Not an expert on the UK's parlementary system.....does this bring down Brown's government, and force an election for a new PM?
doc
No Doc, these were local elections for councils to run towns and counties across the country, and the most high profile election was for Mayor of London. However such was the scale of the disaster for the Labour party that many within the Labour party are thinking it is time for a new leader, simply because they are staring defeat at the next general election in the face. This has been a political story of epic proportions here and as you can imagine there has been acres of newsprint, but this encapsulates the mayoral effect nicely
linkyThe lefty meme is that Boris is a racist buffoon who in incapable of being a serious politician. Does this ring a bell?
The invective culminated in this article in
The Guardian newspaper, yes we now have Boris Derangement Syndrome.
Ach. That floppy hair, and that sodding bicycle. Has any man ever before managed to persuade such a huge number of people that he was a decent chap on two such flimsy, trivial, irrelevant, modish pieces of ephemera?
Never mind what a laughing stock we'd be, internationally, if we elected Boris Johnson as mayor. Never mind what a mess he'd make of the whole thing, how unproven he is in anything beyond having a big gob, never mind that if we think Ken Livingstone lives high on the taxi hog, God alone knows what this moneyed creep would get up to. Never mind all that for the moment. Let's just concentrate on this myth of his being a nice guy. He is not a nice guy.
Two mistakes we make about Boris: the first is that, because he says "unacceptable" things, then he must be honest; he must be outside the airless bubble of PC. This is bilge. He is no more honest than any other philanderer before him. He has lied flagrantly, flamboyantly, to save his marriage, and given how little else he's prepared to do for it, one must conclude that he doesn't put a very great premium on telling the truth. So if he gives out these apparently harsh truths about gay people or Liverpudlians or the people of Congo, it is not because the fire of truth burns so brightly within him that he can't snuff it out. It is because he genuinely despises these people. He despises gays and he despises provincials (you are all right with Boris if you come from Liverpool but don't sound like a Liverpudlian. Once you've been to public school, then you are from postcode POSH), and he despises Africans. He despises them, and he despises those of us who would hold such judgments to be bigoted and inhuman.
Am I being unfair? Let's recap - he pooh-poohed gay marriage with an assessment that was actually pretty droll, but contained within it, of course, total derision for the outlandish idea that you might be homosexual and also have feelings of love and permanence. "If gay marriage was OK - and I was uncertain on the issue - then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog." OK, at this point, maybe he's just saying it for a laugh. Maybe he doesn't mean it. That would be fine, except he does mean it. As recently as 2000 - he wasn't just some young man in a hurry, trying to make a point about Clause 28 to curry Thatcher's favour - he was on about "The essence of that Tory case is unchanged ... it is more sensitive to spare parents' anxieties than to allow leftwing local authorities to waste taxpayers' money on idiotic and irrelevant homosexual instruction." Irrelevant homosexual instruction? He would have us believe that, conversely, the Labour party wants children to give up maths and concentrate on gay sex? Come on! He has all the mendacity, the slyness, the patronising sleight of hand that the Daily Mail spews out, only he doesn't seem so outright unpleasant, because of ... that sodding hair and that poxing bicycle.
...MORE...
and the article is followed by a number of people who feared change commenting. E.g.
Vivienne Westwood
Fashion designer
"Boris as mayor? Unthinkable. It just exposes democracy as a sham, especially if people don't vote for Ken - he's the best thing in politics. Unthinkable
Bonnie Greer
Writer
"Boris Johnson in the role of mayor would feel like being trapped on the set of The Wizard of Oz minus the soundtrack and the Technicolor. His election would be the ultimate triumph of the Kensington and Chelsea gulag and the Bullingdon Ascendancy. Please, London. I moved from New York City, for God's sake, to live among you. Don't choose the clown!"
Arabella Weir
Actor and writer
"I will go on hunger strike and throw myself in front of the next horse at Ascot if he wins. Failing that I was going to say I'll sleep with him, but he'd probably say yes. So instead I'll chain myself to the railings of his house. And then I'll move out of London. How do we trust a guy who says he knows about London, when he's just taken three of his kids out of state school and put them into private schools? That's a man in touch with the people. He's loathsome. He's everything that's wrong with the upper classes at their worst. Limited, pompous, without any breadth of vision or sense of inclusion. But I don't even think he thinks he's up to the job. He said it for a laugh, is my guess, and now he's got to go through with it."
The comments by readers following this and many other such articles after the result was known show not only the loathing of the left of those who voted for Boris, but also the counterproductive effect of such bile in that a fair few people were persuaded to vote for Boris simply because of the hysterical quality of the opposition to him.
