The Election Looms

Last Friday a brochure dropped through the letterbox outlining all the candidates in the forthcoming election.

Yikes. I didn’t realise so many of them are so retrogressive – and I don’t mean Boris Johnson! Really, everyone should vote for someone vaguely respectable, if only to keep some of the dire types out of City Hall.

I’ve watched several of the tv debates and Boris has been quite effective, if not quite his usual charming witty self. He seems to have spent some time in a Cameroonian re-education centre.

Brian Paddick has tried hard but his lack of political expertise has damaged him: I feel he was too eager in debates, and often sank to quite coarse personal attacks, which is an off-putting characteristic.

Which leaves Ken. I feel that he won all the debates I watched – he came across well (relaxed, in command, never defensive) and seemed more on top of detail than the others. Boris’s bendy-bus gimmick was a terrible fiasco.

I’m an extremely counter-cultural voter; I always vote for parties when they are about to lose. Now everyone has gone off Labour I will probably vote for them. I can’t say however that I will cry terribly if Boris wins: it will at the very least be interesting to see what he does. Also, it is true that three terms may well be too much for any individual.