Ken is a socialist. As leader of the GLC he was Socialism Incarnate. He may have mellowed slightly since then, but he is definitely to the left of the current Labour Party. I can only assume that this is why he ran as an independent candidate previously, having disowned Nu-Lab (or perhaps it was mutual!)

The Labour Party are - at the moment - questionably centre-left. I would be very surprised if those who supported Ken in his GLC days are still Labour voters - or if they are, they are reluctant - so you can’t really say that a vote for Boris is a protest vote against Labour.

Anyway, it is easy for us to sit up here and pass judgement on London (although I can at least say that I have lived/studied there); in the same way that many of my English chums say, perplexed, ‘Why does Scotland want independence?’ It’s not something you can easily understand if you don’t live there.

And the Iraq War is actually precisely the sort of thing that I think Labour have been allowed to get away with too easily. It is well known that the Conservatives were in favour of going to war in Iraq. But given the public unease over the issue, I think the fact that had it been the Conservatives in government they would have found it a lot more difficult to claim legitimately that they could go to war. You just need to look at the so-called “decent left” to realise that the fact that a nominally “left wing” party was pursuing the Iraq War made it a damn sight easier for them to legitimise.

For what it’s worth, no, I don’t personally think Boris is a racist, at least not in the commonly understood sense. I do however worry that he’s dangerously complacent about racial issues - either way, it’s surely, at the very least, a legitimate matter of concern for people who have an interest in such issues.

His stance on gay rights is also a worry, both in his written comments and his parliamentary record. Once again, it could be worse - he’s backed some rights, and opposed others - but it’s surely a legitimate area of concern, and based on far more than a few stray quotations. You may not feel yourself that it’s that big a deal, but to dismiss it out of hand is going too far, I’d say.

And I just don’t understand Nosemonkey’s point that it’s somehow wrong to oppose him because he’s a Tory. It’s not based on a personal, I-spit-on-you-Tory-scum animus - it’s simply a disagreement with the policies, premises and beliefs that Conservatism is based on, both traditionally and currently. How is that not a legitimate basis for opposing someone?

To bring in the Iraq war - something that Ken Livingstone opposed, that very many of his supporters opposed, but which Boris enthusiastically backed - as a rationale for not criticising Johnson for his political beliefs is just strange, frankly. I really don’t get where you’re coming from there.

I do think that there’s a chance that Boris might do some good as Mayor - he has some strong libertarian instincts which I approve of, and he might be able to get away with things Ken never could, in a Nixon-goes-to-China sort of way. But the hand-waving, ill-thought-out policies he ran on, and his gimmicky early announcements in the past few days, don’t seem to bode terribly well as of yet. We’ll see.

1) I do find a lot of the “Boris Johnson is only famous for being on Have I Got News for You” arguments completely maddening. I was really upset that in the entire election nobody ever seemed to mention that Ken has been on HIGNIFY exactly the same number of times as Boris has (7): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_I_got_news_for_you

2) The problem I had with Boris was that he wants to spend more money on the Police and more money on Public Transport while simultaniously reducing the collection of tax by reversing the congestion charge. At no point was funding for this sufficiently explained other than the incredibly wooly “efficiency gains”.

I know that the rot would have probably set in during the third term but better the devil you know was my policy.

As for Boris Johnson’s now famous “piccaninnies” article, I do think it is one of those “often cited but seldom read” pieces. I have read the article and it is not obvious to me that Boris Johnson’s intention was to make racist remarks. Rather, when you read the quotes in context, it seems to me that he was lambasting Tony Blair.

When you look at the people who made a fuss about the article in the first place, it is clear that they had an agenda. They were Labour politicians attempting to discredit an ascendant Conservative rising star. It is very interesting that it took them five whole years to register their disgust, and that point in time just so happened to be when Boris Johnson announced his intention to stand for London Mayor. Of course, precisely because of all of this “boo the Tory party is the nasty party” stuff, they knew that a racism charge would stick very easily and would receive little scrutiny. And bingo, it worked.

Even then, Boris Johnson apologised for the offence that his article caused. If only Ken Livingston had the humility to apologise for his mistakes.

And in any case, my real point is that none of that matters - because both parties and people change (if I didn’t believe that, I’d be in favour of the death penalty). What happened in the past is irrelevant - when we vote, we vote for the future.

And the indirect death toll?

(This is not me excusing Tony Blair of anything, by the way. His craven following of the US government agenda is culpable. The thing is it makes us all guilty, too, merely because we are citizens of the country he led.)

“He’s a racist and a homophobe”, they cry. I’ve read those articles Tom refers to, and no - no he’s not (at least, not on the evidence of those pieces). Individual lines taken out of context can appear racist/homophobic, yes - but (especially with the picaninnies piece) what everyone’s doing with Boris is equivalent to accusing Johnathan Switft of advocating eating babies having read a single line of “A Modest Proposal” (not that Boris has ever approached Swift in terms of quality, but still…)

“He’s got no experience of high office!” they shout. What about Tony Blair? He’d never even held a ministerial post before becoming Prime Minister. And in any case, holding high office doesn’t mean you do everything, it means the buck stops with you - the only qualification you need is to be prepared to accept responsibility (something Ken has rarely done - as with his refusal to apologise over the concentration camp guard comments - and which Boris has proved amply by taking the blame for the Liverpool piece in the Spectator, despite not having written it, because as editor it was his ultimate call).

In short, the anti-Boris stuff is all very silly - and at its heart always seems to boil down to the brainwashing of an entire generation. Tories are evil - especially the ones who went to Eton - because Thatcher did some stuff 20-30 years ago. And, obviously, political parties are completely incapable of changing. (Because, after all, 30 years ago it’s not as if Labour were anti-EEC, anti-US and anti-Nuke, is it?)

It’s all so pathetically stupid - especially when you boil it down to the basics of Labour vs Tory in the evil stakes (which seems to be the only option when faced with such trenchant, inflexible, self-righteous, blindly loyal viewpoints):

Death-toll as a direct result of Thatcher’s policies? A few hundred. Death toll as a direct result of the current Labour government? A few hundred thousand.

And yet it’s the Tories who are evil. Christ.