agreement. But then neither does James Lovelock, really. His refusal to support the increased charge for gas guzzlers using the C-charge area is not good from the point of the environment. But the fact is that in London [and even in provincial backwaters like the town I live in, there is the perception that Labour are suffering from out-of-control ‘tax incontinence’ where everything which moves gets taxed, and people want to get back some control, and cut waste of public funds.

Ex-Labour / Lib Dem voters [such as myself] are disappointed at how the Government seems to be straying into a world in which small business and farms, which employ lots of people, seem to be under the cosh, and would even be willing to countenance Bullingdon Berties getting their hands on the tiller if the brakes could be put on the ‘tax and spend’ culture for a few years.

Neither do I profess to support Boris printing views which are alleged to be racist [I never read the Speccie, so I’m simply not able to pass judgement on these] since, whatever you might think, I’m really a bit of a lefty-liberal. My point is simply this - the perception, particularly among women I know, is that Bozza is a bit of a bumbling, loveable rogue whose hair they want to help keep in shape. You are entirely right to point out that this carefully crafted image is not all there is to him, and bring up the real issues of having him as the London mayor.
BUT, however unfair you think it is that he has a ‘cuddly’ image, trying to ’sex up’ the argument against him will merely backfire as people’s perceptions are just so fundamentally different.

My point is merely that your approach is somewhat reminiscent of the ‘cannabis campaign’. Some people think that cannabis is just a bit of a laugh, and good fun on a Friday evening.
Others point out to the dangers to your mental health. What then happens is that some people try and exaggerate the dangers to prevent us falling for it. Nasty and terrible things will happen if we fall to the temptation of voting for Cannabis. When people give it a try, and find that it isn’t quite as bad as the scaremeisters would have us believe, they are on the road to ‘hard drugs’. ..

So this is not really about kicking you when you are down. It is merely that I think [and I accept that I may not be able to persuade you of this] that if you try this same approach again, say on Cameron, you are doomed to failure - whereas you need to go away and have a re-think about your future approach, not ‘cry in your beer’ about your failure, or even worse having the Neil Kinnock ‘one-more-heave’ approach without fundamentally re-assessing your approach after having learned the lessons, and coming up with a different line of attack in the future.

If you always do what you always did, then you’ll always get what you always got…

Snob: zero occurrences of that word on this site.

Affair: mentioned almost exclusively in relation to his having lied about his affair to his boss and thus ended up being sacked for lying. The one mention of it that is not in this context is at the time when the media were having a field day about Ken having five children by three women, without any suggestion of any infidelity or poor fathering. I was simply pointing out that suggesting that the perfectly normal activity of having children and taking care of them was far less ’scandalous’ than cheating on your wife, in the context of a lot of hubris about the former while glossing over the latter. No suggestion that the affair was a particularly damning indictment of Boris per se, although I don’t suppose anyone who has had an affair would claim it was their finest hour!

Racist: I did not once call him racist. Others have done, but the accusations I made that were closest to this were: 1. that he has ‘pandered to racists’, in other words written things which fitted and reinforced racists’ unsavoury views of the world, such as the repeated attacks on the Stephen Lawrence inquiry as ‘Orwellian’ and insisting racism was ‘natural’. 2. that he employed and published an out-and-out racist columnist, Taki, who did write columns about blacks having lower IQs than whites, and indeed long arms dangling down to the floor and tongues hanging out, which Boris approved for publication as editor of the Spectator.

So your suggestion that I killed any chance of my campaign succeeding by doing three things which I didn’t do is rather bizarre. In actual fact what I did do was exactly what you suggest I should have done – “stuck to examining his background, business acumen, competence for management and tried to stick him with a ‘Chatshow Charlie’ type epithet”. OK, there was no persistent epithet (there were a few different ones in relation to different matters at various points) but I certainly concentrated hard on his background (particularly his past writings), his complete lack of business acumen and competence for management, and his lightweight, gameshow-suited persona, as well as tackling the equally important area you have completely overlooked (like most Boris supporters!), namely the quality and suitability of his policies, which I examined at length.

So I did exactly what you suggest, and more, and the campaign still failed. Got any further dazzling insights into where we went wrong? Actually, if they make as little sense as your first comment, you might want to keep them to yourself.

To Boris is not an ogre:

first off “handly badly”?

Your experience of London has been the majority are fairly wealthy, London is one of the wealthiest areas in the UK, but the large majority of Londoners live nowhere near the same living standards as Boris, He went to Eton the most elitist private school in the UK, followed by a degree in Classics at Oxford Univesity, he was also a member of the Bullingdon club. He is by all accounts a snob.
I am unsure as to how most Londoners would react to his attendance of a private school, but I certainly disagree with private education.

He is a public figure, he is expected not to engage in such activities (as are most members of Britain) , although you are probably right that it wouldn’t have bearing on his integrity for doing the role of London Mayor. It certainly would not have had any bearing on my choice not to vote for him.

Now the big issue, there is a major difference between make an off the cuff remark about the welsh (not these are acceptable) and printing a series of articles over an extended period of time which state what can only be deemed racist views.

Mr. Stop Boris did examine “his background, business acumen and competence for management”, but it is impossible to do this fairly without examining them alongside opinions Boris has given in the past. I have no doubt if Livingstone had in the past made racist remarks the right-wing press would have had no quarms in reporting them, nor would you have passed at the opportunity to come onto this forum and bring them up here.

You killed any chance this campaign had of succeeding when you overplayed your handly badly in the following areas.

* Accusations about him being a snob. Most of the people in London are fairly wealthy, and a large proportion have been to college.
London is the capital of England - the most class conscious society in the Western world - do you really think the fact he had been to public school would bother most people ??

* Kicking him for having had an affair, as if that would have a bearing on his integrity for doing the role of London Mayor.
An awful lot of people reading your propaganda will have been through divorces, possibly as the result of affairs - trying to portray those people as the devil incarnate was doomed.

* The most stupid, asinine tactic of all was the wholescale hype about him being ‘racist’. People in this country are fed up of people being labelled with this at the drop of a hat.
Janet Street-Porter and Anne Robinson had the full weight of a media onslaught with the potential for the law getting involved, simply because they said a few things about the Welsh.
Not very polite, and a bit ill-advised, but nobody, least of all the Welsh, wants this to result in people ending up in court or walking on eggshells. People read these accusations on Boris.
People looked at Boris and simply couldn’t tally it with the guy they saw, and as soon as this happened they treated the rest of your complaints about him with scorn and scepticism.

Had you stuck to examining his background, business acumen, competence for management and tried to stick him with a ‘Chatshow Charlie’ type epithet you might have stood a chance.

But as the old saying goes, ‘Nothing is quite as bad, or as good, as it appears’, and your portrayal of a Boris Mayoralty as being an unalloyed disaster will be forgotten within a few weeks.
After all, it is not as if he is going to be doing it single-handed… - and sometimes when it comes to government and regulation, Less really is More..