Of course, with Boris Johnson winning the London mayoral race, over at The Guardian there's an amusing outpouring of name calling of Boris voters (who are obviously just too stupid to vote for Ken), and empty threats of self exile from the city/country.
What is it about lefties and this precious "if the majority don't vote like I do, I cannot live here" attitude? People used to say that conservatives had a "born to rule" attitude, but it's clear that such a belief in entitlement (based on their superior intellect and morality, of course) has long since passed over to the followers of the other side of politics.
PS: Surely even those who hate him would have to agree that Boris made a very gracious acceptance speech. Maybe he will end up like Schwarzenegger: a somewhat unexpected great success when put in the right position.
PPS: Tigerhawk has a good post about the adolescent nature of this "if my candidate loses I will leave politics/the country" attitude.
PPPS: Or, to put it as Nige does at Bryan Appleyard's blog:
What has struck me in all the interviews with those on the losing side - Ken of course included - is the unspoken assumption that a Tory advance represents a reft in the very fabric of space-time, a fundamental anomaly, that can only be the result of 'mistakes', of 'not listening', of a failure to get the message across. I've often noticed this mindset in leftists, the assumption that their project is not only right but self-evidently right, and those who don't buy into it either haven't understood it or are outside the pale of rational discourse, irredeemable and best ignored or sneered at .....
Well, over at LP, Suz is horrified - horrified!, I tell you - that Boris has been elected. Apparently he is an equivalent to Pauline Hanson.
ReplyDeleteTruth is, Boris was almost the perfect politician for the elites, an intellectual who is seeking power. The only thing that disqualifies the elitist/Guardianista vote is that he is (shock! horror!) a Tory.
As for me, I like him, almost purely on the basis of his brilliant writing and journalism and his editorship of The Spectator, which remains one of the finest magazines around.
On the point of "born to rule" it really is just a matter of incumbancy and lask of imagination and it infects all sides of politics - I reckon you're just noticing the ebb and flow in British politics and their pundits.
ReplyDeleteGive it two terms of Kev here and we'll all be astonished at the Turnbull/Costello/whoever ascendency when it comes.