What have Londoners done?

Last night Boris Johnson won the race to become the next mayor of London - ending Ken Livingstone's eight-year reign at City Hall.

The Conservative candidate won with 1,168,738 first and second preference votes, compared with Mr Livingstone's 1,028,966 on a record turnout of 45%. This shambling, aphorism-spouting fool is now responsible for the great city of London!!!

Mr. Johnson gave a sober and gracious victory speech, every word if it no doubt pre-stamped by the Tory high brass, acknowledging that many Londoners, even some who had voted for him, may have misgivings about his qualifications for the job, but pledged to “work flat-out” to earn their trust. “Tomorrow we’ll work like crazy,” said Mr. Johnson, who gave up alcohol during the campaign, “but tonight we’ll have a drink.”

This is classic Johnson; full of smart comments, light on grey matter. This fool is out and right dangerous. It would be enjoyable to list the foibles of Boris Johnson's character, but it is perhaps easier, and certainly more revealing of his person, to let the good old boy speak for himself. Heaven help us:

On China:

"Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase… Indeed, high Chinese culture and art are almost all imitative of western forms: Chinese concert pianists are technically brilliant, but brilliant at Schubert and Rachmaninov. Chinese ballerinas dance to the scores of Diaghilev. The number of Chinese Nobel prizes won on home turf is zero, although there are of course legions of bright Chinese trying to escape to Stanford and Caltech… It is hard to think of a single Chinese sport at the Olympics, compared with umpteen invented by Britain, including ping-pong, I'll have you know, which originated at upper-class dinner tables and was first called whiff-whaff. The Chinese have a script so fiendishly complicated that they cannot produce a proper keyboard for it."

On Africa:

"The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more... Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. ... the British planted coffee and cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right... If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain. You never saw a place so abounding in bananas: great green barrel-sized bunches, off to be turned into matooke. Though this dish (basically fried banana) was greatly relished by Idi Amin, the colonists correctly saw that the export market was limited... The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty."

On Homosexuality:

"Labour's appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it."

On George Bush:

"Not only did I want Bush to win, but we threw the entire weight of The Spectator behind him. "

On his extramarital affair:

"I have not had an affair with Petronella. It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture. I am amazed people can write this drivel."

On Nutrition:

"I'm kicking off my diet with cheeseburger — whatever Jamie Oliver says McDonalds are incredibly nutritious and, as far as I can tell, crammed full of vital nutrients and rigid with goodness. "

On Liverpool:

In October 2004, Johnson's magazine, The Spectator, carried an unsigned editorial comment criticising a perceived trend to mawkish sentimentality by the public. Using British hostage Kenneth Bigley as an example, the editorial claimed the inhabitants of Bigley's home city of Liverpool were wallowing in a "vicarious victimhood"; that many Liverpudlians had a "deeply unattractive psyche"; and that they refused to accept responsibility for "drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground" during the Hillsborough disaster, a contention at odds with the findings of the Taylor Report. The editorial closed with: "In our maturity as a civilisation, we should accept that we can cut out the cancer of ignorant sentimentality without diminishing, as in this case, our utter disgust at a foul and barbaric act of murder."

This would all be quite hilarious if it wasn't so terribly serious.

By Paul Tuthill/MOLI