Not in the sense that he's been particularly good, it's just his sheer level of novelty makes anyone else seem impossibly bland. It's tough for even a good politician to follow Boris in the same way that it's tough for The London Symphony Orchestra to follow 'The man who can scratch his back with his dick'; the audience probably don't want to watch anything else, in fact they need a break to think about what they've just witnessed.
Either way, someone will have to fill the hole left by the giant display-only teddy bear, and on Friday The Conservatives announced their London mayoral election candidate: Zac Goldsmith. Labour apparently chose theirs a while ago when I wasn't paying attention (Sadiq Khan), so for the first time we can assess the match-up between the likely front-runners.
Conservatives:
Zac Goldsmith, MP for Richmond
Park.
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| Photo courtesy of ominous-close-ups.co.uk |
Clumsy, unsubtle parody of every Tory stereotype ever, Zac Goldsmith is the son of a billionaire tycoon and went to Eton. He also attended 'The Cambridge Centre for Sixth Form Studies', which I think is what The Grafton is now. Chances are he has such a removed perspective on money that he has to Google the price of milk, probably via the following searches:
'how much is pint of milk'
'is 45p a lot'
'where can I buy 45p coin'
'viola teacher-student porn'*
*He'd need a break, and this is just what I imagine he's into.
Policy-wise, he's keen on environmental issues, and opposes a third runway (hasn't said anything about a fourth or fifth one though, so watch out); he also wants to build 200,000 houses during his first term, and as he lives in Richmond they'll presumably be sweeeeet.
Perhaps the most eye-catching fact about Goldsmith, though, is that he recently divorced a woman genuinely called Sheherazade Ventura-Bentley, who sounds like both the love interest in a straight to DVD Austin Powers spin-off, and an £8000 aftershave you'd find in the duty-free catalogue on an Emirates flight ('smell like the void in your life'). That said, without its preposterous double-barreled appendix, 'Sheherazade' actually teeters between being unfathomably posh and unfathomably working-class, something I don't think any name has achieved before. It's enough to give Katie Hopkins an aneurysm, meaning we should probably call every child born in this country Sheherazade until Hopkins explodes in a mushroom-cloud of flesh and whatever her species has instead of blood.
(Of course the real worry would be that, if Katie Hopkins were destroyed, they'd just build another, which to our surprise would be fully operational long before it appeared to be finished. However, we'd most likely be able to destroy The Second Katie Hopkins using a pretty similar method to the first.)
To summarise, Goldsmith is out of touch but has some reasonable policies, and I am easily distracted. Moving on.
Labour:
Sadiq Khan, MP for Tooting.
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| Photo courtesy of peoplenearlyastallasbigben.com |
Sadiq Khan has described himself as Mr London, implying he thinks you have to change your name to wherever it is you live: an embarrassing start. That said, he does seem to fit the Londoner bill pretty damn well. The son of a bus driver, raised in a council flat, and he's lived in the capital all his life - he just needs to have been in a gang of musical pick-pockets to complete the set.
As for policy, Khan has responded to Goldsmith's green-focus by saying he'll 'plant a million trees', which sounds like something an 8 year old would suggest when asked how his school could 'make the playground better'. He's also keen on housing, and wants Londoners to have 'first dibs' on homes. I don't know what a dib is, but I think it's something technical to do with rent - either way it's good to see he's not dumbing down.
Interestingly, Khan was the 'mastermind' behind Ed Miliband's successful Labour leadership campaign, and guiding Ed Miliband to victory is a bit like guiding a new-born goat through one of the harder levels on CBBC's Raven, so it bodes well for him. He's a good choice for Labour.
The
Battle
It's someone's attempt to make David Cameron on The Sims 3 versus how José Mourinho would look in one of my less vivid dreams, and I'm excited.
However, what puzzles me is who the undecided voters will be. I know they exist, but I just can't picture them. What kind of person can't choose between a candidate so incredibly Tory and a candidate so incredibly Labour? I can only imagine it's someone who sits exactly half way between them. Liz: a 43 year old daughter of a billionaire chimney sweep who grew up in a council house she inherited before going to Eton to study lorry driving. Liz is going to decide the election. Alone.
No pressure, Liz.
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