You can’t elect Boris Johnson as mayor just because he hasn’t ‘gaffed’.

It seems to me, looking at the press converage on the campaign for London Mayor, a large amount of attention is paid to Johnson and whether or not he has commited any ‘gaffes’ yet. And the fact that he hasn’t on a massive scale – like offending all of Liverpool – seems to be a justifier for him becoming Mayor of London, as if ‘not making gaffes’ was the number one quality needed when running a team of 109,000 people, with an £11billion budget, presiding over a city of ten million people that is one of the most ethnically diverse in the world.

A lot of people also seem to be passing over his racially insensitive comments about black people being ‘picannies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ in the past. While I don’t actually believe Johnson is a racist per se, he’s obviously racially insensitive to be writing such articles in the first place. He seems to believe that by saying his ancestor was a Turkish muslim who knew the Qur’an by heart, therefore he, Boris Johnson, could not possibly be anti-Muslim, despite saying ‘the problem is Islam’ and that Islamaphobia is a natural reaction to any non-Muslim who reads the Qur’an. The same Qur’an his ancestor knew by heart that supposedly proves he isn’t anti-Islam. By the same logic Adolf Hitler could not possibly be called a ‘anti-semitic’ because his own grandmother was Jewish. It’s such a feeble argument from someone who is meant to be such a clever man.

Similarly, he has tried to pass off his comments about civil partnerships – where he suggested that if two men can marry there is no reason why three men, or indeed three men and a dog, could not also marry – as a message of ‘tolerance’. How?! How is that a message of tolerance, comparing two men in a civil partnership to two men and a dog? Despite making various vitriolic comments about the scrapping of Section 28, which he supported, he didn’t even understand what it was.

There isn’t actually any aspect of his campaign that is unique or original in it’s vision for London. His ‘big’ centrepiece, is a pledge to get rid of bendy buses, which has turned into a complete farce as he insisted it would cost £8 million, then it turned out that independent figures by TfL showed it would actually be around £110 million. Johnson and his team denied this completely saying it was a fix and that they were trying to side with Ken Livingstone. Yet when an undercover Livingstone supporter asked Johnson how much the buses would cost (and filmed it), Johnson replied ‘about £100 million’. Once he’d been found out he has now come out with a proper set of figures. Now he tries to claim that he has been ‘regularly’ saying £100 million, which is an outright lie. He only says it now because he’s been found out.

It’s the same with him refusing to name who he’d had in his team, expecting people to vote for him alone with no idea of who he’d have with him running the capital city of England. Then, when his poll ratings start to slide, suddenly he starts naming ‘parts’ of his team, despite explicitly saying he wouldn’t do so before the election.

So you can see, even in a campaign where he’s been muffled by Lynton Crosby, he has still made the odd gaffe. Like saying he’s want to do an online referendum on allowing clubs and pubs to be smoking areas if he was Mayor. Then retracting it and blaming the Sun for not printing ‘If I had my way’, which supposedly is an indication of his knowledge that it would be beyond the remit of the Mayor of London. But actually look at the statement, and even if he had his way, which thank god in this case he won’t, why an ‘online referendum’? It makes no sense whatsoever, just like the Tory idea that every petition on the government website that reaches 100,000 signatures would be debated in the House of Commons, it would be completely open to hijacking from special interest groups. We’d see our elected representatives debating the merits of Jeremy Clarkson as Prime Minister (Better than Cameron, worse than Harry Hill). An online referendum to decide policy would be shambolic, unrepresentative and humiliating for London’s reputation as a world leader for progressive politics.

He also promised to do a deal with the union workers for the Tube, to stop them having the ability to strike, something the unions laughed off and said they would never do.

I believe the point of these nonsense promises, is not that he intends to follow them through, but because it puts him on the side of Londoners, affected by tube strikes and the like, and in the end he hopes that will be enough to see him through and be elected Mayor, even though he either has no intention or in fact cannot actually do what he pledges. Then, when he cannot do them, he can blame central Government for not letting him.

The one time Boris Johnson has had a chance to make an impression on a world leader, was at the Conservative conference where he gave a speech. It is a classic example of how the right-wing press fawn over him, and the reality. Watching his speech via live video-link was the person due to speak immediately after him. It was the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. While watching Boris speak, Arnie (as I’ll call him), lent over to his advisors and said ‘Who is this guy? He’s fumbling all over the place’, to which his advisors burst out laughing. Yet parts of the press ran with headlines like ‘Boris Johnson upstages Arnie’.

So, just to make clear, the one time Boris has spoken in front of a world leader, he thought he was an idiot. Surely this brings into doubt his ability to act as an ambassador to London, where it necessitates travelling across the world, selling London as an investment centre and a place to do business?

Ultimately, if you want a clear picture of Boris Johnson and his suitability to run for Mayor of London, you need look no further than the Conservative party. He wasn’t David Cameron’s first choice, that was supposedly the right-wing radio talkshow host, Nick Ferrari. He wasn’t even his second choice. That was Greg Dyke, then there was another DJ, Mike Read. It’s commonly known that Boris Johnson was actually David Cameron’s last choice for London mayor. If you look at the words Cameron uses when discussing Johnson, it gives you a precise idea of what he expected when he chose Johnson: He might even win it. If David Cameron really thought Boris Johnson was a top tier politician, then why did he sack him from the Conservative front bench when he was Shadow Higher Education Minister?

Whoops, gotta own up to a little error here. Turns out he resigned the post to concentrate on running for Mayor. He resigned it in July 07, though by all accounts was still being accosted by George Osbourne in the new year because he wasn’t taking it seriously. He was sacked from his last shadow cabinet position because he lied about having an affair with a journalist.

David Cameron chose Boris Johnson with no expectation of him winning, it was like a political hospital pass. Except in the mean time Labour have taken a hammering in the polls and the right-wing press have run a constant campaign against Ken Livingstone, particularly the Evening Standard newspaper and the Channel 4 ‘documentary’ Dispatches, which is generally considered by knowledgeable political commentators to be a pathetic anti-politics hack job. Now the Tories are taking it seriously, as you can see because Johnson has been banned from drinking until after the election. It creates the idea that they’re trying to fool the public into not seeing the real Boris Johnson. How are people going to feel if he starts drinking after the election, when elected, and people realise what they’re stuck with for the next four years? They won’t be thanking the Conservative party that’s for sure.

This also tells you something about the Conservative party under David Cameron. Cameron, who is trying, with some success, to reposition the Tories as the party of the NHS, Education, Public Services and all the rest of it, and leave behind the image of the Tories being the ‘Nasty Party’, has chosen as a man to represent his party for London Mayor, someone who refered to black people as having ‘picannies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’, explained the joy of gutting a live deer and seeing it involuntarily empty its bowels, described South Africa as the ‘tyranny of black rule’, said ‘Islam is the problem’, offended the entire city of Liverpool with his insensitive comments over the Ken Bigley kidnapping, collaborated with someone to have a journalist beaten up and who has a long history of being a climate change-sceptic.

Yet by addressing each of these issues with weak, half-hearted and often nonsensical explanations, he seems to be getting away with it. The way some parts of the press tell it, we should be considering electing this man because he hasn’t made any ‘gaffes’ in his election campaign.

It’s not his election campaign I’m worried about. It’s his long and very public list of gaffes, insults and incompetences from the past ten years that worries me.