Posts in the ‘The Times’ category

Why we must stop Boris at the polls today

Thursday, 1 May 2008, 1.26 by Mr. Stop Boris

The Tory Troll earlier posted a summing-up at the end of a 50-post campaign against Boris, which has been one of the best-researched and most strident on the web.

Here at the Stop Boris campaign, we have also been blogging for some time now, as a way of spreading the word about why we need to vote against Boris Johnson today.

Our campaign started in July last year, when it was first announced that Boris Johnson was going to put himself forward for the Conservative Mayoral candidacy. While most people dismissed him as a joke, it was clear to us that in modern politics, in a personality-driven campaign, there was a very real threat that Boris could be elected.

The Stop Boris group on Facebook was set up, and its Posted Items and Wall remained the focus of the campaign until March this year, when the idea of stepping things up with campaign posters first dawned.

Somewhere to host the posters was needed, and before we knew it we’d had the StopBoris.org domain and a nice chunk of web space donated to us, so it seemed rude not to set up a web site too.

Mrs. Stop Boris suggested she should create an accompanying application for Facebook users, which she did with aplomb, and tonight sees its user base on the verge of hitting 1,000.

A static web site proved, within just a few days of launch, inadequate for tracking a fast-moving campaign, rich in developments and arguments against Boris, so that’s where the Stop Boris blog came in, and it’s on researching and writing for this I’ve spent nearly every free moment for the past six weeks.

So I’m now able to look back over the 183 posts prior to this one that I’ve written on this blog, and bring you a summary of the compelling case against electing the woefully unsuitable Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, divided into 15 headings which seemed vaguely appropriate at the time…

Some links to posts are in bold/larger type, indicating some sort of relative importance in their subject area. I don’t pretend it’s been done in a scientific way, though.

The people who know Boris know he’s completely inappropriate to be Mayor

Of course, only those who aren’t desperate to get him elected are admitting it publicly. Even plenty of people who are in or support his own party are worried about the damage he’ll do to the Conservative brand if he becomes the most powerful Tory politician in Britain.

He holds offensive views that make him unsuitable to lead a diverse city

For years he filled his writing with outrageous statements, many of which he has refused to apologise for. Even when he has said sorry for things, it’s been a grudging apology riddled with caveats. Issues include homophobia and pandering to racists. No wonder the BNP have called on their voters to give him their second preferences.

His flagship policy is a complete and utter mess

The main policy associated with Boris for many months was his plan to replace bendy-buses with a "new Routemaster". It’s been discredited on so many grounds it’s extraordinary he’s still persisting with it.

He is by far the weakest candidate on tackling crime; his Mayoralty will see more deaths

He’s the only main candidate with no pledged target on cutting crime (he just whips up fear about it without being able to tackle it), and his Freudian slip shows this is because he knows his planned budget cuts will mean they can’t cut crime at all.

And while crime may well rise under Boris, so will pedestrian deaths on the roads as he reverse the progress that has been made in making London more pedestrian-friendly over the past few years.

He is atrocious on the environment

There’s a general consensus among environmentalists that Boris, a climate change denier and anti-Kyoto campaigner, would be a disaster on green issues the world over.

His entire campaign has been fake and micromanaged by Lynton Crosby, and he has never focused on the issues

He just knows a few focus-group tested lines but has no substance behind any of the sentences he’s learnt and certainly has no concrete policies to back them up. When asked about his own policies he instead turns everything into a tenuously linked and generally unfounded attack against Ken Livingstone.

Most of his policies are the stuff of cloud cuckoo land

He promises a no-strike deal with the RMT union. The RMT say they would never, ever, ever sign such a deal. It’s almost certain that they will go on strike if he tries to impose one, in fact. And that’s just one of his policies: the majority of the others are also fanciful. Or just rubbish.

He can’t be taken seriously

He’s built his entire career on being a buffoon, an idiot, a fool, a clown. He simply can’t be taken seriously. Imagine him trying to address the city after a terrorist attack? "How many are dead? Oh, cripes!"

He simply isn’t up to the job

He has a track record of incompetence, gaffes, sackings and not being able to take anything seriously or dedicate himself to anything for a prolonged period of time. And he’s barely managed to find anyone who’s willing to join his administration so who knows who’d end up doing any of the real work?

