Sunday 5 July 2009

 

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Liz Anderson

Liz Suggests


Jobs at Telegraph

The hard choices that face the Father of the Mayor

Wednesday, 7th May 2008

Stanley Johnson is adjusting to his new constitutional position in the life of London: not least deciding which clubs to avoid at lunchtime in order to dodge Boris’s journalist foes

Last July, soon after Boris had announced he would be a candidate for the post of mayor of London, the editor of The Spectator very kindly invited me to give my reaction in the columns of this magazine. In the article I wrote then, I described the circumstances of Boris’s arrival in this world, in a hospital on New York’s East Side, around 70th Street.

I recalled that, as a modern man, I was perfectly ready to be present at the birth but that unfortunately I missed it, having slipped outside for a moment to buy a pizza. So the first view of Boris that I had was in the crèche of newborn babies. I couldn’t see much of him, since he was neatly wrapped in swaddling clothes. I did, however, note that for security reasons the soles of his feet had been dipped in black ink and his ‘footprints’ taken.

‘It didn’t occur to me at that moment,’ I wrote, ‘that I might be looking at the insteps of a future mayor of London.’

Well, those tiny feet have marched a long way since then! As I suspect most people know by now, the Conservatives under David Cameron, with Boris leading the charge, took London and over 250 seats in the country as a whole, signalling emphatically a revival in the fortunes of the opposition and a considerable crisis for the government.

As the proud father, I was interviewed on a couple of occasions by the BBC and Sky News and invited to comment on the results. I argued that I had probably known Boris as long as anyone, apart from his mother. Over more than 20 years I had read most of his articles in the national press and all of his books, including The Dream of Rome, and it was absurd to suppose that just because he wrote in a readable and often humorous way, or just because he appeared on programmes like Have I Got News for You, he was somehow not a ‘serious person’. I have a lot of time for journalists. Some of my best children are journalists. But when the press and media pursue an easy headline in defiance of the evidence, I can’t help thinking that they are guilty, at the least, of sloppy thinking.

More articles from: Stanley Johnson | this section

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Comments

Post a comment


Your comment:*

Your name:*

Your email address:*
(We won't publish this)

*Required information

Please click the button only once - your comment will not be published immediately

iskidmore

May 9th, 2008 11:16am

why does every promotion of Boris bring his talentless family swooping out of the shadows. Its worse than the Waugh

robert

May 9th, 2008 7:22pm

Absolutely right, isk! If there's one thing that is guaranteed to make Boris fail, it's his awful talentless family: Rachel in the Sunday Times (why?) and Question Time (no, seriously) - or this bumbling, arrogant, presumptious fool

D Short

May 9th, 2008 9:29pm

Yes, she was pretty hopeless on Question Time. I couldn't believe how dumb she was. I also noticed she used her Sunday Times column this past week to wail that people only come up to talk to her to get an intro to Boris. Exactly the same point she made in another column next year.

Boris has more than just four children as dependants!

Ronald

May 13th, 2008 10:09am

I think your contributors are both being hard on Boris's father. That's a priceless line about Polly Toynbee, the most grim, self-righteous and self-important of commentators.


Spectator Book Club

In this section

Labour’s U-turn on social housing for non-immigrants is welcome but too late

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that metropolitan liberal ideology is too deeply ingrained in local councils, social services and the judiciary to be overturned by one panic measure driven by Labour’s sudden fear of the BNP

To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with

Cass Sunstein

Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme

A splendid lunch with Jimmy McNulty

Deborah Ross

In the first of an occasional series of interviews over meals, Deborah Ross talks to Dominic West about The Wire and the challenge to an Old Etonian of playing an American cop

What Jacko needed was someone to say ‘No’

Uri Geller

My defining memory of Michael Jackson — vulnerable, brilliant, otherworldly — is of watching him dance to the soundtrack of a movie.

Michael Jackson Notebook

Emily Maitlis

The news cycle of a dead celebrity is a curious thing.

Related articles

The gym where they teach you how to beat up chavs

Brendan O’Neill is not impressed by a class of paranoid white-collar workers learning how to head-butt imaginary assailants and defend themselves with their laptops

Fathers have become second-class citizens

Toby Young

Toby Young says that Father’s Day is nothing to celebrate: today’s neutered dads have become overworked assistants to their children rather than paternal role models

We came close to losing our democracy in 1979

Douglas Eden

Douglas Eden reveals the extraordinary penetration of the 1970s Labour movement by pro-Soviet trade unionists and the extent of Callaghan’s toleration of the hard Left

Even if the system’s to blame, no one forced MPs to milk it

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that Sarah Teather, the righteous young Lib Dem MP who refused to claim for a second home, proves that it wasn’t mandatory for MPs to fleece us

Another Voice

Matthew Parris

The spirits of Spectator editors past battled within me as I embarked on a criminal act

Spectator recommends

Spectator classifieds

BIG SAND STEEL BAND

IF YOU ARE PLANNING A CHAMPAGNE RECEPTION and looking for some light entertainment, you can now hire London's busiest steel

BOSC LEBAT, Tarn et Garonne.

BOSC LEBAT, SW France. Only 45 minutes from Toulouse Airport with daily flights from most provincial airports avoiding the horrors

ROME CENTRE

PORTA METRONIA, ROME Standing high on the top of one of the seven hills of Rome- the Coelian- this unique