Ray Lewis and The Labour Response

Another day, another resignation from Boris Johnson's mayoral team.

The first one was probably something he could not control. People say stupid fucking things all the time - it is no excuse, though, and Boris was right to boot this guy. However, the scandal around Ray Lewis was entirely avoidable.

Seriously, the allegations relate right back to the 1990's. Was Lewis not vetted? The Tories should have known that there is a problem before Lewis was even offered the job. As unpleasant as it might sound, background checks are part of modern politics, and the Tories should have got to know everything about Lewis before he was offered the job with Mayor Boris.

Because Boris is the most powerful Tory in the country right now. Yes, he is even more powerful than Hug A Husky Cameron. Calm down David, I know that damages your ego and deflates the air of smug complacency and pomposity that has surrounded you for the past year or so, but it is true. Boris Johnson is the most powerful Tory since John Major handed over the keys for Number 10 to Tony Blair. This scandal is the sort of thing that should happen to a Liberal Democrat leadership contender. Not to the most powerful representative of the party who most likely will be in power after the next election. The Tories need to raise their game and sort themselves out.

The Labour reaction to this resignation has been as predictable as it has been hypocritical. Take Hazel Blears:

"People across the country will note that after just two months, the new Tory administration in London is in complete disarray. David Cameron has known Ray Lewis since his first day as Tory leader and Boris Johnson appointed him as deputy mayor days into the job. People will ask themselves: how have they allowed themselves to be embroiled in a mess like this?"

Yep, that is Labour criticising the Tories for being in a mess. It is the pot looking over at the kettle, chuckling slightly, and calling it black. Seriously, Hazel, if you think that the Tories are in disarray, why don't your toddle off to Scotland and look at how the leadership of the Scottish Labour is getting on? Whilst you are north of the border, head over to Glasgow and see how that by-election, in a safe Labour seat, is going. And even if you don't want to head North, go into a Cabinet meeting and watch the Cabinet positioning themselves behind their sinking leader, waiting to jostle for the position of Labour Prime Minister for whatever period of time is left before Labour ceases to be governing this country.

This scandal has shown the Tories to be inept; but they have nothing on the absolute catastrophe that is the Gordon Brown Labour party. So, Hazel, put your own house in order before you carp at others. You chipmunk faced twat.

Boris: The stakes are high

Mayor Boris is up and running after less than a week in the role. Which is one in the eye for those who thought that it might him a week to work out where City Hall is. And his first policy is to ban booze on public transport.

As policy, it is grossly illiberal. But I’m not going to hark too much on that – have a look at DK if you want the ideological analysis. Be warned/encouraged, he is on sweary form with this one. On a purely practical level, I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to have a drink on a long tube journey anymore. But on the flipside, I will concede that the piss stained tramp on the tube is more pleasant if he isn’t clutching a can of Special Brew. And in his defence, Boris is a Tory, and not a Libertarian. So we should have known that he would have no problem in sacrificing freedom in order to play to the public galleries. This is reality - politicians for the main parties will disappoint, again and again. In fact, it is pretty much the only thing you can rely on with them.

But now, for a lot of people across London, I think the reality is starting to sink in. We have him – Mayor Boris. And with the reality sinking in, the expectations are being raised.

For Tory supporters, his victory is clearly worth celebrating – and I don’t begrudge them those celebrations because they’ve had fuck all else to celebrate since pretty much 1992. On the other side of the fence, the Labourites are whining like little whining bitch kids because their guy lost. Well, fuck them. They should get used to the taste of defeat – judging by the polls, it is going to get a whole lot worse for them.

Yet the extent to which this is actually a Tory victory remains to be seen. The gamble for the Tories was not letting Boris run – had he lost, then the Tories could still have celebrated kicking the arse of Nu Labour in the local elections. No, the gamble for Cameron et al is here and now, and with us for the next four years. There is a lot riding on Boris for the Tories.

Because Boris is the most powerful Tory in the country now. In fact, he is the most powerful Tory since John Major left Downing Street in 1997 to watch some cricket. And rather than having some nice Cameron-esque party poodle in place, the Tories have Boris Johnson. Someone who has no issue with disagreeing with the party line. Someone who can unintentionally attract controversy, just by dint of opening his gob.

