Boris Johnson has taken office as Mayor of London.
I would like to thank first the vast multitudes who voted against me – and I have met quite a few in the last nine months, not all of them entirely polite.
I will work flat out from now on to earn your trust and to dispel some of the myths that have been created about me.
There is nothing you can do to earn my trust you idiot. You’ve already lied about your transport policy, you’ve shown disinterest, dislike and ignorance about diversity, and offered policies on crime which were just plain stupid. How do you think you can earn my trust, when the ‘myths’ have to a number already been proven to be true? When you’ve written in an outright homophobic manner for years and then when you have the opportunity to explain your platform’s contradictory support for gay Londoners you refuse – when you say you were against Section 28 but still support the point of it, what are we supposed to think?
Where there are neglected opportunities we will seize on them, and we will focus on the priorities of the people of London: cutting crime, improving transport, protecting green space, delivering affordable housing, giving taxpayers value for money in every one of the 32 boroughs.
Putting metal detectors in schools and tube stations to weed out those carrying metallic weapons is economically impossible. It’s also impossible in terms of manpower, and is hardly a step towards tackling the reasons for why knives and guns are being used by young people to kill one another with. Improving transport won’t be done by attempting a no-strike deal with unions ideologically opposed to you, with clout no central government would currently dare stand up to for long.
And I hope that everybody who loves this city will put aside party differences to try in the making of Greater London greater still.
You are an Old Etonian who hasn’t as an MP voted for the best interests of London. Put aside party differences? Are you completely mad? Your sponsors the Evening Standard went through the whole gamut – from saying Ken’s campaign was being managed by suicide bombers to claiming he was setting up a socialist cabal in City Hall – maybe you’re the one guilty of negatively inflating party differences.
To the young people who voted for the goofball celebrity of Have I Got News For You, to the self-loathing gay Tories who voted for a man who hates you, to the ungrateful taxi drivers who voted down the man who inflated your fares well past the point of reason, to the racists and homophobes who took their opportunity to stab London’s minorities in the back, I say thank you. Thank you for making London look as stupid as the United States. We now have no political capital to expend in attacking the Americans for voting for a hateful, ignorant and stupid buffoon as their leader. Where they voted him in anyway for his affability, it seems London just did too, proving once again that most people really are stupid.
Cosmodaddy 
So if we were to wash out the foam from your mouth and actually look at the two main candidates’ policies. It was pretty obvious that Boris Johnson was the right man to win. I resent being classed as ‘stupid’ or bigoted for voting for Boris. As someone who is from an ‘ethnic minority’ background with a first, allow me to address some issues you point out.
I don’t think someone having an opinion on whether the legalities of gay marriage should is right or not quite counts as homophobia. Some people seem to forget that we don’t have gay marriage anyway, we have civil unions – which Boris supports. So why are people not having a go at Tony Blair for not legislating gay marriage and only settling for civil unions instead? As for section 28, that’s a debate from the last century. Time has moved on from that. As a gay individual myself, Boris’ views on section 28 isn’t of any concern when it is not even under his jurisdiction as mayor of London.
Crime – I think it is important for the mayor to focus on crime, especially gang crime which is a serious problem. I’m sure you are update with the statistics of black on black crime being considerably higher than black on white. So as a black person myself, crime is an extremely important issue to me as well. Not just to white middle class people in the outer London boroughs. I want to be able to feel safe on my way home from work. So Boris’ policy of zero tolerance approach to crime is definitely the way forward.
Racism – haven’t got much to say on a man’s alleged racism when he is married to a half Sikh woman himself and when one actually reads the incriminating article where he used the term ‘piccaninnies’, anyone with a proper grasp of English language can clearly see he is being sardonic and using the term in jest. Nevertheless, he has since apologised. Something Ken Livingstone has failed to do with his anti-Semitic remarks. And while speaking of Livingstone’s lack of apologies, I didn’t hear any apologies for hanging around with a suicide-bomber sympathiser who holds extreme views on homosexuality either. If you complain about Boris, you should listen to what Al Qaradawi has to say on homosexuality!
Eton – I doubt eight year old Boris had much choice of which school to go to, but I think we are all aware that Eton is a very good school academically. So if there is anything to be said about his Eton education, it should be that he is clearly more than qualified enough to take on the job of Mayor.
Having said all that, it is of course your democratic right to choose who you want as mayor. But democracy has spoken, you will have to accept that now. And also please don’t presume to speak for me, as a homosexual from an ethnic minority background as you have tended to do in some of your posts. I voted for Boris, and I am proud. One important thing you should always remember is that we are all individuals.
The one thing I especially hated about Livingstone is the way he would use minority groups to play off each other to further his own interests. He was divisive figure, and London, in my view is much better off without him! As for Boris, I think those who opposed his candidacy should try and be objective and look at his time as Mayor rather than drag up insignificant issues from the past.
