Tuesday 6 May 2008

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth

Perhaps the best thing about Boris Johnson's victory last Thursday/Friday has been the sight of the entire British left wringing their hands in palpable woe. Many of them apparently believe that the election of a candidate they don't like represents a failure of democracy! Perhaps they should elect (or rather, speed up the process of electing) a new people! Anyway, here is a brief catalogue of some of my favourite lefty whines:

We start at JuliaM's new blog, where she has found three examples of mournful pieces by Guardian hacks at the paper's "Comment is Free" site. John Harris's "Enter the Jester" is particularly amusing:
...one can surely envisage the idea of London as the ultimate switched-on metropolis - the political class's beloved "world city" - beginning to wilt...corks are already popping in the home of such neo-Thatcherites as George Osborne, William Hague and Liam Fox. The chances of a David Cameron government taking power and laying waste to what remains of the welfare state and the public sector ethos are now all the greater.
Other schadenfreude-inducing whinings include, from the blog Stumbling Sonata, the revelation that it was all those damn lower middle class suburbanites who did it. If only the right to vote were restricted to those who could be trusted to use it properly (a category that is apparently composed primarily of the author's friends and acquaintances) then that nice Mr Livingstone would still be in charge!
I simply cannot get my head around the fact that so many people voted for that shameless, bumbling moron. I have not met a single person who lives in central London who wanted Boris for Mayor so I can only conclude that the bored suburban masses all came out of the woodwork to provide themselves with four years’ entertainment at the cost of the capital. This is what a nation that watched Big Brother will do.
Yes, it's all TV's fault!

Meanwhile, the author of the evidently rather unsuccessful "Stop Boris" blog warns that Johnson's victory will bring out the violent racist in all of us:
With Boris as Mayor and the BNP on the Assembly, we could also see race-hate crime on the increase in the capital for the first time in many years, following years of the capital bucking the national trend with a fall, versus a rise elsewhere.
We could indeed see racist crime rise in London. We could also see the sun darken at noonday (I'm sure many leftists fully expect it to). However, there is no evidence to suggest that the election of people that the left don't like will bring either scenario about.

In any event, as I've pointed out many times before, most racist crime is targeted against white people. So is Mr Stop Boris in fact arguing that all those tolerant minorities will now be going out beating up white people for having the temerity to vote for Boris Johnson or the BNP?

On the subject of the BNP, it has to be said that, owing to the misery engendered by Johnson's victory, Richard Barnbrook's election to the London Assembly has received less attention than it might otherwise have done. But it did serve to further depress the spirits of many leftists. Take this, from the Daily Mirror's political correspondent, James Lyons:
And things look even worse. Forget Labour's May Day mauling and Boris's triumph in London its [sic] another result in the capital that has me holding my head in my hands.

Personally, I suspect that it is not in his hands that Mr Lyons has placed his head...

Richard Barnbrook is the new British National Party member on the London Assembly after the odious far-right party managed to get more than 5 per cent of the vote. They also picked up council seats in other parts of the country.

I met the charming Mr Barnbrook and his travelling circus of slack-jawed goons during the 2005 general election and the idea that anyone could vote for them fills me with horror.
And, of course, pompous lefty hacks being "filled with horror" (as opposed to their normal state of being 'full of shit') is a prospect just too dreadful to contemplate. Remember James Lyons next time you're voting: you wouldn't want to upset him, would you?

But my very favourite display of leftist rationality and common sense came in a comment on
this Times article about Mr Barnbrook's election:

Boris as Mayor and the BNP on the Assembly. This is the worst night London has seen since the Blitz.

Steven Morrison, Streatham, London, UK

Nothing like keeping a sense of perspective, is there?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

.
With Boris, the 'Asian Yooths' will not be allowed to get away with acts of racial and religious hatred as much anymore.

I'd say this is worth a 2nd case of champagne, but probably not a third. Boris has said that "Islam is the problem...", so he's got that going for him too.

Boris may be a buffoon, but at least he's not a communist one.

Bloody good news! Praise the Lord! Thank God! There is hope for Londonistan. What will Red Ken do next?

:)
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
elect a communist

someone who will work full-time
to destroy your country

.
http://haltterrorism.com

FREE Absurd Thoughts About God eBook

:)

.

Anonymous said...

"...the author of the evidently rather unsuccessful "Stop Boris"..."

I hope, for his sake, he had the forethought to reserve the name 'stopborisnexttime'... :)

Anonymous said...

"This is the worst night London has seen since the Blitz"

I suspect that, had he been born then, Mr Morrison from Streatham would have been one of the lefties cheering on Germany until the morning of 22 June 1941.

Anonymous said...

There's an idea I have been toying with, and it keeps coming back into my mind.

Why do we have to beg the goverment for a referendum? What resources would it take to put together a voluntary referendum? It wouldn't be legally binding, but it would have a salutory effect on those MPs who have voted to silence the public. We could appeal for volunteer vote counters and invigilators for every ward. And people to deliver a voting slip to everyone on the electoral register. One simple question- Should the UK accept the Lisbon Treaty, yes or no.

I think if this idea ever got off the ground, the government would try to stop us doing it. And that, in itself, is a good reason for doing it.

Monty

Anonymous said...

umbongo

Having just finished Francis Beckett's 'Stalin's British Victims' and seen the contortions the CPGB worked themselves into while Uncle Joe was torturing and shooting their kith and kin, I think you have a point.

GW said...

Had Red Ken been reelected, I think it would have been the nail in the UK's coffin. Instead, Labour gets shredded and Gordon is in the cross hairs. Can't count you Brits out. Do love the whining by the way, its what the left does best when they don't get their way. Great post. Linked.
http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2008/05/interesting-posts-from-around-web-8-may.html

Fulham Reactionary said...

USpace:

While Johnson is certainly an improvement over Livingstone, I don't imagine that his election will have much impact on the behaviour of "Asian Youths". For a start, even if he had the inclination to do something about their conduct (which I doubt), he wouldn't be able to, since the Mayor of London does not have any control over the police.

Monty:

I suspect you might have posted your comment on the wrong thread - the post about the EU referendum is below this one.

Your idea of having a private referendum is quite good, and has been suggested before (by the Tory peer, Lord Young, for example). Indeed, a couple of villages in some parts of the country have held local referenda. If the money and organisation could be put in place it might be worth trying, although I suspect that the government would just ignore the result anyway.

GW:

Thanks for the link!

Anonymous said...

Wow, the Mayor of London has no control over the Police in his own city. That's a bad law that should be changed. Thanks for the link back.

:)

absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
police should not do their jobs
.