Cameron and the Tory high command will be on tenterhooks for the next four years. If Boris does well, then they will have a perfect example for the masses of why the Tories should be in government. If he fucks up, or has some sort of gaffe like declaring war on Liverpool or something, then the Labour party will have a massive stick at the next election to beat Cameron with.

The pressure is on Boris – their crowning achievement of last Thursday’s election is a double-edged sword. And unless Boris is very careful, then Boris could unintentionally make the whole party fall on that sword.

Blimey! It is only bally Boris!

So we've got it: Mayor Boris. And I dare say that, with this latest electoral kick in the teeth, some people in the Labour party will be looking for Prime Minister Straw. Or maybe Prime Minister Miliband. Perhaps Prime Minister Benn. As an extreme - a return of Prime Minister Blair. But I'd imagine most in the Labour Party would go for Prime Minister Anyone-But-That-Twat-Brown as they look at the election results this morning.

They'll be lots of celebrations and autopsies, focused on why - and how on earth - Boris Johnson, a man more famous for being ripped to shreds on TV panel shows and being sacked for lying about being able to keep his love tackle in his pants - has become Mayor of one of the greatest cities on earth. For me the reason is simple - he is less odious than Livingstone. Others might see different reasons - perhaps the hate campaign of The Evening Standard against the former mayor played a part, of the egregious corruption of the Livingstone's cohorts helped to oust him from office. You could argue that his Mayoral election had bugger all to do with those running against it, and was more about national politics. About using the bland, I-Can't-Believe-They're-The-Tory-Party Cameron Tory party to kick Gordon Brown in his knackers. But hey ho, there will be hundreds of different theories; it is all irrelevant now. Boris is the mayor, and Ken will be shuffling away from the political limelight for a while.

But let's look to the future. Boris has a real opportunity here to shine. To take the role he's won, make it his own, and really do a lot for the City of London. If I were to send a message to him this morning it would be simple - do something, but don't fuck it up. Unfortunately, Boris failed to show in the campaign exactly what he would do in power if he won, other than not be Ken Livingstone. Well, Boris, it worked, and you won. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that if you do nothing, you are doing OK. That would be to follow the Blairite example through and through, and I think (I certainly fucking hope) that people have had enough of Blairism by now.

Half the city thinks Boris is a great hope for London, the other thinks he is a bumbling, posh tit. The jury's out on this one, and it is down to Boris to show which of those two options he is. I hope he rises to the challenge; I've yet to be convinced that he will.

Brown Bashing: Losing. Badly.

It is a bad day for Labour. A truly shocking day for Gordon Brown. Therefore, it is a great day for anyone who despises the incompetent shower of shits who run our country and the flaccid cock of a man who runs the government. I, for one, am smiling. In fact, I'm tempted to do a happy jig.

Brown not so much failed his first electoral test as not turn up to the exam room until half an hour into the test, and when he did manage to turn up, he forgotten to revise, put on his trousers and actually had no clue whatsoever that he was being tested. This must be why Gordo shies away from elections. He's fucking shite at them.

A Tory government has gone from being possible but highly unlikely at the next election in 2005 to an almost certainty when Gordo finally goes to the national polls. At these elections, it appears Labour has dipped below the level of the Liberal Democrats. That's how crap Gordo is. He's worse than Nick Clegg.

Two things can happen now, depending in part on whether Boris takes City Hall from Red Ken. Either the Labour party limps on under Gordo to an almost certain defeat at the next General Election. Or they admit that Brown was a colossal error of judgement, and ditch him unceremoniously for another candidate - possibly Jack Straw. I favour the former option, even though it involves Brown being in power for longer. Because a new Labour leader might just turn it around, and win the next General Election. If Brown clings to power, Nu Labour, and this godawful government that has been in power for far too long, falls.

The strategy for the Tories, Lib Dems and anyone else who hates Labour is clear - do whatever they can to keep Gordon in power, so he can lead his increasingly suicidal government over the cliff at the next election, and down into the jagged rocks and roaring sea of harsh historical judgement.