He only entered into this contest for a bit of self-publicity – he never actually wanted the job, but now he’s in too deep…

People have been underestimating his chances

Many anti-Boris people think he’s just a joke and there’s no serious chance of him getting the job. These people are complacent and might not get out and vote. They need to be alerted to the danger urgently and dragged to the polling stations! :)

He claims to support ‘zero tolerance’ but has broken the law a number of times himself

Evidently he thinks the law only applies to the little people, not VIPs like himself.

His campaign is riddled with outright dishonesty

His campaign team have been paying people to comment on blogs such as ours and The Tory Troll’s, pretending to be normal members of the public. Fortunately we exposed them and they then left us largely in peace.

Aside from that, the team have also been spreading various lies and half-truths to scare people into voting for Boris, who has let a number of lies slip himself.

His media cronies have run half his campaign for him

Certain nasty parts of the media have made no attempt at balanced coverage of this election, instead doing everything they can to discredit the current Mayor and promote Boris, despite there being no case for doing so. Just about all the newspaper leaders endorsing Boris failed to give a single positive reason to vote for him.

The Evening Standard’s own journalistic team even tore Boris’s manifesto to shreds while managing to pick only modest holes in Ken’s, yet their billboards and pages have teemed with anti-Ken, pro-Boris propaganda for months.

He doesn’t care about ordinary Londoners

He has no real roots here and is completely out of touch with the concerns and lives of everyday Londoners.

Campaign videos

Sometimes 25 pictures a second are worth 25,000 words a second, or something.

Campaign posters

They still hold true, seven weeks on from creating them.

How to stop Boris

So, all that said, here’s how to vote most effectively to stop Boris.

Good luck, Boris-stoppers.

This election is going to be extremely close. We need to get Boris-stoppers and Boris-sceptics to the polling stations in their millions.

Do whatever you can to encourage people to vote today and we can stop Boris.

A grassroots campaign taking on the might of the Standard and the Sun. Are you up for the fight? Let’s do it.

Posted in Blog, Blogs, Buses, Campaign, Channel 4, Conservatives, Crime, Cycling, Daily Mail, Diversity, Driving, Environment, Ethnic minorities, Evening Standard, Facebook, Gaffophobia, Getting an easy ride, Homosexuality, Housing, Incompetence, Lies, London Lite, Lynton Crosby, Manipulation, Media, Other candidates, Party Election Broadcasts, Personal life, Policies, Posters, Radio, Recycling, Satire, Stop Boris, Team, Telegraph, The Times, Transport, Underground, Voting, Web site, YouTube | 5 Comments »

Caitlin Moran wants to stop Boris

Monday, 28 April 2008, 13.36 by Mr. Stop Boris

Her article in the Times today doesn’t contain much more substance than fellow comedy columnist Charlie Brooker’s article from a couple of weeks ago, and indeed she uses a similar description of one segment of Boris’s fanbase, what she terms the “BorisROFLMAO vote”. One difference is that her article, unlike Brooker’s, doesn’t seem to be particularly amusing, but I suppose that’s subjective!

Anyway, I’m not knocking her, she’s On Our Side, and in a newspaper which desperately tried to pretend on Saturday that it wasn’t, so it’s all good.

I will NOT be voting for Boris. Quite aside from being a ditzy, posh, albino fanny-hound, he has a far greater impediment to running one of the greatest cities in the world: he is disabled by his own funniness. I understand Boris’s weakness. I understand it only too well. As someone who spends most of her life trying to be funny, I know just how much effort it takes. It’s like running a quiet heroin habit on the side. It’s a full-time commitment. It makes you fatally, fundamentally, unsuitable for a job with genuine responsibilities and consequences.

Posted in Media, The Times | No Comments »

Dave Hill on some of those leaders

Sunday, 27 April 2008, 11.23 by Mr. Stop Boris

Dave agrees, in some detail, with our assessment of the Times’s unconvincing pro-Boris leader.

He also agrees with us about the Sunday Times’s similar leader today.

