London's New Mayor

So London has a new mayor – Boris Johnson, a larger-than-life blonde-haired buffoon. This is not necessarily a problem. In one sense, it’s a plus as I will go on to explain. But he was elected not because he’s a member of the conservative party, but because he is a personality. If you’re from outside Britain, let me explain the phenomenon of Boris. He’s an old Etonian, who went to Oxford University before a career at the Daily Telegraph and then as Editor of Spectator magazine. He then become a Tory MP and a shadow cabinet minister during which time he put his foot in it so often, he only opened his mouth to change feet. Gaffe-prone and politically-incorrect, he’s won the hearts of Londoners.

Ken Livingstone, who came a close second, has been mayor for eight years. He is universally acknowledged as having given the role more meaning and power than it might have otherwise had, partly because Ken Livingstone is impressively bloody-minded and difficult. He did, to his credit, a great deal to improve London’s buses, but he did a lot else besides, not all of it good. He did not lose the election because he was technically the Labour candidate – the same party as Britain’s government at the moment who were badly beaten in lots of other local elections that day. (Whenever Ken speaks warmly of the government, Gordon Brown and New Labour, no-one believes him) Ken lost because people were fed up that he’d broken too many promises, that he was protective of cronies who needed to bee investigated on grounds of corruption and that he’d been in the job too long. (He promised he wouldn’t run for a third term of office – and broke that promise).

It’s all rather depressing because both candidates are known adulterers but that didn’t seem to make a blind bit of difference. Both candidate received hundreds of thousands of votes. What’s more, both candidates are ‘personalities’ – so personal integrity has little to do with it. Boris is a shambolic overgrown schoolboy; Ken the champagne socialist who keeps newts. No thought is given as to whether either man has a good character or is able to employ people with good judgment and rectitude.

Even worse, argument of minutiae of policy is mind-bending. Boris had lengthy arguments about the variety of bus that should carry people around London’s streets. There is no real ideological difference between candidates here. Consensus politics says that London authorities really should micromanage bus design and refuse collection – rather leaving it to bureaucrats, residents associations, markets, individuals or people who actually know what they’re talking about. Britain is sadly obsessed with letting government run everything and then electing people to run these overgrown institutions who have no commendable characteristics other than being ‘characters’.

Here’s the only silver lining I can see. Boris is a buffoon. And liberal socialists will hate him because he will make a mockery of the thing they love – government. For liberals who wants the government to over-tax people and run every conceivable service, from health and education to buses and bins, it’s essential that you take government seriously and don’t snigger. The British government – as many government around the world – are constantly trying to make Britons feel grateful for the governing service they provide, telling the great British public how they’re spending all this money that’s miraculously appeared in the Treasury, forgetting that the great British public put it there (and that government collected it and their usual inefficient, graceless, unjust way). But with Boris in charge, London’s government, at least, will appear rather shambolic, incompetent and gaffe-prone. Perhaps then the great British public will recognise that the Leviathan that they elect to run their country is nothing but an puffed up Puff Adder in a big suit that demands to be worshipped and taken seriously. Hopefully, Boris will be unable to continue the charade.