Ken Livingstone: Spineless Shit

In a staggering interview with The Observer yesterday, Ken pretty much offered Boris a job after next Thursday's election. Audacious stuff. It is a bit like Hillary Clinton offering Barack Obama the vice-presidential slot on the Democratic ticket (which she has actually done). The Observer notes:

“Ken Livingstone yesterday offered to give his Tory rival a job and train him as a future mayoral candidate, in an extraordinary last-minute bid for Tory votes.”

This is the same Boris Johnson that Ken ripped into in a piece for The Guardian:

“The second, conservative, coalition behind Boris Johnson is symbolised by its support for the Iraq war and indifference to environmental issues. Its immediate practical expression is its record of running down London's public transport, talking about crime while cutting police numbers, opposing measures to provide affordable housing and indifference to the problems facing ethnic minorities or women. This coalition has recently acquired a sordid, if uninvited, partner through the BNP calling for a second-preference vote to the Tory candidate.”

From that sort of comment to offering the man a job – Ken has managed a U-turn that would make Gordo himself proud. But his opinion of Boris has clearly radically changed:

'I think Boris is a person of huge potential, but he's never been involved in detailed administration of anything. I would genuinely want Boris to come in, take a job and get some experience.'

Ken goes even further; at one stage, he talks about grooming (don’t tell the News of the World, they’ll probably mis-interpret it) Boris to be a candidate for Mayor in 2012. This is the same Boris who warranted this comment from Ken not so long ago:

Johnson says he considers Margaret Thatcher the greatest 20th-century peacetime prime minister - Thatcher who abolished London's democratic city government and brought the city's public services and infrastructure, and therefore quality of life, to their knees.

There we have it. Ken is prepared to support someone who he believes would bring Londoners to their knees for the purposes of political expediency. Ken is prepared to embrace the man who is his ideological anathema if it helps put him over the top with votes on Thursday. Difficult to know whether Ken is a spineless weasel or a shameless, self-serving cunt. Either way, his sudden unseemly attempt to jump into bed with Boris Johnson should lose him, rather than win him, support.

Still, this being Red Ken, he doesn’t just stop at the controversy of embracing your opponent in a crucial election just days before the ballot boxes open. No, he also has a pop at his own party:

I think people are genuinely thinking "who do I want to win London?", rather than "I want this to be a referendum on the government". If it was a referendum, I wouldn't have a chance.'

I agree – if people were voting based on the record of the national government, then Ken should be looking at the job ads in The Guardian. Still, nice of him to add to the government’s problems by shunning them at a time when the party is asking government ministers and, in particular, the Prime Minister to stay away from the campaign. But as his job offer to Boris shows, Red Ken is out for Red Ken – and no-one else.

This total lack of loyalty and ideological commitment from Ken makes me hope that Boris is offered a job on Thursday – not by Ken, but rather by the voters – and I hope it is Ken’s job.

London Mayor: Those Candidates In Full

Couple of days ago the good people of City Hall sent through a document detailing the manifestos of the candidates for London Mayor. An online copy can be found here, although it is not as good as the paper one. Mainly because it lacks all the utterly moronic photos.

The booklet starts with the BNP manifesto. Maybe the organisers wanted to get the appallingly ignorant out of the way first. It is unpleasant stuff, and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. But then again, would you expect anything else from the moronic BNP?

The candidate's message starts with:

"Remember London the way it used to be? Clean, friendly and safe."

No, frankly, I don't. When has London ever been clean, friendly and safe? It has simply never been like that. Throughout the history of London there have been problems. The Blitz, Jack the Ripper, The Great Fire of London, The Great Plague, to name but a few. To be a pig ignorant racist is one thing. To base your pig ignorant racism on a utopian vision of London that has never existed is something else.

Then the manifesto bangs on for a while longer, with the usual toss about putting non-immigrants first, before it introduces us to three people like *you* who are going to vote for the BNP. Of course, given one is a housewife, one a builder and one is a student they are nothing like me. And their opinions on why they vote BNP are the usual shite that you might expect from people who read The Daily Mail and take it as gospel truth. My favourite is the builder, Ken:

“I vote BNP because I’m proud of my country and our heritage. We should celebrate things like St. George’s Day and other Christian festivals like St Patrick’s Day instead of other festivals such as Ramadan and Eid.”

