The body politic

If I had been given a monkey for every time someone had told me knowledgeably that Boris Johnson was a comical buffoon unfit for high office, I’d be able to open a very large ape house.

It annoys me not just because it’s not true but also because of what it says about the stupidity of the chattering classes and the potency of received ideas. Gordon Brown: prudent economist. Ken Livingstone: lovable, cheeky-chappy newt fancier. Islam: religion of peace. Etc. Most of the people who believed –— or even continue to believe — in these memes have votes, and this ought to worry the rest of us greatly.

The idiots are even more wrong about Boris. In the coming months, he’s going to have to make some very difficult political decisions, and perhaps none more difficult than how far he dares oppose the erection of that mighty Islamist propaganda tool — aka the 70,000 capacity Super Mosque — bang next to the main Tube station servicing the London Olympics stadium. If he’s going to do this without being accused of ‘Islamophobia’, he needs all that (very) silent majority of moderate Muslims out there to think he’s a jolly good egg who loves their religion of peace greatly.

This is why, of course, it was so helpful in that wonderfully entertaining Who Do You Think You Are? episode that he was able to wheel out a Muslim great-grandfather. And why, when offered a chance to make a two-part BBC series about the birth of the ‘clash of civilisations’, he didn’t suck his teeth and go, ‘Oooh. I dunno. Might be a bit of a conflict of interest there, what with me being a politician with a large Muslim electorate to avoid offending.