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| Two men dancing in their underwear – Boris and Ken | Two men dancing in their underwear – Boris and Ken |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| I feel I must apologise for the conduct of my nation during the war. Or rather, not the war, but the last week. And not my nation, so much as those who would have my nation obey their orders. Your Boris Johnsons. Your Ken Livingstones. | I feel I must apologise for the conduct of my nation during the war. Or rather, not the war, but the last week. And not my nation, so much as those who would have my nation obey their orders. Your Boris Johnsons. Your Ken Livingstones. |
| Last Friday brought the hyper-cringe of waking up to headlines from abroad reading things such as “London mayor accused of dog-whistle racism for saying Obama ‘part-Kenyan’” and “London mayor compared to Donald Trump for ‘racist’ comments on Obama’s heritage”. This Friday morning offered its own powerful inducements to self-medicate, in the form of “UK Labour party’s crazy Nazi meltdown caught on camera” and “Labour suspends former London mayor over Hitler remarks”. As I type these words, I am watching a news programme in which London mayoral hopeful – very hopeful, admittedly – George Galloway has just explained that in some sense, “Nazism and Zionism were two sides of the same coin”. | Last Friday brought the hyper-cringe of waking up to headlines from abroad reading things such as “London mayor accused of dog-whistle racism for saying Obama ‘part-Kenyan’” and “London mayor compared to Donald Trump for ‘racist’ comments on Obama’s heritage”. This Friday morning offered its own powerful inducements to self-medicate, in the form of “UK Labour party’s crazy Nazi meltdown caught on camera” and “Labour suspends former London mayor over Hitler remarks”. As I type these words, I am watching a news programme in which London mayoral hopeful – very hopeful, admittedly – George Galloway has just explained that in some sense, “Nazism and Zionism were two sides of the same coin”. |
| At Visit London, all weekend leave is cancelled until further notice. Unless, of course, this is part of some false flag attack orchestrated by the tourist board specifically designed to denude the capital of desirable travellers in order to make room for even more supra-political non-doms. Still, we can’t argue with the ballot box. A city that has a good claim to be one of the most successfully multicultural in the world has been represented since the inception of its mayoralty by a man deeply affronted that his witticisms about “grinning piccaninnies” and “watermelon smiles” are taken “out of context”, and a chap rapidly emerging as only slightly more historically reliable than the National Socialist archives. | At Visit London, all weekend leave is cancelled until further notice. Unless, of course, this is part of some false flag attack orchestrated by the tourist board specifically designed to denude the capital of desirable travellers in order to make room for even more supra-political non-doms. Still, we can’t argue with the ballot box. A city that has a good claim to be one of the most successfully multicultural in the world has been represented since the inception of its mayoralty by a man deeply affronted that his witticisms about “grinning piccaninnies” and “watermelon smiles” are taken “out of context”, and a chap rapidly emerging as only slightly more historically reliable than the National Socialist archives. |
| Boris and Ken. Ken and Boris. To know them by their first names was not to love them. They are in so many ways united by more than divides them – the self-love, the sense that public office is a mere plot device in their personal stories, the belief that the ordinary standards of decency are really something for other people, the inscrutable sexual charm … “Come home with me,” Ken once leered to a woman journalist. “I’m like a broom handle in the morning.” | Boris and Ken. Ken and Boris. To know them by their first names was not to love them. They are in so many ways united by more than divides them – the self-love, the sense that public office is a mere plot device in their personal stories, the belief that the ordinary standards of decency are really something for other people, the inscrutable sexual charm … “Come home with me,” Ken once leered to a woman journalist. “I’m like a broom handle in the morning.” |
| Boris and Ken share the belief that the ordinary standards of decency are really something for other people | Boris and Ken share the belief that the ordinary standards of decency are really something for other people |
| Ken has made one internationally great speech – just after the 7/7 bombings – which he recently chose to cancel out live on Question Time by declaring that the bombers “gave their lives” in protest. As for Boris, I chanced to be present in the Olympic stadium in Beijing for the single piece of public service he has ever performed on the world stage. As democratically elected London mayor, his role in the 2008 Games closing ceremony was to accept the Olympic flag after his centrally appointed Beijing counterpart had been formally relieved of it. By this stage it had become quite clear that the Bird’s Nest was a fully operational battle station. China had spent more than two weeks announcing its gathering 21st-century primacy, drummed in by over 2,000 percussionists who had been made to rehearse in nappies in order to eliminate the need for bog breaks. So when Boris – quite deliberately, I am sure – cocked up the handover by getting the flag tangled and openly giggling, it felt like a pleasingly British release of tension. | Ken has made one internationally great speech – just after the 7/7 bombings – which he recently chose to cancel out live on Question Time by declaring that the bombers “gave their lives” in protest. As for Boris, I chanced to be present in the Olympic stadium in Beijing for the single piece of public service he has ever performed on the world stage. As democratically elected London mayor, his role in the 2008 Games closing ceremony was to accept the Olympic flag after his centrally appointed Beijing counterpart had been formally relieved of it. By this stage it had become quite clear that the Bird’s Nest was a fully operational battle station. China had spent more than two weeks announcing its gathering 21st-century primacy, drummed in by over 2,000 percussionists who had been made to rehearse in nappies in order to eliminate the need for bog breaks. So when Boris – quite deliberately, I am sure – cocked up the handover by getting the flag tangled and openly giggling, it felt like a pleasingly British release of tension. |
