Boris Johnson is the new mayor of London, after beating incumbent Ken Livingstone in Thursday's ballot.
It's hard to imagine gaffe-prone Boris running one of the world's great cities. But he will now get the chance to do just that.
Johnson's win was just the most high profile disasters for Labour as the party's 15 year dominance of British politics appeared to be coming to an end. But the way the city's Evening Standard newspaper relentlessly campaigned against Ken reopened the old complaints that Britain's Tory-supporting press gave the party a huge boost. Almost every day, the Standard billboards carried another anti-Ken story, ranging from accusations that the outgoing mayor was supported by terrorist-sympathisers to talk of sleeze.
It's hard to judge whether Ken would have won had the Standard not run Boris's campaign for him. I suspect not, given that Livingstone's early promise had given way to arrogance and gesture politics over the past few years. His introduction of the congestion charge was a masterstroke, showing that bold policies could be popular. But his inspired response to the 2005 London bombings proved the high water mark of his mayorality. He soon demonstrated an assumption of being above question or challenge, most famously by refusing to apologise for saying a Jewish newspaper reporter had acted like a concentration camp guard. Ken's fall is a classic example of how even the most popular politicians can become out of touch over time.
I objected to the Standard trying to win London for Boris. Less powerful but just as disturbing was the lead feature in The Guardian's G2 supplement on election day gathering dozens of people to say why Boris shouldn't be mayor. The tone was obvious from the intro by Zoe Williams:
"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 such a decent chap on two such flimsy, trivial, irrelevant, modish pieces of ephemera?"
I take great exception to newspapers telling me how to vote. (Though I didn't have a say in Ken v Boris as we don't live in London.) Especially when the argument is as shallow as this comment by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood:
"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."
Democracy as a sham? Let's just remember that 1,168,738 people voted for Johnson. By contrast, not a single voter had a say when Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair. That strikes me as a more obvious democratic deficit. But I look forward to the day when newspapers shed their arrogant insistence in telling us who to vote for.
PS: back in 1998, I went to a talk about the proposed new London mayor and assembly. I asked Andrew Turnbull, then permanent secretary of the department of environment and future Cabinet Secretary, whether people would be confused between 'his' mayor of London and the ancient office of Lord Mayor of London. Turnbull said he didn't think that would happen. He was obviously right - though the fact the older role was renamed Lord Mayor of the City of London in 2006 suggests the authorities were concerned to avoid confusion even after six years of Ken Livingstone's high profile mayorality.
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