Someone should tell Ken that he doesn't *have* to celebrate Ramadan and Eid. It is totally optional...

Then we have a woman from the Left List. Her photo is striking - she looks like a librarian, someone who lisps and smells faintly of must and gone-off cheese. Her manifesto seems to have been lifted straight from the old BBC sitcom Citizen Smith. Of course, there is much to laugh at with her naive sub-Communism, but my favourite is her policies on war:

"Bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, no attacks on civil liberties. Spend the money used for war on welfare."

Does she actually realise that she is running for London Mayor rather than Prime Minister? As far as I am aware, the London Mayor doesn't decide where British troops are deployed. Still, since Lindsey has roughly the same likelihood of becoming London Mayor as me, I'm guessing that she won't have to live with the disappointment of realising this herself.

Boris is next up. He notes:

"I am serious about making London safer, protecting our green spaces and giving the taxpayer value for money – and I have the ideas to do it."

Of course, Boris might have ideas, but he can't have that many, as a quarter of his space in the booklet is taken up with a massive photo of him. And he shouldn't show a photo of himself. It just accentuates the fact that he can't comb his hair. Ok, I can't either, but I'm not running for London Mayor.

Still, his policies are saner than the BNP's of the Left List's. Only just, though, in some cases:

"Implement serious strategies on knife and gun crime and arm the police with handheld weapon scanners"

Now, I don't know what a "handheld weapon scanner" is, but it sounds fucking cool. Seriously, it sounds so futuristic that Boris probably nicked the idea from the Jetsons or something. But if he can find this sort of technology to fight crime in London, I think he should be able to find other faintly ludicrous technology as well. Maybe he could go the whole hog and put Robocop on the streets of London.

The Green Party are running with a woman called Sian. There's lots of green on her pages in the booklets, perhaps unsurprisngly. Her policies lurch between the vaguely sensible and the jaw droppingly awful. My favourite is her policy on wages:

"Insist all employers pay a London Living Wage of at least £7.20 per hour."

It is a lot of fun to imagine Sian going to big corporate companies and telling them to pay the living wage. You can picture her really insisting. And then it is even more fun to picture Sian's face cracking up into tears when said companies tell her, in no uncertain terms, to go fuck herself.

Next up is Brian Paddick for the Liberal Democrats - a man who appears to have had his charisma surgically removed. Two things stand out his dreadfully dull manifesto. First of all, he writes:

“If I can’t cut crime and make our streets safer I’ll quit.”

Well, that's a fat lot of fucking use, isn't it? Paddick could fuck up the crime stats in this city, and then fuck off. But then again, there is very little chance of Paddick ever getting the chance to resign in disgrace. After all, he is standing for the perpetual third party. Which makes this statement very, very funny:

"London is my city."

No, Paddick, it isn't. And it won't be after 1st May either.

Onto UKIP. Their candidate looks a lot like someone who was sacked from John Major's cabinet for being too extreme. Hell, he's standing for UKIP, so he probably is someone who sacked from John Major's cabinet for being too extreme. However, his manifesto could not be more bland. Take this as an example:

"Law and Order – Punish the guilty and protect the innocent"

That's his Law and Order key policy. For most people it would be a mindless truism, for Gerard Battem, it is policy.

So onto the Christian Choice. It begins with a quote from Jesus:

"The leader is the one who serves."

Jesus died 2000 years ago, but is heading up this tit's manifesto.

Underneath there is a picture of the candidate with his family. They look a bit like the Robinsons from Neighbours. And the manifesto reads like a character from Neighbours seeking power - full of unrealistic, staggeringly naive thoughts. Only this reveals the true character of the man running:

"Stop the mega-mosque at West Ham near 2012 Olympics proposed by a controversial Islamic sect"

There we have it. The Christians can have as many places of worship as they like. The dirty infidels can't. Alan Craig should piss of to Alabama. Where he might stand a chance of getting elected. Hopefully he'll be utterly shunned here in London.

The English Democrats's candidate looks like a fat reject from Pop Idol. I'd go into the details of his manifesto, but it isn't worth it. The gormless fucker has already left the contest.