| Other than that, Boris’s “statesmanlike flourishes” do not really travel. To watch him being slapped down obliquely by Obama last week was to see that this was a man hopelessly out of his weight division. He has had a decade, all in, to make a remotely memorable parliamentary speech, yet never has. Forget the old Jesuit punt on being able to foretell the man from the boy of seven. Give me the man of 51, and I will show you the putative prime minister. Boris believes in nothing but himself. | Other than that, Boris’s “statesmanlike flourishes” do not really travel. To watch him being slapped down obliquely by Obama last week was to see that this was a man hopelessly out of his weight division. He has had a decade, all in, to make a remotely memorable parliamentary speech, yet never has. Forget the old Jesuit punt on being able to foretell the man from the boy of seven. Give me the man of 51, and I will show you the putative prime minister. Boris believes in nothing but himself. |
| One of the greatest acts of comic sabotage in the entire Tony Blair premiership came during prime minister’s questions, when a Labour backbencher, Tony McWalter, stood up and inquired solicitously: “My right honourable friend is sometimes subject to rather unflattering or even malevolent descriptions of his motivation. Will he provide the house with a brief characterisation of the political philosophy that he espouses and which underlies his policies?” | One of the greatest acts of comic sabotage in the entire Tony Blair premiership came during prime minister’s questions, when a Labour backbencher, Tony McWalter, stood up and inquired solicitously: “My right honourable friend is sometimes subject to rather unflattering or even malevolent descriptions of his motivation. Will he provide the house with a brief characterisation of the political philosophy that he espouses and which underlies his policies?” |
| Despite four days’ notice of the question, Blair was more than momentarily silenced. Yet compared to Boris, Tone was John Locke. You’d have more luck finding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction than you would a sincerely held view not predicated on Boris’s personal ambition. I shrieked when he attempted to map himself on to the space occupied by Winston Churchill by publishing a book about the man who frequently polls as Britain’s greatest ever leader. It called to mind a great line in Working Girl: “Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna. Never will.” | Despite four days’ notice of the question, Blair was more than momentarily silenced. Yet compared to Boris, Tone was John Locke. You’d have more luck finding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction than you would a sincerely held view not predicated on Boris’s personal ambition. I shrieked when he attempted to map himself on to the space occupied by Winston Churchill by publishing a book about the man who frequently polls as Britain’s greatest ever leader. It called to mind a great line in Working Girl: “Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna. Never will.” |
| Moving on from the mental image of Boris singing and dancing around his house in his underwear, we return to Ken’s remarks this week. And for these, we really do require the Hazmat suit. When last I donned it in this cause – shortly after Ken’s appointment to various senior roles by Jeremy Corbyn, and his near immediate decision to make mental health jokes – all sorts of people wrote to me hotly defending the appointment. In light of the week’s developments – which could only have been anticipated by the aforementioned child of seven – I am very much looking forward to the next stage in our correspondence. | Moving on from the mental image of Boris singing and dancing around his house in his underwear, we return to Ken’s remarks this week. And for these, we really do require the Hazmat suit. When last I donned it in this cause – shortly after Ken’s appointment to various senior roles by Jeremy Corbyn, and his near immediate decision to make mental health jokes – all sorts of people wrote to me hotly defending the appointment. In light of the week’s developments – which could only have been anticipated by the aforementioned child of seven – I am very much looking forward to the next stage in our correspondence. |
| Related: Has Boris Johnson been a good mayor of London? | |
| Alas, the story of Boris and Ken is the story of the London mayoralty, which has been passed like a trophy wife between these two men. With apologies to those who didn’t vote for them, their successive election victories have felt like a city that should be far better than that offering itself up with a panted “USE ME! USE ME!” The architectural style of the period has been characterised by the erection of a series of monstrous glass penises, with even City Hall itself acknowledged by Ken as a “glass testicle”. That was a rare non-Hitler reference, I should stress – as a leading historian of the Third Reich, Ken would be among the first to debunk that malicious falsehood about the Führer’s gonads existing only in the singular. | Alas, the story of Boris and Ken is the story of the London mayoralty, which has been passed like a trophy wife between these two men. With apologies to those who didn’t vote for them, their successive election victories have felt like a city that should be far better than that offering itself up with a panted “USE ME! USE ME!” The architectural style of the period has been characterised by the erection of a series of monstrous glass penises, with even City Hall itself acknowledged by Ken as a “glass testicle”. That was a rare non-Hitler reference, I should stress – as a leading historian of the Third Reich, Ken would be among the first to debunk that malicious falsehood about the Führer’s gonads existing only in the singular. |
| Indeed, despite the new choices on offer in Thursday’s election, it is difficult to feel much of hope for a better class of politics in the immediate future. The Tories’ repulsive decision to play identity politics at city level has opened the same Pandora’s box as Labour’s horrendous forays into that mire at national level. It wasn’t us who mentioned the war. But none of us will get away with it. | Indeed, despite the new choices on offer in Thursday’s election, it is difficult to feel much of hope for a better class of politics in the immediate future. The Tories’ repulsive decision to play identity politics at city level has opened the same Pandora’s box as Labour’s horrendous forays into that mire at national level. It wasn’t us who mentioned the war. But none of us will get away with it. |