Why we must stop Boris at the polls today
Thursday, 1 May 2008, 1.26 by Mr. Stop BorisThe 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.
- Portillo squirms - are other Conservatives worried too?
- Cameron starts the damage limitation
- Manchurian Boris
- Boris ‘underwhelming and nervous’
- Monsieur de Parris
- Simon Heffer wants to stop Boris too!
- Tories’ enemy’s enemy is also their enemy
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.
- Three men and a dog
- More evidence of Boris’s cluelessness
- In the Stop Boris inbox today…
- Gay Shame poster
- BNP say vote Boris
- More on the BNP recommendation
- A bit of Jewish empathy
- The Voice speaks
- The problem is Islam
- Boris can’t be "out-ethnic"ed by an Asian
- Stonewall hustings
- More on today’s Stonewall hustings
- Boris’s "big idea"
- Fruity gossip
- Littlejohn backs Boris
- A bit of class
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.
- Bendy bus-lovers of the city, unite
- The bendy-bus - no, Routemaster - menace
- The last word on Boris’s bus black hole?
- Bashing Boris on buses
- Boris’s bus idiocy, part 99999
- Boris’s routemaster plan “non-starter”
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.
- Boris’s environmental pledge: plant far fewer trees
- Boris’s next enviro-pledge: encourage more waste and energy use
- Jonathon Porritt
- Boris “stuck in the 80s” on the environment
- The whole world in our hands
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.
- Don’t mention the issues
- Logic problem
- Surreal Metronet coverage
- Serious business
- Gaffophobia in action
- Any questions? Tough, Boris won’t be answering them
- What a difference abstaining makes
- Manchurian Boris
- Boris’s own TV fakery scandal
- Divide – and conquer?
- Boris shamed out of ‘under the radar’ strategy?
- Boris turned up to something!
- The gaffophobia issue arrives in the national media!
- Time Out hustings
- ‘Bottler Boris’ strikes again
- Nannied state
- Boris’s Party Election Broadcast - a review
- Boris on PM
- Boris’s "big idea"
- The return of gaffophobia!
- Boris the puppet
- Irrelevant question time
- The astroturfing continues
- Boris on PM - transcript
- Still running scared
- Today? I’ll get back to you tomorrow
- Sky News debate
- The main candidates’ last TV appearance
- "Boris isn’t wearing any clothes"
- A reason to vote for Boris
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.
- Who’s he gonna call? Union-busters!
- BoozeTube no longer
- Boris’s "big idea"
- On your bike, Boris!
- Evening Standard lays in to Boris’s rubbish manifesto
- Dave Hill on transport policies
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…
- It was never meant to go this far…
- Manchurian Boris
- Et tu, Tele?
- Empty canvass
- “Boris to homeless: my house is worth shedloads”
- Newsnight debate
- Newsnight- reaction and video
- If Boris gets in, we ‘can always move to Scotland’
- Charlie Brooker wants to stop Boris too
- Monsieur de Parris
- Boris’s dream team
- Smokescreen
- Boris’s "big idea"
- Won’t anyone join his team?
- Irrelevant question time
- Video: Boris’s incompetence with figures
- Caitlin Moran wants to stop Boris
- Polly Toynbee wants to stop Boris as well
- Dave Hill declares
- Simon Heffer wants to stop Boris too!
- Zoe Williams wants to stop Boris – and so do loads of other people
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.
- Hit the road, Zach
- Rewriting history in Epping Forest
- Lies, damned lies and ignoring statistics
- What goes up must come out
- Boris’s answer to Tube crime fears: keep staff shut away from passengers
- The lies just keep coming
- All-day Freedom Pass ‘mad’ claims Team Boris
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.
- The pot calls the kettle a piccaninny
- Dirty tricks in the Telegraph
- La la la la not listening can’t hear you la la la la
- Vendetta
- Tribune
- Evening Standard web poll
- Don’t let it be the Sun wot wins it
- ‘Interesting’ times at the Evening Standard
- How the media works
- Lack of gaffes ≠ statesmanlike competence
- Weak leadership
- Sunday leaders
- Dave Hill on some of those leaders
- Link to Is this rubbish ‘the big one’ Gilligan was saving up?
- More on sub-Standard accounting
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.
- Is Boris overplaying his London credentials?
- Those strong London credentials come to the fore again
- A change for the better off
- A bit of class
Campaign videos
Sometimes 25 pictures a second are worth 25,000 words a second, or something.
- 3am eternal
- Bremner, Bird and Fortune
- Stop Boris now on YouTube
- A leader, not a joker
- Not for the easily offended
- There’s a (slightly) less offensive video too!
- All at sea in the Stop Boris campaign song
- Newsnight Mayoral debate, children’s edition
- Boris criticises Brian’s record – because, er, um…
- The return of gaffophobia!
- Back this?
- London Election Cinema contest
- Another song/video
- Video: Boris’s incompetence with figures
- Return of the d***head
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.