Finally, the King of the Newts, Red Ken himself. He writes:

"Over the next four years London needs to go further. It needs a competent Mayor with a proven record of commitment to our city – able to stand up for London, ready to tackle the still bigger challenges ahead."

Absolutely. Absolutely. But the past eight years have convinced me that you are not that mayor, Ken.

So there we have it. Boris wins my vote, because he's the only person who has a chance of unseating the piss midget. But if this sack of shit is the very best that London has to offer, then I despair. And the booklet really makes the case for not having directly elected mayors. If this is the best London can come up with, then imagine the dross that Redditch, Dudley or Crewe might come up with.

Boris: Talking with the voters

Boris Johnson showing his common touch with the (wo)man on the street:

With his reputation with the ladies, you'd have thought that he'd look a bit happier.

(h/t the Moai. Well, he found the link to the photo and send it to me).

Mayor of London: A non-choice?

The election rumbles on. No, I’m not talking about the Democratic Primary Season, where the epic* battle for the nomination continues. Here in the UK (well, England. Well, London) we are coming to the end of another epic electoral duel. With a throwback to the 1940’s taking on a Stalinist piss midget. The choice is not so much substandard as downright depressing. And for all the talk of basing the contest on policy and moving away from the Celebrity Big Brother/cult of personality that so dominates society today, this contest has become about personality. And I don’t think I will be alone in casting my vote based largely on personality rather than politics. And I make no apology for doing so – increasingly we are not voting for something (an ideology etc) but rather for someone. Or, more typically, against someone.

There was once a time when people could vote on ideology (cue the sound of soft violins to evoke a haze of nostalgia). No, really, there was. In 1945 you had a choice – between the socialist Labour party, ready to nationalise everything, and the more restrained Tory party. That choice was resurrected in the 1970’s, when the Tory party lurched to the right, and the Labour party to the left. Seriously, look at the 1983 General Election. Margaret Thatcher, who wanted to slash the welfare state and kick start the economy using controversial economics, against Michael Foot – possibly the most left wing leader the Labour Party ever had. You could vote and know you were voting for something. What would happen if there was a general election today? You’d probably end up voting for Cameron, or Clegg, not because you happen to like them, but rather because they aren’t Gordon Brown. The policies are broadly the same, the personalities aren’t. So you vote for the personalities these days.

It is just the same in the London Mayoral Election. Ignoring the minor parties,** this is a straight contest between Livingstone and Johnson. And their policies are broadly the same. Sure, they will do slightly different things and finance it in slightly different ways – Ken from taxing you like a bitch, Boris from the mayor’s promotion budget (which he seems to think is bottomless) – but there is nothing radical in either of their platforms. You put their ideas together, in identical document in plain text, and I’d be surprised if you could genuinely tell them apart.

So you vote, if you want to vote for someone with even a chance of winning, based on what you perceive about the personality types of the two lead candidates. And neither bears up to a close inspection. I like Boris, but I do understand that he has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth a lot. I’m also very wary of his use of racially abusive terms, about his bumbling, and about what that says about his competence to be Mayor. On the flipside, you have Ken – once a radical alternative to Nu Labour, he is now an establishment man through and through. With Ken, there are the rumours – of drinking, of anti-Semitism. Then you have his various contacts – some of whom appear to be grossly corrupt, some of whom are extremists. To back that up, you have those whispered stories, of fights, including one that involved a pregnant woman. Sure, both Boris and Ken, being so firmly in the glare of the media, are going to have stories made up about them. But I think there are enough true incidents floating around to make you question whether either man should be Mayor of this great, cosmopolitan city. And the murky nature of the two candidates may be why the polls have narrowed – ultimately, there isn’t a great deal to help you to choose between the candidates.

But fuck it; that’s the choice we’ve got. Boris or Ken. And, unless he manages to set fire to himself at a campaign stop or joins the Ku Klux Klan or the BNP, Boris will be getting my little “x” next to his name a week on Thursday. Mainly because I find Ken so absolutely odious.

Modern British Politics: “You get my vote because you aren’t as repugnant to me as your opponent.”

