Salient

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

By The Tory and The Marxist | 12 May, 2008

“It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.” - Daily Telegraph, 10 January 2002

Boris Johnson’s main assets are an unruly intellectual charm, a healthy contempt for ethnic minorities and gay marriage, and a habit of saying vaguely offensive (and thus refreshingly funny) things on television. He regards the Koran to be hate speech, and openly nicked a cigar case, belonging to Saddam’s deputy PM Tariq Aziz, from the rubble of Baghdad. See? He visits Baghdad. What a badass scruffy strawhaired motherfucker. He even jogs in a gangsta bandana to prove how badass he is.

“The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.” - The Spectator, 2 February 2002

I see Boris as a Lange figure, because he’s fat, funny and kind of insane. Whereas I see Ken Livingstone as more of a Muldoon figure, because he’s domineering and he makes a lot of enemies. Red Ken, with his multiculturalism and the sheer fuckwittery that made him think hosting the dictator Chavez was a good idea. Why on earth was the Mayor of a city, whose two responsibilities are the transport system and metropolitan police, enacting his own foreign policy? Ludicrous. Boris, on the other hand, with his healthy disregard for those without a proper accent, provides the wit and zest required for a financial capital. Yays.

“Yes, cannabis is dangerous, but no more than other perfectly legal drugs. It’s time for a rethink, and the Tory party - the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth - is where it’s happening.” - Daily Telegraph, 12 July 2001

Yours Sincerely, Huggable Tory.

“I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn’t go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar.” - Evening Standard, 17 October 2005

Dear Boris, you are a wanker. You’ve removed from power the only great, truly insane socialist politician in England (because clearly there are still batshit insane socialist leaders around the world). Your only claim to fame is a failed attempt at snorting cocaine. When I think of Eton, I think of you, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Privileged, clever, utterly insubstantial.

Old Ken managed to do the impossible in his two terms as the first Mayor of London: he fixed its transport system. Before his reign, navigating public transport from one end of the city to the other would take hours. Ken discovered that much of the delay came from a simple stupid mistake: if a bus was scheduled to arrive at 9am, the onward train would be scheduled to leave at 9am, and if the bus was a minute late the commuters would have to wait for the next train. By spreading these times 10 minutes apart, Ken had suddenly allowed each trip of each journey to connect to every other, so that it now takes forty minutes to make the cross-city trip. Even on the 8 July 2005, the day after suicide bombers had killed 52 public transport commuters.

Which brings us to the main reason you’re a dick – you’re casually racist. Because you’re a sheltered toff. You think you can navigate the fractured city’s bubbling racial tensions the way understanding Ken has? Either understand that your words are a welcome to bombland, or fuck off.

Yours Sincerely, Wannabe Marxist.