Three Dicks for London!

English readers will instantly pick up my oblique reference to Dick Whittington, the mostly mythical character who tried, and in the end succeeded, in becoming mayor of London, and whose only reward from posterity was to become the leading character in a pantomime.  For the benefit of my American readers, and anyone else who is deaf, dumb, blind and possessed of no sense of smell, we are just a few days away from electing a new mayor.  This election is only contingently important because it coincides with local council elections in other parts of the country and comes at a time when our prime minister stands exposed as a blustering but weak and vacillating incompetent.  The mayoralty of London is the jewel in the crown, not in terms of direct power, but as a prime indicator of how the British electorate looks upon 'Hash Broon' and his quivering party.  I use the word "quivering" because it would add insult to injury for me to use the word 'frit', a favourite of 'that woman', and also because there are around 130 marginal seats occupied by Labour MPs and they are scared witless lest they be evicted in two years time and find themselves forced to earn an honest living.

So this mayoral election does have some significance and this is reflected in the amount of attention it has received from the media, such that, in our teeny-weeny British way, we are trying to emulate the great 'Hillbilly' vs. 'Baramarama' fight across the pond.  I have watched two live debates with the three main candidates - Brian Paddick (il-Lib-non-Dem), Ken Livingstone (the incumbent for two terms, standing, as usual, for no-one but himself and his Trot-lot cronies under the false colours of Labour) and Boris Johnson (Tory toff).  Paddick is platitudinous to the nth degree.  He rose rapidly upwards through the ranks of the Metropolitan Police which should be enough to tell anyone that he's a politically correct nonentity almost certainly promoted beyond his ability.  If he was a Detective Sergeant with thirty years up the sharp end I might have paid him more attention.  Livingstone has always lived down to my expectations of him.  He is a political viper and if anyone doubts it they need only look back to the time when the London Labour group won control of the old GLC and within 48 hours he had the Labour leader, a political moderate, thrown out of his job and replaced by ... yes, you guessed it ... Ken Livingstone.  I was never fooled by his cheeky chappie public persona.  Livingstone is the hardest of hard Left and the quicker London is rid of his, and his corrupt cronies, pernicious influence the better.  Which leaves Boris!  Again, for the benefit of my American readers, let me try and explain the phenomena that is Boris.  He is, on the face of it, your archetypal Tory toff.  Eton and Oxford educated, he worked for a while in the media ending up as editor of my favourite mag, the Spectator. He became a Tory MP for Henley-on-Thames which is very definitely as posh as it sounds.  Boris has spent a considerable amount of time pretending to be a buffoon.  How difficult that was for him remains to be seen!  He tends, as my old mother used to put it, to open his mouth and let his belly rumble which is actually rather refreshing when contrasted to the ultra-careful mumblings of other MPs terrified of upsetting their PR advisers.  For example, recently he used the word "piccaninnies" in referring to black children and all the usual po-faced suspects leaped up and down screeching imprecations.  It was also a word used, famously, by Enoch Powell 40 years ago so that, too, added to the furore. Needless to say, as a blogger who refuses to allow the 'Word Police' any authority over my utterances, I cheered for him.  (Incidentally, the word originates from West Indian creole via Portuguese/Spanish for 'little' or 'tiny'.)

You can tell that my sympathies are with Boris but not for the conclusion you might jump to.  Boris does not sit easily with many of his Tory counterparts, particularly in the leadership cabal that surrounds 'Cameroon'.  I suspect that as mayor of London, and assuming that 'Dim Dave' doesn't contrive to lose the next election, Boris will prove to be something of a thorn in the government's side.  Neither do I believe that he is anywhere near as buffoonish as he pretends.  Eton, Oxford and the newspaper world will have given him an excellent education and I suspect he is intelligent enough to use it.  Above all, and this is why I really warm to him, he is a man inside of whom, I suspect, are many rooms, unlike most of our politicians whose interior has one room marked 'Politics' and no others.   Boris is a man of many interests, and the apparent fact that some of them are married to other men merely adds to my admiration!  Watching the debates I believe he has a vision but he's not, thank God, single minded to the point of being just another political android.

So, if you're a Londoner - 'Vote Boris!'

Comments

[Larry Teabag]

Of course the "open his mouth and let his belly rumble which is actually rather refreshing when contrasted to the ultra-careful mumblings of other MPs terrified of upsetting their PR advisers... and all the usual po-faced suspects leaped up and down screeching imprecations" defence works equally well in Ken's favour.

[David Duff]

Yes, I agree, which is why I am so surprised that so many people are fooled by Livingstone. But when he openly admits (boasts?), as he did on the BBC debate, that he had conned the government and Londoners over the Olympics bid, then you don't need to be po-faced to leap up and down, merely be a council tax-payer.

I will add one more thing concerning Livingstone which I meant to put in my main post, and that is that he gives the impression of being weary of it all. He has taken a severe hammering on an almost daily basis by the Evening Standard (for the benefit of my American readers, the Right-wing London paper owned by the Daily Mail Group) and he looks and sounds tired and dispirited.

It will be interesting to see if the City centre Muslim vote, which will be as crooked as a corkscrew, beats the recently energised Tory vote from the London suburbs. We shall see.

[JuliaM]

"This election...comes at a time when our prime minister stands exposed as a blustering but weak and vacillating incompetent."

To be fair, there's pretty much no time since he ascended to the throne that that hasn't been true.. ;)

[David Duff]

Crikey, Julia, I wouldn't wish to cross swords with you when you're being unfair!