Martin from Mayorwatch’s comment about the Times one is also good:

I love the subheading

"Two terms is enough for Livingstone. Johnson should be allowed his chance"

it’s just insane to suggest that democracy is best served by voters being told they can’t elect the same person person three times (not sure that was the Times line when Maggie won three elections) and that offices should pass to new holders on a ‘his turn now’ basis.

Absolutely. Please, for goodness’ sake, this Thursday, think about how you’re voting and use your votes in a sensible way, not based on ridiculous statements like "time for a change"!

Posted in Blogs, Media, The Times, Voting | No Comments »

Sunday leaders

Sunday, 27 April 2008, 1.00 by Mr. Stop Boris

The Sunday Times follows its sister paper by endorsing "time for a change" Boris, without providing a single positive reason why. In fact, again, they provide instead some reasons why he should not be trusted with the job:

Many have doubts about whether he is the right man for the job. His campaign has shown that the qualities that have endeared him to voters as a political clown do not translate easily into being a powerful executive mayor. […]

Mr Johnson knows that this is his last shot at demonstrating that he can be a serious politician after many false starts.

"Many" occasions when Boris has completely messed up being "a serious politician", and a failure to translate his undoubted clowning abilities into executive abilities, are not reasons to give him four years’ major power.

Indeed, as the Observer (which, like the Guardian yesterday isn’t exactly glowing about any of the candidates) puts it:

The unavoidable choice is between an incumbent whose record and character are familiar from many years in office and a challenger whose image and beliefs have been cynically manufactured for the campaign.

London is not a focus group for national parties to test their tactics, it is a city in need of a competent mayor. The only way to guarantee it has one is to cast a [second preference] vote for Ken.

The Observer is the only paper I’ve seen offering a full recommendation for the use of both preference votes: they encourage readers to put Siân first, and Ken second, making them a ‘number 2′ type in our tactical voting advice.

Ah, the Sunday Telegraph’s leader has just appeared online and, in stark contrast to yesterday’s Daily Telegraph’s leader, does explicitly (and at great length) endorse Boris. In fact it reads like some sort of party election broadcast for Boris. The only hint that he might be an incompetent, risky candidate – a doubt which I have yet to see anyone independent seriously dispute (that is, say that he definitely isn’t risky) – is the tiny phrase:

In all modesty we cannot claim that his past as a journalist was the ideal preparation for political responsibility.

That’s certainly a "modest" way to describe the huge risk inherent in electing a clown to manage an £11bn budget!

Does Boris have particularly good friends in particularly high places at the Sunday Telegraph? Following their meticulously calculated bit of front-page electioneering on his behalf three weeks ago, to find them publishing a lengthy leader apparently written on an extremely rose-tinted computer screen does make me wonder if this ‘newspaper’ might be trying to be even more pro-Boris than the Evening Standard, which would certainly take some doing.

So, now we know where nearly all the newspapers stand. (I guess one or two more may be saving their leaders for polling day itself, or shortly before.)

A defeat for Boris would be a defeat for the most reactionary and cynical instincts of the Murdoch, Mail and Telegraph press. Yet another reason to vote against Boris on Thursday!

Posted in Guardian, Media, Telegraph, The Times, Voting | No Comments »

Weak leadership

Saturday, 26 April 2008, 11.25 by Mr. Stop Boris

Have you ever attended an amateur debate, in which people have been given things to argue in support of which they don’t really believe themselves? They’ll give it their best shot, but underneath their rhetoric, it’s plain that they don’t really believe in the argument they’re putting across.

Which brings me to today’s newspaper leader columns.

The Times

The Times spends some time highlighting Ken Livingstone’s achievements in office, then bizarrely talks about him offering "more of the same" (which surely doesn’t sound too bad in the light of his achievements?).

They gloss over Brian Paddick as an acceptable alternative, without really explaining why: "He has at no second offered compelling reasons why he should be in the mayor’s chair", a statement which could equally describe the overwhelmingly negative campaign of Boris Johnson.

Then they alight on Boris.

There is plainly an element of risk in backing Mr Johnson. Newspapers have fretted about endorsing him precisely because journalists know Mr Johnson, a fellow journalist, so well and they know he has a history of letting people down.

That a sentence like that can appear in a leader called Boris Johnson for London is extremely revealing about how little their heart is in this recommendation.

