The Buffoon Wins

After second preference votes were taken into account, Boris Johnson has been declared Mayor of London, defeating Ken Livingstone by 53% to 47% which was roughly what YouGov predicted.

The other day I heard someone say of the now newly elected Mayor of London that behind the thin veneer of a buffoon lies… a buffoon.

Yet, Simon Heffer writing in the Telegraph on Tuesday believes that behind the clever façade of a buffoon lies a calculating and ruthlessly ambitious individual. He says of Boris:

I want to dismiss a prejudice about Mr Johnson, and I do so as one who has known him for the past 20 years. It is that he is a buffoon. He isn’t. The act is calculated and it has required serious application and timing of the sort of which only a clever man is capable.

Whether or not the ambitious Mr Johnson actually makes a good go of being Mayor is something else entirely – but for the moment it doesn’t really matter. He won and that’s all that counts – that, and rather pleasingly Ken Livingstone has finally been ditched.

Elsewhere around the country the Conservatives have made substantial gains in local elections and the Labour party equally substantial loses. Whether these results show an increase in support for the Conservatives or people simply not turning out to vote Labour will be both interesting and important.

In comparison and of very little importance, the chattering metropolitan classes in the media have already begun their usual pointless speculation on whether these results, if reflected at a general election, would give the Conservatives power and a working majority. The point is of course that these results would not be reflected at a general election (though they may show general trends) as they were undertaken in completely different circumstances. However, oblivious as ever in their small bubble, the media still insist on filling column inches with such drivel because they can find nothing else meaningful to write about.

The bottom line is that despite seemingly good recent election results our man Dave still has a long way to go before he can even hope of being Prime Minister.

Boris 4 London

Voting in the London Mayoral elections is now well under way. Those ever fickle polls (that usually influence rather than convey public opinion) are showing a reasonable lead for Boris Johnson.

Whether or not he wins is another matter entirely of course, though I expect he will. Just. The tide is now noticeably turning against Labour and against Ken.

Whether a Boris win is a good thing for either London or this country is debatable though. As Peregrine Worsthorne said in the First Post today of Boris Johnson, ‘take away the gags and jokes and nothing much is left’. Much the same could be said of the elitist metropolitan classes that now infect the majority of political institutions and parties in this country.

Still, at the end of the day, sum zero Boris is more positive than Ken Livingstone who languishes in complete negativity on almost all fronts; whether he is vocally supporting brutal communist regimes in Cuba or Venezuela or comparing a Jewish journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard.

Thankfully since I do not live in London and will not be voting in these elections, I will not be affected by its result (directly anyway) and can rest with a clear conscious tonight.

Engineering The Vote

Despite the title this article does not concern the ongoing elections saga throughout Zimbabwe in which President Robert Mugabe may attempt to rig the result in a desperate effort to cling onto power for another consecutive term.

No, unfortunately this post once again concerns the Conservative MEP selections and the continuing discontent being voiced by party members over its rules and procedure.

This dissatisfaction has rumbled on for over a year since the central party hierarchy proclaimed that incumbent MEPs would automatically top any selection list and the top ranking woman in any vote would automatically receive preferential treatment.

Since the selection count on Friday the Conservative party has bowed to pressure and publicly released the figures by which candidates were ranked and selected. The results show that despite a number of women receiving fewer votes than their equivalent male candidates, they were still ranked more highly in the final process. Unfair? Yes. Unexpected? No.

Yet, in a few regions female candidates such as Jacqueline Foster and Anthea McIntyre topped their respective ballots on their own merit without it would seem any required or unwanted intervention. These results therefore prove that women, regardless of their gender, can outperform male candidates in a vote if they are deserving.

Click here to continue reading the article…

Full South West Result

The result for the South West MEP Selections is as follows: 1) Giles Chichester MEP, 2) Julie Girling, 3) Ashley Fox, 4) Michael Dolley, 5) Don Collier and 6) Zehra Zaidi.

It looks as though my prediction of the final vote was almost completely wrong. Oh well, what do I know? Results from the other EU electoral regions around Britain can be found at ConservativeHome in a running update.

Despite changes in the number of MEPs the South West elects (and I use the term ‘elects’ very loosely) being reduced from seven to six, it is almost guaranteed that Giles Chichester and Julie Girling will be elected in 2009 to serve as MEPs in Brussels. However, Ashley Fox’s expenses paid first class ticket on the Euro-star is not quite so assured.

At the European elections in 2004, UKIP increased their share of the vote by 12% when compared with the result from 1999. With an ever growing mood of discontent directed towards our own self-serving Government, Parliament and the European Union, there is every chance that UKIP will poll even more strongly at the next EU elections in 2009.

Nick Webb has reminded me that depending upon overall turnout and how well other parties such as the Greens and UKIP poll, it may only take as little as an increase of 600 votes per Parliamentary constituency within the South West to win a third Conservative MEP. In the current political climate this is of course more than achievable.