Wednesday 29 February 2012

Kaa Livingstone


The one figure I admire above all others in the Conservative Party is Boris Johnson, the present Mayor of London. He is a clever, affable and self-assured chap. Beneath an occasionally bumbling exterior there is a shrewd mind at work. In contrast to Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne, he is comfortable with who he is and where he has come from, carrying none of their exaggerated fears of appearing to be upper class ‘toffs.’ Boris is a toff and people love him just the same, or perhaps even more for his honesty! He is, as Nick Cohen wrote in an article last year, the Bertie Wooster of English political life.

This year he faces a fresh mayoral contest with Labour’s Ken Livingstone, the former incumbent defeated by Boris in the election of 2008. If Boris is Bertie, Livingston with his heavy eyelids and generally shifty appearance calls to mind another literary figure altogether – the Indian python Kaa as depicted in the 1967 Disney movie version of The Jungle Book. Last year he published his autobiography, You Can’t Say That. To this I respond I Won't Read That, but according to Cohen, whose judgement I trust, it’s verbose, self-pitying and petty, very much as I see Kaa Livingstone.

Livingstone is a perfect example of the idiocy of the left or the socialism of fools. This has seen supposedly ‘progressive’ elements carry out incredible ideological contortions to ally themselves with some of the most reactionary forces on earth. Yusaf al-Qaradi, spiritual guide for the Muslim Brotherhood, is a man, Kaa hisses, who is attempting to “reconcile Islam with democracy and human rights, in particular women’s rights.” As Cohen pointed out in the political journal Standpoint, he conveniently forgets to mention Qaradawi’s fatwas in favour of the genital mutilation of girls, wife beating, and the murder of gays, Jews and apostates.

Livingstone’s position here is even more hypocritical and disingenuous, for he also overlooks Qaradawis’s links with Jamaat-e-Islami, the far-right Islamist party, whose leaders stand accused of aiding and abetting the Pakistani army’s massacre of civilians during the Bangladeshi war of independence.

So this Kaa, the face of the London left, a face that looks with favour on the most obscurantist forms of fundamentalist opinion. I just hope, like Mowgli, the city evades his slimy grasp in the coming election. Better off with Bertie by far.

10 comments:

  1. I think Slimy Livingston is more feelie-eely than ophidian. And since he's blood-sucking public leech, perhaps the lamprey is the creature he most resembles?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamprey

    I have always had a fondness for how Kaa dealt with the Banderlog chatterati . . .

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    1. Calvin, did you know that he raises newts? Elsewhere I have referred to him as King Newt. :-)

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  2. I also happen to like that Boris Johnson guy, he seems to be intelligent and down to earth. And he has nice hair, too.

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  3. I like the way you describe Boris Johnson. Charles had Uncle Dicky, but London's luckier, I suppose. They have Uncle Boris. He reminds me of Frankfurt am Main's Oberbürgermeisterin Petra Roth of the conservative party; the CDU. She's been in office for ages, because she's Auntie Frankfurt. All of the socialist efforts to oust her out of office are pathetic at the very best, because everybody living in that city thinks she's the only person who truly cares more about the city than about politics.
    I suppose Boris is just like Petra; someone who takes his civic responsibility more seriously than he does campaign party rhetoric. He looks like the sort of man even the Anarchy Federationists would secretly vote for when nobody's looking, because no one wants to imagine what London would be like without dear old Uncle Boris.

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    1. The horror! The horror! Roth sounds interesting, Weissdorn. I shall have to find out more about her.

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  4. The only reason I'll be voting Ken is in reliance of his promise to (somehow) lower fares (so I'll be pretty peeved if he backfires). All the other things that he and Boris talk about won't really effect me in the least whether they be good or bad. Also, I'm not prepared to go on paying unreal amounts to travel in the most disgusting conditions and never getting to sit down either. If the tube fares are to be hiked up then we should at the very least expect a seat. Having said that I have still to fill in my form to be put on the register at my new address!

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    1. Rehan, you are not going to vote for Kaa?! Yes, I know the tube is disgusting, but it was no better when he was in charge.

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