They say that "the thrust" of Boris’s "policy suggestions" (it’s true, they aren’t fleshed-out enough to be called policies!) is sensible, and that he is "alive to Londoners’ … concerns about drugs, stabbings and gangs", which is hardly the same thing as being the right person to do anything about them.

Most breathtakingly, their final paragraph even admits that electing him would be an "experiment", and that "if it fails", "London and the country will have learnt something of immense value". Too right: not to trust the Times’s leader column ever again.

In fact, this whole column is so weak in its support for Boris, readers could be forgiven for thinking that an edict was issued from Murdoch Towers that the editor was to print a leader column backing Boris, then left to come up with the arguments himself, despite not believing Boris capable of the job. But surely that would never happen, would it?

Daily Mail

As the Evening Standard’s sister paper, not to mention the bible of the right, it was always inconceivable that they would back anyone but Boris, and so it proves, but as with the Times their support is in extremely measured terms.

Again, a surprising measure of praise for the incumbent is present, given his nemesis status at Daily Mail group HQ:

Ever since he became Labour’s leader in London he has outfoxed opponents, including those in his own party.

In office, he has proved a rather more substantial figure than his critics predicted. Love it or loathe it, his congestion charge is now being studied by cities all over the world.

He was commendably steady after the terrorist attacks on London. And he has proved more friendly to business than you might expect, given his rabidly hard Left past.

Of course they then dwell on some criticisms in the less substantive areas which their Standard cohorts have beaten Londoners around the head with for the past nine months. For instance, apparently the £25 gas guzzler charge is "class spite", which seems strange when there are cars of every size which don’t have to pay it and actually the more wealthy you are, the easier it will be to trade in your luxury car for a less polluting model.

We also learn that Ken’s politics are divisive, which isn’t reflected in the level of racially aggravated crime, which has fallen hugely in London in recent years, while rising outside it; and besides, it’s hard to think of a more divisive politician than Boris Johnson anyway, with his numerous gaffes over the past few years offending everyone from races to cities to entire countries. I suppose at that rate he could soon unite the entire world, against him!

The Mail are keen to point out that Boris "has some highly competent people behind him". It’s interesting that they’re so confident about this, when he has repeatedly refused to name any of them so we have no evidence of this whatsoever.

He "seems genuinely concerned to do something about London’s broken society". Ahh, the old Mail favourite, the "broken society". But if crime is highest and society at its most "broken" in the most deprived areas, which are broadly located in inner London, and Boris is the man to sort this out, why is Boris so unrecoverably far behind Ken in the polls in these areas? Could it be because the people with the biggest fear of a "broken society" are actually those who read the Mail’s baseless ranting but live in the relative safety of the outer boroughs, so can gamble on Boris’s police cutbacks and removal of crime reduction targets without fearing for their own security?

So let’s put our cards on the table. We believe London and Britain would be best served by a vote for Boris - and not simply because the Mail is instinctively conservative.

Yes, I’m sure you gave a great deal of consideration to backing Red Ken!

Indeed, one of the attractive aspects of Mr Johnson’s campaign is his promise to put London first, even if it means disagreeing with national policies.

And this is certainly not something that could be had elsewhere, perhaps from a Mayor who opposed the Iraq war and the abolition of the 10p income tax rate…

We support Boris because he offers change. … Eight years of Ken Livingstone haven’t solved London’s problems. A new, serious Johnson should be given a chance.

"given a chance"? What do they think this is, some sort of game? There’s no such thing as "a chance" in this job: you have to hit the ground running from day one and work flat out for four solid years, showing competence and abilities which are far beyond the reach of even the newest, most serious Johnson imaginable. And don’t forget, this "new, serious Johnson" is an illusion created for the duration of the election campaign only, through a ban on alcohol and minders paid in inverse proportion to the number of gaffes Boris commits.

So with even the Mail’s best arguments for voting in Boris being so weak and couched in expectation-lowering terms, can anyone be left in any doubt as to how little trust there is in his abilities among newspaper journalists?

Daily Telegraph

If you are in any doubt, let Boris’s own colleagues at the Telegraph remove it.

The journalists and editors at the newspaper where Boris has worked for two decades can’t actually bring themselves to back Boris!

