Andrew Gilligan has attempted to land a few tired punches on ‘da Left’ in today’s Evening Standard. After admitting that it “hasn’t been a good week for Boris“, he writes that the true danger is to ‘anti-Boris forces‘, or “Ken Livingstone groupies” as he charmingly dubs them elsewhere. It seems that scrutinisers of the administration are petty, vindictive and spiteful, and should shut the hell up when the Mayor makes a mistake.
The problem is that the article itself is woefully incompetent – sloppily written and uninformed. Therefore, we thought that we could turn his ‘advice’ on it’s head. Forgive the protracted and scattershot approach, but it’s sad to see a fine journalist flailing about so miserably.
“…there was that car crash on the Today programme, when London’s new First Citizen didn’t seem to have read the memorandum on which he was being questioned – a performance symptomatic, it is alleged, of a broader carelessness about boring-but-important details, such as appointments, salaries, and costs.”
Of course, it wasn’t the case that Boris ‘didn’t seem to have read‘ the memorandum, but that he vocally doubted that it even existed. And the memorandum wasn’t a detail, it was the focus of the interview and is an important part of Olympic finance strategy.
“And a little earlier, there was the row about the downgrading of the anti-racist element of the Rise festival.”
Here, I must rise to defend the Mayor. Boris is entirely innocent of the charge of changing the theme; he wasn’t even aware of the decision.
“Though you’d never know it from the Ken GLA, the white working class remains the largest single group in the city – something of which it reminded us on election day, by voting almost as one for Boris. He won two-thirds of the wards in Barking and Dagenham, truly astonishing for a Tory.”
Despite my initial confusion, Gilligan is right on this point. What he selectively omits, however, is that, overall, Livingstone won more votes than Johnson in the Barking and Dagenham borough. Saying, then, that the white working class ‘voted almost as one for Boris‘ is to lie.
“Since his election, Johnson has assembled a senior team significantly more “inclusive” and “diverse” than anything Livingstone managed. At least five of his top appointees are gay. Three are from ethnic minorities.”
Obviously, inclusivity is excellent, but as a hymn to ‘Boris’’s fair-mindedness this resembles the “some of my best friends” gambit. However, the Mayor, to his credit, has not drawn attention to this area.
“In his behaviour (not least towards those who oppose him) Boris has struck a rather attractively liberal note. Ken would have made tedious capital from those anti drink-ban demonstrators who made such a mess on the Tube. Boris sounded rather understanding about them.”
But crafty old Ken escaped this scenario by not banning drinking on the tube.
“And over the changes to the Rise festival, the heartbreaking news for the London Left is that beyond the usualsuspect participants, such as National Assembly Against Racism (secretary: Lee Jasper) and the Cuba Solidarity Campaign (what were they doing at an anti-racist event, by the way?)..”
As two can deploy the faintly pathetic association fallacy, why is a journalist part-paid by the Iranian government castigating the CSC?
“Rise-type events had a purpose in the Eighties, when antiracism needed to be made fashionable. But that battle won, it is not nowadays clear how a bunch of overwhelmingly white people going to a pop concert advances any cause beyond the participants’ own feeling of righteousness.”
One can almost hear Gilligan’s chortling emanating from the page. “Anti-Racism? That’s so the-decade-before-last!”
Still, when one breaks out of one’s comfy cocoon, one might see that Richard Barnbrook was elected to the Assembly, with his party garnering 5% of the vote, in the context of rising racist crime, and one might wonder “Gee, shouldn’t we be doing something about this?”
“But London hasn’t collapsed since Johnson took over”
Such searing insight…
“the voters, at least for now, don’t seem to be judging him on the criterion of whether he can produce the usual robot-speak on Today.”
Maybe not, but if a Mayor shows himself to be unaware of his own policy, one might wonder where else his knowledge is deficient. If he shows himself to be unaware of his policy on multiple occasions then one might wonder ‘is this true for other issues?’ or even ‘what the hell is going on?’
Boris promised transparency, and therefore it is quite reasonable to highlight or identify mistakes and distortions, either obvious or obscured.
“And the first strategic decision that Labour must make is, of course, to deal with the most obvious symbol of the old message: the old Mayor. Ken’s hanging around City Hall like a lost dog is sad and embarrassing and has the whole of political London sniggering behind its hands. It symbolises his own, and his party’s, inability to come to terms with defeat. If it is to recover, Labour has to shut Ken out of the building and change all the locks.”
And have you heard? He’s one of those filthy reds as well!
Dave Hill has more…
(Hat-tip to Mr Fingers for pointing me towards ward breakdowns)
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13 responses so far ↓
Do you think Gilligan realises that Ken isn’t Mayor any more? I’m starting to wonder because he just can’t stop banging on about him.
It must be difficult for him though, what with the man he championed for Mayor being so visibly unable to do the job. And to have other people scrutinising the Mayor of a London on a daily basis must be hard for a man who until recently was doing exactly the same thing.
In the meantime it seems that he is trying to transform himself into yet another one of Boris’s advisers. Have you seen the new banner he has above his articles: ‘Boris’s Agenda’ as if it was him not Boris who was running London. Although on second thoughts, maybe he’s on to something.
Hehe.
I think that the consistent references to Ken serve to appease the targeted readership. They may not be enamoured with ‘Boris’’s administration, but set against Commie Ken and the Covetous Cronies he’s a veritable knight.
Gilligan is more interesting, as he did genuinely interesting work previous to his screeds in the Standard. When you remove the inspiration, however, all that writers have is bile.
Do you know of a link that substantiates the Barking and Dagenham claim, or was it just improvisation?
I have no idea how he worked out those figures. In the City and East constituency in which B+D is a big part, Livingstone got 52% of the vote and Boris got 27%. Given that, his claim that two thirds of the wards in B+D voted for Boris sounds completely bonkers. Do you think he just made it up?
Well, unless he’s got hold of inaccessible information, there are two possibilities. Either he’s got a dreadful memory/accepted anecdotal information or he’s made it up.
So, Andrew Gilligan – Ignorant or Liar?
Do I have to choose?
No, it was a probably ‘mistake’. Or maybe even an ‘administrative error’.
Well, you can access ward by ward vote counts on a Borough basis. I know because I have the figures for Tower Hamlets, that was provided by our local Labour Party office. In theory, Gilligan could have done this. That information does exist.
Thanks Mr Fingers.
I found the ward information, and it seems that Gilligan’s statement that two thirds of the wards voted for Boris is correct. However, as I had suspected this is deliberately misleading. Because by stating that Boris ‘won two thirds of the wards’ would suggest to most people that the majority of people in B+D voted for Boris. This was not the case. Overall the majority of voters in B+D voted for Ken. Of course Gilligan somehow forgot to mention that bit.
Thanks, Mr Fingers, I wasn’t aware that there were ward breakdowns online, and have edited the post.
To say that the white working class voted ‘almost as one’ for Boris is still shamelessly dishonest, though.
I’m glad we’ve established that Gilligan is still a prick.
Keep up the good work.
Heh, to be fair, if he hadn’t been quite so selective with his information then I’d have had to be rather more apologetic. It was silly of me not to research the wards claim further.
“Rise-type events had a purpose in the Eighties, when antiracism needed to be made fashionable” – fashionable? Antiracism? If ‘fasionable/unfashionable’ really is Gilligan’s frame of reference on racism as a social phenomenon, and on the ongoing need to undermine it, then he really has lost whatever dwindling credibility he may once have had.
Indeed – it’s an appeal to ridicule that makes him look quite startlingly ridiculous.