Introducing a man called Boris

Let me be clear. I do not hate Boris Johnson. He has done nothing, yet, to deserve my hatred.

But I do not trust him.

He’s a man with a reputation for buffoonery and public gaffes. His experience of running a large administrations is seemingly limited to running the Spectator. And now he’s in charge of London.

He needs keeping an eye on.

Here’s the Boris story so far (taken from here and here).

• He was sacked from the Times for “falsifying a quotation from his godfather Colin Lucas“, but at least he admitted his idiocy after the event.
• In 1995 a phone conversation was recorded in which he promised to supply the address of journalist Stuart Collier to school friend Darius Guppy explicitly so that Guppy could have Collier beaten up for finding out too much about his attempted insurance fraud.
• In 2004 he managed to offend the entire city of Liverpool by criticising the mourning of Ken Bigley, a contractor murdered in Iraq, and then blaming them for the Hillsborough disaster. He apologised, but only after the then Tory leader Michael Howard ordered him to.
• He was later sacked by Michael Howard from the Tory front bench for allegedly concealing the truth about an affair.
• In 2005, following the 7th July bombings, he wrote that, to non-Muslim readers of the Koran, “Islamophobia … seems a natural reaction”, in an article in the Spectator.
• In 2006 he suggested in a Telegraph article that Papua New Guinea was a country of cannibals, and when asked to apologise the best he could manage was the sarky:

“I meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea who I’m sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity in common with the rest of us.”

• A rotund figure himself, he allegedly dismissed Jamie Oliver’s (admittedly unsuccessful) efforts to get school children eating better meals, apparently saying:

“If I was in charge I would get rid of Jamie Oliver and tell people to eat what they like”

• Rod Liddle has allegedly accused Johnson of being prone to refer to black Africans, in private conversation, as “piccaninnies” – a term that he used in a 2002 Telegraph article, albeit in a sarcastic context.
• In April he said of Portsmouth that it was:

“…one of the most depressed towns in southern England, a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs”

Now, none of these are reasons to hate the man, or even to suppose him to be unfit for the job. We might even agree with some of his opinions. But I worry about having someone who’s quite so prepared to make public gaffes like that run my city. Ken was no model of tact, certainly, but that’s no reason to condone the practice of saying really stupid things to a wide audience.

Then there’s the figurehead issue. Everyone equates the words “Boris” with “Buffoon”. And this man is to be the face stamped onto the front of London. Two YouTube videos to demonstrate what I mean:

So this is the man who is to run London for the next four years.

In the next post, Boris’ manifesto. Let’s keep track of what he said he would do, and compare it to what he does do.

If you come across this blog and have anything to add, put it in a comment below.

In the meantime, Boris – we’re watching you.