Boris Shuns His Own Voters

After his appearance on The Andy Marr Show (tm) yesterday, one might have thought that London’s increasingly occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was more than willing to appear before the media, whatever the venue, especially as he is only going to reach his goal of leading the Tory Party if he succeeds in returning to the Commons. But the reality of Bozza’s activities is rather different.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the hustings debates that have taken place across the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency. Bozza is the Tory candidate, and he’s defending a five-figure majority, so he’s decided only to bother with one of the three debates. This may be not unrelated to the other candidates being all too willing to give him a very hard time when he bothers to turn up.

As Get West London observed after the first debate, “Candidates from four of the five main political parties made promises at a public debate about how they would vote if elected to parliament”. Who might the fifth have been? “Conservative candidate Boris Johnson skipped the session – the first of three planned for the borough – as it clashed with a People's Question Time he was legally obligated to attend as London mayor”.

Bozza “was ‘empty-chaired’ at the debate and came under fire from all sides”. He came under even more fire at the second event, when he decided it might be wise to show his face and remind the electorate that the Tories were actually fielding a candidate. “Boris Johnson slammed at pre-election debate in Uxbridge” was the understated headline.

Labour hopeful Chris Summers was one of those slamming Bozza: “You don't want a candidate who's already got mayor of London, which is one of the biggest jobs out there, who's also an author, a newspaper columnist, numerous other sidelines … You're looking for someone to represent Uxbridge and South Ruislip and stand up for you on all the issues that matter. You're not looking for a dinner party guest”. Ouch!

Lib Dem Mike Cox also appeared to be enjoying himself: “We need somebody who is going to work hard for you irrespective of fear or favour, party or personal interest and, yes, God forbid, a burning ambition to be prime minister … If you want an MP to be a national celebrity, with no moral compass, who parachutes himself in from time-to-time, then vote for that man over there”. Double ouch!

Bozza retorted “I do have a record as a previous constituency MP and I worked flat out for those people”, but then, he resigned when he became Mayor of London, rather than try and do two jobs - and write his “chicken feed” generating column for the Telegraph - at the same time. He may not have enjoyed his hustings experience, because he didn’t bother turning up at the third and final event. And it gets worse.

At the only hustings that Bozza attended, all questions were pre-submitted and the candidates did not debate between themselves. He ducked the events where he would have had to think on his feet and take criticism from his peers. That’s not good enough.