Ah, the big question. Why indeed? There's no doubt that Boris is brilliant light entertainment. His appearances on Have I Got News For You? are frequently hilarious. So why shouldn't he be given a go as Mayor?
There are a number of reasons – a very large number of reasons, expanded on throughout this web site – but for a start, here are a few. We challenge you not to find at least one which, deep down, you agree with.
Note that many of the links on this page will take you to relevant campaign posters.
Incompetence, chaos, embarrassment, shame...
Boris has cultivated a media image as a loveable buffoon, who comes across as chaotic and awkward, and likes to keep his profile high through regular amusing gaffes and cock-ups.
There's one problem with this: it's not just a media image that he has cultivated. What you see is actually what you get.
David Aaronovitch, The Times, 11 MarchThere is hardly a senior soul in this business who hasn't turned up to an evening with Boris, to discover that it is an evening with anyone but. “I'm sorry,” says the chair, anticipating the boos of disappointment, “but Boris Johnson is unable to be with us,” followed by some lie.
The man is chaotic. The notion that a Boris administration will, as his website promises every few lines, subject London's finances and procedures to the most rigorous of scrutinies, is beyond parody.
Boris simply doesn't have the organisational abilities or competence to be Mayor. This BBC London video report illustrates just what a poor grasp of detail he really has.
This is a job he would be doing for four long years – there's no way to give him a trial run and see if he's as bad as we expect. If he is – and believe us, he would be – we're stuck with him for four years anyway.
The eyes of the world will be on London over the next four years, in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. Boris being our great city's figurehead would be a huge embarrassment for us all, as his administration descended into gaffes and cock-ups galore.
And it's not just London he'd be embarrassing. If you're a Conservative party sympathiser, you might be planning to vote for Boris, but think again. Boris would be one of the two or three most high-profile Conservatives in the country if elected as Mayor. How would that reflect on the party as a whole? This ineloquent buffoon as ambassador for the 21st century Conservative party. Doesn't sound good, does it?
A final point under this heading. While none of us wants to see a repeat of the tragic attacks of 7 July 2005, everyone acknowledges that something similar may well happen at some point. As Londoners reeled from the shocking news, does anyone really think Boris could address the city in an appropriate tone? In a terrorist incident, “Cripes!” doesn't really fit the bill.
Right-wing, often unsavoury opinions
This point may convince you Boris isn't for you, or if you're an old-school Conservative it might actually have the opposite effect. In such circumstances, we refer you to the above section, or to our Conservatives against Boris poster, to remind you why not even agreement with his right-wing principles should sway you his way!
The point here is that Boris is at heart a hard-right, Thatcherite politician, who for years has written a Daily Telegraph column and otherwise communicated his views and opinions, including:
- fanatical support for the Iraq war;
- campaigning for George W Bush to win the US elections in both 2000 and 2004;
- opposition to the Kyoto protocol on climate change (which every single developed country in the world apart from Bush's USA has now signed up to, indicating that Boris is more right-wing than any developed country outside America);
- opposition to the Minimum Wage;
- support for rail privatisation;
- opposition to the congestion charge;
- opposition to paternity leave;
- the belief that South Africa under Nelson Mandela represents “the majority tyranny of black rule”;
- such vocal and sustained criticism of the inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence murder case (calling its recommendations for improved anti-racism laws “weird” and “Orwellian”) that Stephen's non-partisan mother has said he is “definitely not the right person” to be Mayor.
...You get the idea.
As well as all this, when an old friend (and now-convicted fraudster) of Boris's was being investigated by a journalist for fraud, Boris offered to help him arrange for the journalist investigating him to be badly beaten up. Boris's only concern was that the beating wouldn't be traced back to him. When challenged about this several years later, he shrugged: “I'm not ashamed of it”.
More about many of these matters, and other right-wing opinions Boris holds, can be seen in the document Boris Johnson: a member of the hard Tory right (883kB), which was produced, admittedly, by a left-wing organisation, but it does contain full references to all the material quoted and Boris has never denied saying any of it!
Lack of checks and balances
The Mayor of London is one of the most powerful jobs in British politics. To ensure that decisions can be taken and pushed through as quickly and effectively as possible, there are minimal constraints on the Mayor's power (within those areas for which he or she has responsibility).
One of the few genuinely restrictive measures on the Mayor's power is the fact that the Mayor's budget must be approved (or amended) by at least one-third of the members of the London Assembly.
Because of the make-up of the constituencies in London, and other political factors, the Conservative party has over a third of the members on the Assembly at the moment, and they are not expected to lose this position in this year's election.
At the moment, Ken Livingstone's party does not have over a third of the Assembly members. This means that he must negotiate his budget with the other Assembly members and produce a more consensual budget which meets more people's wishes.
If Boris became Mayor, his budget could simply be waved through by his own party and this beneficial period of scrutiny would be completely lost.
The thought of a chancer like Boris wielding power over the greatest city on earth is bad enough; the thought of that power being effectively unconstrained by checks and balances is intolerable!
He really can win
A lot of people dismiss Boris as a joke of a candidate who ‘clearly won't win’. Wrong!
Opinion polls have consistently shown that he has a real chance, and when you take a step back and think about it logically, it is obvious why.
There are three sets of people (perhaps with some overlaps) who will vote for him:
- Conservatives: actually, this is only the Conservatives who are prepared to overlook what a disaster Boris would be for their party's reputation.
- People who want Ken out: this has a number of sub-groups, but is fairly large in number overall.
- People of the sort who elected H’Angus the Monkey to be Mayor of Hartlepool in 2002*.
It's the last group which Boris will have brought on board in significant numbers this time, and which wasn't a factor in previous London elections.
The simple fact is that Boris is a comic figure of fun to many people, many of whom don't normally vote at all. They will see that he is standing, not read up on any of his policies or the implications of electing someone as Mayor, and decide to vote for him ‘for a laugh’.
When you add that third group to the pre-existing first and second groups, it's obvious that Boris has not just a chance, but a very good chance, of becoming Mayor. The polls are heading Boris's way too!
And that's why we need to make sure we do everything in our power to stop him from being elected on 1 May 2008.
Good luck, Boris-stoppers.
*Footnote re H'Angus the Monkey
It has been suggested on a forum that this reference is insulting to Stuart Drummond, who was the person dressed as H'Angus who was elected as Mayor of Hartlepool. We know he has since been re-elected and is generally agreed to have done a good job, but the fact is that during that first election campaign he was only standing as a man in a monkey suit, for a joke. That was the basis on which he was elected, and that proves that there are a lot of people out there who dislike politics to the extent that they would rather vote for a joke candidate instead. And of course the big difference here is that there is no competent Mayor figure inside Boris's chaotic clown suit: what we see is sadly exactly what we would get as Mayor.
It is, though, rather amusing to note that having published a web site arguing at great length and in great detail about what is wrong with Boris, so far the only critical comment we have found of the material on this site is in defence of H'Angus the Monkey!
