Dear all,
Thursday the 5th of May is the London mayoral election, and also the start of the city’s post-Boris era. The theatrical, mop-haired Boris Johnson, (journalist, MP, cyclist, eccentric) was a colourful mayor who through his two terms delighted the press, tourists and spectators with his antics. He appeared as such a big, bungling, utterly cuddly teddy bear that often one even forgot he was a Tory.
And before Boris there was Ken: ‘Red Ken’, Ken Livingstone, the man who had once (as leader of the GLC) proved such a left wing nuisance to the Thatcher government. Ken Livingstone was part of London’s successful Olympic bid, was mayor at the time of the 7/7 terror attacks on London in 2005 as well as at the time of the 9/11 attacks on US targets. Ken may have had an irritating voice but he too was a colourful character, and one with a strong personality.
But the candidates who Londoners now have to choose a new mayor from, are a strangely uninteresting lot. The front runners are said to be the Tories’ candidate Zac Goldsmith and the Labour candidate Sadiq Khan. Goldsmith is the Conservative MP for the leafy, affluent suburb of Richmond (whereas Khan is the Labour MP for Tooting. Apart from them you have also have a Lib Dem woman candidate Caroline Pidgeon (who has scary eyes and a pigeon-like face) who has been a London Assembly member for many years and generally seems to talk a lot of sense. The maverick, rabble-rousing George Galloway is a candidate too but the media treats him as a fringe candidate. The UKIP candidate is gay and very English, and the Green Party candidate is blonde and earnest.
But one thing that has really stood out about the candidates is their colourlessness. This was particularly evident in the first mayoral debate in which the five main party candidates (Labour, Tory, Green, Lib Dems and UKIP) took part. Everybody was unimpressive. Zac was the best looking, a tall, graceful Eton-educated golden boy, with a lovely polite voice but nothing interesting to say. Sadiq Khan came across as fairly hyper but also quite annoying in the way he wouldn’t give a straight answer to a direct question. He and Zac also kept getting into pointless little altercations which really did nothing for their credibility. The other three tried to impress with a balance of gravitas and common sense but overall they were all quite bland.
People on Twitter joked that the most impressive person in the debate was the moderator, journalist Andrew Neil. Also on Twitter, George Galloway’s young, Indonesian wife Gayatri expressed outrage at the BBC for not inviting her husband on to the debate.
The debate was a yawn, but so far polls have claimed that it looks as if Khan is in the lead. Khan, who is the son of immigrant parents from Pakistan, was a human rights lawyer before his parliamentary career took off. What intrigues me is how his being a Muslim will impact on his chances. In the wake of terror attacks on Paris and Brussels and revelations of ‘home-grown terrorism’ in Europe and the UK, will some degree of fear, some form of Islamophia, cut into his vote bank? Or will the threat come from within the Muslim community, from those who denounce him for his progressive stance on issues like same sex marriage and various other freedoms?
There’s a real irony and a horrible reality here: to right-white voters he is a dangerous, terrorist sympathising Muslim while to many (regressive) Muslims he is just not Muslim enough. It’s unclear whose voice will become louder -- that of those who insist he has links with fundos and militants or those who denounce him for his progressive outlook and humanist stance.
Being moderate is not a popular option…
Best wishes