I don’t understand why people take internet rants so personally. I really don’t. But Johnson’s victory has angered me for reasons which you fail to address. I never said I supported Livingstone’s connection with Al-Qaradawi – I’ve watched him justify it in person and it was a downright stupid argument. As ever when he did something which the most reasonable in society disagreed with he just blamed the Daily Mail and Evening Standard for misrepresenting things. But I’ve never equated Johnson with the likes of Al-Qaradawi – if you read my earlier post, my argument against him in terms of diversity and equal rights is far more complicated than involving a died-in-the-wool homophobe shouting hatred from the rooftops. I sat through a hustings where he responded to a question about diversity, showing no understanding and even less interest. You may think that doesn’t matter – to watch someone who is now the Mayor of London say he still supports the ideological justification for Section 28 is an outrage. You may dismiss that as a triviality, I would argue someone (him) holding that attitude is extremely dangerous and irresponsible. I find it almost unfathomable that any gay person could dismiss Section 28 or the ideology from which it sprung, but it is part of what makes us all different.
I haven’t said that standing up to crime is a problem either. For goodness’ sake I voted for Brian Paddick, despite my disgust with the Metropolitan Police! He offered a completely different approach to policing which actually might help those most in need and stop the various, worsening cycles, in part around race. I think Ken made a good start in stopping a decline in police numbers and funding, but his uncritical approach to Ian Blair was a disaster, and Johnson’s zero-tolerance, using the Met as a blunt instrument is similarly stupid. It’s been tried, it doesn’t work.
I do accept the result, however I dislike the result intensely – you similarly have to accept that (or just don’t read the blog after all, it’s only a blog – why read something you dislike? I don’t exactly read the Standard lol). Livingstone had his faults, you’re dead right. And the best spin you can put on the Lee Jasper affair was that his management of those closest to him ended up lax through arrogance – casual cronyism because he’d been in too long and couldn’t even see it for what it was. I also wanted a change, but Johnson is without doubt in my mind a regressive one – incompetent and ignorant with no honesty about his platform (£8 million or £110 million?) or responsibility for what he believes. Dragging up his many statements about race and sexual orientation in the past is indeed practically pointless – but they weren’t what I based any of my current distaste for him on in the first place. On a purely practical level do you really think that Mayor Johnson would introduce an innovation like the partnership register, which made so much difference to people’s lives at the start of the decade, and which was the precursor to civil partnerships? I don’t. You may suggest that’s not his job – I would argue the bar for his job has been set pretty high in diversity issues.
I respect much of what you put, although it’s a shame you chose to remain anonymous. It’s also a shame that you took so much of what I wrote personally that we might not find the common ground we might share. Thanks for taking the time to post though, I do appreciate it.
Good post, I totally agree. I still can’t believe that man is representing our city now.
Smashing stuff mate. I like how you describe change in the form of Boris as regressive I think thats well put. I think I was being far too optimistic when I hoped that London was a city liberal and diverse enough to hold off a tory mayor (conservative politics I feel don’t fit into London outside of Westminster) and hold on to a mayor that I felt was far more in tune with what we were after. Boris’ lack of any idea about the problems that Londoners really care about (i.e. NOT booze on the tube and bendy buses) I think has already been proven.
Also the criticisms brought against Ken didn’t really effect my opinion on him and he’s probably my favourite politican ever because of what he’s done for London since 2000. I really feel like he’s transformed this city and Boris is going to undo all of that.
So suppose that the mayor you voted for was elected into power. Then you’d have the a large percentage or Londoners who oppose that. As was said before, it was democratic and continues to be so. I often get the feeling amongst liberals and protesters that they just want to protest, perhaps a feeling or importance that they are somehow defying the government. Woopteedoo.
Boris has an education that is of a better standard than most of us and clearly appealed to a majority of voters.
As for his apologies – we are all human, even for a man whose hairstyle is under such pathetic scrunity when it isn’t even that extreme, and we therefore all make mistakes. If a politician says the wrong thing and apologise, of course, it could be just to save public embarrassment, but equally it could be a genuine apology after realising they made a mistake.
Boris has an education that is of a better standard than most of us and clearly appealed to a majority of voters.
I don’t believe for a moment that anyone voted for him because of his education. And for someone with such an excellent education he’s shown unimaginably bad judgment in his new office already.
And he’s never to this day apologised for the homophobic things he’s said in the past. Fair enough he was very supportive of Pride and even led the march, but he’s never explained why or how he’s changed his ideas.
I voted against Ken rather than for Boris, its just that he was the only candidate who could beat him as far as I could see. Ken brought a lot of great ideas to the city but I felt that he had become corrupted with power by the end of his term and had to be removed.
I don’t think I’m alone there either. You shouldn’t assume that most people are stupid because they have different views to you, no one has all the facts. Its a shame because you make some good points but your delivery leaves people like myself, who voted for Boris, less inclined to listen to you or take in what you’re saying.
I guess it comes down to whether you want to achieve something or just throw your toys out of the pram.