It is easy to write off Boris Johnson as a buffoon. There is a real danger he will be running London, a city of 7½ million people in a couple of months time. Make sure Johnson is not made London’s Mayor in the May 1st elections. As Compass points out, “his buffoonery conceals a hard line right wing set of views – a type of Norman Tebbitt in clown’s uniform. The quotes below are taken from their pamphlet Boris Johnson – a man of the Tory hard right.

Johnson is also a thug. He had a phone conversation with his friend, convicted fraudster and fellow old Etonian Darius Guppy. Guppy was planning to have News of the World journalist Stuart Collier beaten up. Boris was happy to supply Guppy with Collier’s address. Guppy explained that Collier “will probably have a couple of black eyes and...a cracked rib or something like that.” The attack did not actually take place since the phone chat was published in the Daily Mail.

London is a multi-cultural city. Here’s an example of Johnson’s sensitivity. On Africa, “the problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more...The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.”

Here’s another. “They say he (Blair) is shortly off to the 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.” Johnson is equally offensive about anyone else who is not a white upper class male. He must not be the speaker for London!

Here’s a sample of his economic literacy. “Both the minimum wage and the Social Charter would palpably destroy jobs.” Elsewhere he fantasises that the Tories will win the 1997 election. “Golly it occurs to you: no more minimum wage. The polls had been so confidently predicting a Labour victory that you had already made provision to pay your workers at least £4.10 an hour, putting up your costs and greatly reducing your ability to reinvest. Your mood lifts a notch higher at the thought.”  Note that, for Johnson, ‘you’ are always a boss. Draw the lesson. For the vast majority of us who work for someone for a living Johnson is the enemy.

As Mayor, Johnson would be in charge of public sector services for the capital. But he wants to sack the workers who offer these services. “It is agreed across the political spectrum that the public sector is growing at too fast a rate and that this involves much waste.” His attitude is bound to alienate public sector workers.

The average house price in London was £289,000 in 2005. The average income for Londoners is £300 per person per week. That means housing is absolutely unaffordable for first time buyers who aren’t getting family help. Yet Johnson is opposed to social housing.

More than half a million children, 40% of all those in London, live in poverty. Yet Johnson attacks the welfare state as “this irrational system of subsidy, the excessive disbursements that warp honest people.

• He is opposed to the Social Chapter of the EU which provides a measure of defence for the standards of the poorest and is against paternity leave. He wants more private money in the NHS and supports private health provision.

• He supports grammar schools and private schools (of course).

• He has opposed devolution for Scotland and Wales. Why should he support the right for Londoners to elect their own local government, apart from the fact that it gives him a chance to run the show?

• He is opposed to the congestion charge. Apart from the issue of congestion, is he really unaware that the charge is virtually the only source of income for the Mayor and GLA?

Johnson is unfit to be London’s Mayor. Run him out of town!