Instead, they spent half their column building up London as the most important place in the world, and the other half ruthlessly attacking Ken Livingstone. The only mention of any success whatever is, in full, "the Oyster card, better buses".

Essentially this leading article adopts the Boris campaign tactic of attacking Ken Livingstone while not drawing too any attention to Boris’s own hopeless manifesto of police cuts and impossible promises, but at least Boris has learnt a few short lines about his (to use the Times’s terminology) "policy suggestions". The Telegraph appear to be so nervous of endorsing this buffoon that they can’t even bring themselves to print his name!

In conclusion

With supporters like this mealy-mouthed bunch of leader-writers, who needs opponents? The Guardian have a more sensible line on things, although their endorsement for Ken is not a great deal more ringing than the others’ for Boris, although they are able to point to Ken’s strong record in various areas, which is certainly more than anyone examining Boris’s hopeless record of gaffes, incompetence, lies and sackings could do. Their verdict on Boris is as follows:

The Conservatives have fought a strategic campaign and benefited from Mr Livingstone’s weaknesses. That is not the same as setting out a solid case for office. Mr Johnson has offered celebrity and noise, but nothing very substantial, or even all that brave, his policies in many instances being modified versions of ones pursued by Mr Livingstone. … he has not shown himself equal to the mayor’s strengths. At the end of the campaign Mr Johnson still looks an accidental candidate who has stumbled into his position and is making the best of it, but might not make very much of being mayor. He promises better buses, less crime and a greener city, but cannot explain how he would bring these about.

That sounds about right to us.

What all this highlights is that here in the Stop Boris camp we are certainly up against it. We have the might of Murdoch and the Mail against us, as well as the Evening Standard and Telegraph, although all their support for Boris is half-hearted at best.

What we mustn’t do is become disheartened by this media onslaught. In a democracy, it is we the people who have the final say on polling day. We must not allow sections of the media with vested interests to bully and coerce us into electing another who has no proven abilities at all and would damage London’s reputation around the world as well as managing its huge budget with the incompetence for which he is so well known among everyone he’s ever worked with.

We need a final push this week, Boris-stoppers. E-mail all your friends to warn them about the mendacious campaign Boris has been fighting, and the huge risk this inept clown would pose to the serious business of running London. Get into arguments and discussions about it with anyone you speak to. Convince them to vote tactically to keep Boris out.

We can do this, with all your help. Good luck, everyone.

Posted in Daily Mail, Guardian, Media, Telegraph, The Times | No Comments »

Monsieur de Parris*

Thursday, 17 April 2008, 0.32 by Mr. Stop Boris

The Times writer and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris writes about Boris in Thursday’s newspaper, and it’s really quite wonderfully damning:

Boris Johnson’s new, sobersided persona is working well; but happily there does remain the frisson of watching a man apparently dipping into a mental bran tub as he speaks, as mystified as the rest of us to know what bauble of opinion or information he may come up with next.

And (having been one of Mr Johnson’s stable of writers when he was editor of The Spectator) I must challenge Ken Livingstone’s complaint that as former editor of a small right-wing magazine, the only administrative decision Mr Johnson ever took was choosing a restaurant for lunch.

This paints an exaggeratedly hands-on picture of the Boris management style. His secretary did that kind of thing. You were just lucky if Boris came to the lunch.

As he says, he should know, he was there.

So don’t fall for any of this stuff about Boris having great management experience and expertise. It’s all utter nonsense, as it seems anyone who’s worked with him (and isn’t desperate for him to become Mayor, so keeping quiet) will acknowledge.

* Chambers Dictionary informs me that Monsieur de Paris is a euphemism for the public executioner (at the time of the French Revolution). Since these paragraphs amount to a public execution of Boris’s fantasies about having a managerial reputation, it seemed appropriate.

Posted in Incompetence, Media, The Times | No Comments »

Boris ‘underwhelming and nervous’

Sunday, 13 April 2008, 23.20 by Mr. Stop Boris

A.A. Gill is not impressed with New Boris. Example:

“This is the best job in politics, isn’t it?” he says. “This is the really big one.”

