TMP Online

TMP editor, Chuka Umunna, explores Boris Johnson’s candidacy to become Mayor of London.

Finally the circus act which is Boris Johnson is being subjected to the scrutiny that comes with running for Mayor of arguably the world’s most multicultural city. People are beginning to look behind the mask of the clown.

Over the weekend the spotlight has been put on what we already knew but have forgotten in the midst of the “Have I Got News For You” appearances, alleged extra marital dalliances and musings on the “vicarious victimhood” of Liverpudlians – Boris is so far to the right of his party that his views would make even the driest Thatcherite blush.

His writings on race and Black people reveal the mindset of an old colonialist – the scruffy, public school educated, boat-shoe clad type that talks fondly of their family’s time in “Keeenyaa”, drinking, shooting and the rest, whilst the “nice little people” there tended to their every want and need.

In 2002 here he is on Tony Blair’s then imminent visit to the Democratic of Republic of Congo: “no doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.” In 2003 he is reported cheerily remarking to Swedish Unicef workers and their black driver in Uganda, “right, let’s go and look at some more piccaninnies”. These are just a few snippets but you get the flavour.

Put in this context David Cameron’s keenness for Boris to run is puzzling to say the least. Cameron has sought to move his party to the centre ground, to look like a modern, grown up party at ease with the world and the cultural changes – racial or otherwise – which have occurred since the 1950s. Boris clearly is not.

Boris running for Mayor would have been an attractive proposition to his leader because, though he may be seen as somewhat of a Westminster village idiot, at least people know him. He has the distinction of being a Conservative politician and celebrity in one – a rare commodity.

Cameron has been already been accused of being all spin and no substance, and people have cited Boris running as another example of this. But it is not an accusation that deserves to be made in this case.

There is plenty of substance to Boris, which even a cursory reading of his pieces in the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator demonstrate. The problem is that the substance in this instance is just plain wrong if your aim is to win the Mayoralty of a city, a third of whose population is made up of ethnic minorities for whom your candidate has shown wanton disrespect.