Shared Opinion
Gordon can barely speak English either, so why don’t we swap him for Sarkozy?
So, for weeks now, I have been trying to distil what it is that I think Ken has given London, that I’m so worried that Boris might take away. And finally, I think I’ve got it, in a nutshell. It was the elephant. In May 2006, Ken gave us the Sultan’s Elephant.
Did you see the it? It was a giant puppet show, with a huge puppet elephant and a huge puppet girl. Some kind of French arts company, I seem to recall. I have never seen crowds smile so much. The police closed roads, and it blundered around London for a weekend like the benevolent folly of a tyrant run mad. Which, I suppose, was exactly what it was. It was Ken all over, and it was magical. Will you give us an elephant, Boris? Will you? It made London click into place. If this thing is going to the wire, then every vote counts. I know it’s a lot to ask, particularly with your thing about the eggs, but here’s how you can get mine. I won’t be at the ballot station until late on Thursday. Promise us an elephant. Just the one, and I’m yours.
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Ben
May 6th, 2008 7:53pmWhat an excellent article from Hugo, superb about Boris, but with a surprising pro-Ken twist at the end. Masterly. My only quibble would be in the sentence: "I would never suspect Boris of ... secretly hating me for being a Jew." I'm sure that's true of Boris, and it's an admirable sentiment. But is there a hidden implication that Ken is a little anti-Semitic? But that can't be true, can it? Just as I know Boris to be non-racist, I feel in my guts that Ken is also cleared of that charge. Ken's appeasement of illiberal Muslim clerics was wrong-headed, but arose from misguided leftism rather than anti-Semitism. And the famous verbal attack on a Standard journalist likening him to a concentration camp guard was hardly anti-Semitic, rather an attempt to bait the Standard with its pro-Nazi past (admittedly a long time ago).