*By epic I mean epic in the way The Lord Of The Rings film franchise was epic – i.e. long and a bit pointless.
**As they don’t have a chance of capturing City Hall – even the Lib Dems. Paddick has made zero impact in this contest. And I am aware of the irony of someone who is in a (very) minor party dismissing minor parties. Well, the Libertarians aren’t going to win this election. Although if they ever want a candidate for it, I’ll give it a go.

London Mayor: Who should *you* vote for?

Here's a link that tells you (if you are stupid or easily won over or both) who to vote for in the London election, or suggests who you should vote for if you have a little bit of backbone and aren't completely won over by every bullshit test on t'interweb.

Apparently I should vote for:

1. UKIP
2. Boris
3. Ken

(My likely vote is in bold.)

The third result is where the test really loses it for me. I'd rather fight an angry, rabid and hungry leopard that vote for that evil piss midget Red Ken. I'd rather burn off my own genitals with acid whilst listening to Westlife than vote for that fucker Livingstone.

As you might be able to tell, I'm not a fan of Ken and certainly wouldn't place him third on my list. So take the test results with a pinch of salt...

Go Boris! (Sort of)

In order to celebrate, if celebrate is indeed the right word, the beginning of the campaign to unseat that fucking bastard Red Ken… sorry, sorry, the campaign for London Mayor, the Moai and I went to see young Boris speak at a dinner on Tuesday. The scene was slightly surreal – we were clearly the youngest people at the dinner, and probably by between 10 and 20 years. The rules of the club where we ate required gentlemen to wear jackets on all times, except in June, July and August, or when the club allowed them to by putting up notices saying the temperature has risen above 24 degrees. However, a notice informed me that gentlemen were no longer required to wear ties at all time in the public areas of the club, which would have been a ground breaking development had this been the 1920’s.

Anyway, to Boris, and I’ll hand you over to the Moai – a self described recovering socialist - for his verdict on the uber Tory Boris:

"As The Nameless One says, he and I went to a dinner engagement two days ago that marked the beginning of Boris' formal assault on the mayoralty. So, how convinced were we? Well, even the pre-scripted parts of his speech were not utterly dull, and the description of the execrable Londoner as 'Pyongyang style' went down very well, indicating that his minders (who notable by their presence) have not made the fatal mistake of de-Borising Boris. However, in open questioning, he wobbled. He appears to believe that all of the changes he proposes can be funded by slashing Ken's admittedly enormous marketing budget, and, when asked a question on schools policy and underachievement, he was obviously unprepared. Whether or not the Mayor has any control over schools is irrelevant; when required to go off script, he didn't look convincing, which may be a problem in open hustings. The Moai verdict: entertaining, but not - yet - fully convincing."

See, the interesting thing is I felt it worked the other way round. I found Boris’s speech boring, light on policy, and delivered far too fast and with more than a hint of nerves. When it came to the questioning, I felt he came into his own. He didn’t have all the answers, and was clearly developing some policy ideas on the hoof, but he seemed to build up a real rapport with his (albeit quite friendly) audience and also seemed to relish the chance to go off script and think on his feet. He came across as far more likeable than that poisonous little twerp that he is fighting against. And whilst Red Ken clearly sees going for Boris’s jugular is the way forward, Boris slipped in a couple of jibes against Red Ken without really mentioning the man’s name. He seems to be using the classic politician’s trick of not mentioning his opponent’s name for fear of giving that opponent free publicity.

My verdict? Well, he came across ok, but I don’t think anyone would expect anything less from Bozzer. He didn’t really give me a reason to vote for him. My vote is most likely to go to Bozzer simply because he is not that nasty, anti-Semitic, crony loving pseudo-Marxist Ken Livingstone. Equally, he is not Brian Paddick – a man who seems to be even more lost in his own navel than your standard Lib Dem. In that respect, Boris is the perfect candidate to represent modern politics – and in particular the modern Tories. You don’t vote for him, but rather by supporting him you are not voting for any of his opponents. It is a shame he didn’t have more to offer, and I hope if he does win the race, then he has an agenda ready and waiting to go. The last thing we need is another politician popular with the media who wins an election – then sits on his hands, wondering what to do.