And you might get it, I say. “Yes, yes.” He has a nervous, concentrated look, as you might have while waiting for the all-clear siren to sound. “I might – it’s very close, isn’t it?” He flicks me a sideways glance. Yes, I think it is quite close. What are the three things you’ll do when you take over City Hall on the first day: what’s at the top of your agenda?

“Um, um.” He’s plainly never considered this; like the Americans in Iraq, there is no plan for after victory. He searches the horizon for inspiration: “Um, well, put conductors and policemen on buses. Yes, and take away free passes from children.” That’s my son you’re taking about, I point out.

“Only if they’re naughty – your son isn’t naughty, is he? Um, er, give pensioners 24-hour travel passes. Er, stop Tube workers going on strike, bring in legislation to, oh, er.”

Allowing octogenarians travel passes to go clubbing doesn’t quite have the ring of a mission statement. Tell you what, Boris: have a think and call me tomorrow.

We subsequently learn that this was the day of what Gill calls his "ghastly, unfocused, underprepared, stuttering and blustering factless rant" on Newsnight.

Of course, we’re not impressed with New Boris either. Nor Old Boris, nor anything to do with Boris, in fact; except the idea of his defeat in the Mayoral election.

Posted in Incompetence, Media, The Times | No Comments »

I think I fancy Boris

Monday, 7 April 2008, 0.49 by Mr. Stop 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.

Posted in Blog, Blogs, Campaign, Stop Boris, The Times, Web site | No Comments »

It was never meant to go this far…

Friday, 28 March 2008, 23.38 by Mr. Stop Boris

Today’s Times has a lengthy but not particularly substantial article about the contest, and how Boris and co are already drawing up plans for his first month in office. (Presumably the plans will include working out how best to climb down on all the unachievable policies he’s been promising during the campaign.)

The last paragraph is quite revealing:

One person as surprised as anyone at the turn of events is Mr Johnson himself, if one account of a recent meeting with the Olympic Delivery Authority is to be believed. On being told that, on being elected, he would be expected to attend the closing ceremony and receive the flag for London, Mr Johnson is said to have worriedly consulted his diary before complaining: “But I’m in Tuscany that week!”

On reading that, I remembered something it’s easy to lose sight of amid the deeply worrying success Boris has had in the opinion polls, and the disturbing fact that he’s the clear favourite with the bookies to win.

The thing is, it wasn’t supposed to go like this: Boris was the Conservative party’s last choice for their Mayoral candidate, after they’d approached a large number of big names and begged them to be their candidate but been turned down. Only then did they turn to Boris, who in typical style spent several days giving out mixed messages about whether or not he would run before finally agreeing to do so.

He never imagined in his wildest nightmares that he’d ever actually have to do the job, though. His application form for the position of Conservative Mayoral candidate (leaked to the media last year, perhaps by a dismayed party worker worried about the damage he’d do to the party’s reputation!) looked like it had been dashed off in about five minutes. It included such useful answers as:

How much time could you give to the role of Conservative Mayoral candidate? Please be as specific as possible.

A great deal.

Basically the whole idea of standing for Mayor was just a big jolly wheeze. Since StopBoris.org launched we’ve heard from a number of people familiar with Boris who have seen how quickly he tires of things once they become serious tasks requiring proper, sustained attention. Perhaps a constant need to be excited by new and shiny things, discarding yesterday’s three-minute wonder at the first opportunity, is an endearing characteristic of an eccentric person, but it’s not endearing in someone aspiring to be Mayor of London, a job in which they’d be in it for the long haul.

Boris simply doesn’t have the dedication to tasks, the personality to get to grips with details and take large strategic decisions based on properly digested information, or the willingness to be constrained to a single job requiring serious hard work on pretty much every day for four years.

He would never have signed up for this candidacy if he’d realised it would go this far, and neither would his party, now frantically trying to surround him with enough officials to cushion him from doing the party damage (not so keen on ‘small government’ now, are you Boris?). Boris was in this for a few months of high-profile self-publicity, which is all he has ever been interested in.

So all things considered, it’s not surprising that he would have already booked a trip to Tuscany this summer, some time ago, on the assumption that he wouldn’t be Mayor. Let’s do everything we can to make sure he doesn’t have to cancel it.

Posted in Incompetence, Media, The Times | No Comments »