As the political arena has been drained of personality, we should embrace the presence of a real character, writes Ann Marie Hourihane
SO, BORIS has won. It is a rather frightening prospect - he stumbled on his way to the podium for his victory speech - but Londoners are a phlegmatic lot. It could be safely said of Boris Johnson that, notwithstanding his determination to fight crime in London, so far he has proved tough on policy and tough on the causes of policy. In this way, and in quite a few others, Boris is the Barack Obama of British politics. The political high priests might disapprove of him but the voting public found him a refreshing change.
Boris won with his doughnut strategy of cultivating the suburbs that both Old Labour and New had forgotten. His victory party featured champagne, oysters and sashimi. Boris is both more extravagant than Obama - the US man's aides have had to encourage him to drink beer with the workers - and better with ordinary people.
There is a great snobbery within the political establishment about what are sneeringly called "personality" politics. His opponents spent a lot of time trying to portray the new mayor of London's predilection for jokes as a weakness . But politicians are a tough and optimistic bunch - they have to be.
Billions of pounds, dollars and euro have been spent trying to separate politicians from the very energy, gregariousness and impulsiveness that made them politicians in the first place. In Ireland, this money seems to have been spectacularly well-spent. We have politics with no personalities at all, even though Irish politics is overwhelmingly - and destructively - personal.
In Britain, too, they have successfully crushed all vitality from their politicians, and nowhere is this more obvious than on the left. It's time now to start worrying about the British left, which has lost both its sense of reality and its sense of humour. As Marian Finucane put it yesterday, Gordon Brown is looking - and this is a lovely British word - glum. And if there is one thing you should not do in modern politics, it is to look glum.
If we are going to start worrying about the British left then we'll have to join a pretty long queue. Their own old socialists have been complaining for years that New Labour is a quango of media babes and dodgy businessmen buying titles. These complaints have always aroused a strange feeling in left-leaning Irish breasts: jealousy.
If only the home life of our own dear Labour Party was half as interesting.
But let's pack up our national troubles in an old kit bag for a moment. London has for its mayor a Tory, and not just any Tory either. Boris Johnson's is a barely reconstructed skirt-chaser of some renown. He was editor of the Spectator magazine. Under his editorship its circulation rose and its reputation for sexual activity went stratospheric. Bitterly rechristened the Sextator by rivals green with envy , its motto could have been "Please excuse the shaky handwriting."
Pulled into the mayoral race at the last minute - David Cameron had approached five other potential candidates before being forced to choose him - Boris immediately gave up drinking and talking. He had a single glass of champagne at that party on Saturday - much to everyone's disappointment. Even his friends say that he is a buffoon. While Boris Johnson is alive, PG Wodehouse will never be dead. Although there are many of us who would think that a very good thing, you have to say that this description of him from a former boss, Max Hastings, would give any sensible person pause - "a façade resembling Gussie Finknottle, allied to wit, charm, brilliance and startling flashes of instability".
Faced with such a personality, the British Labour Party started complaining about the evils of personality politics. On polling day, the Guardian published a series of attacks. A female journalist said that no one should vote for Boris on the grounds that he had deceived his wife (yes, the parliaments of Europe would start to echo a little). The designer Vivienne Westwood said : "Boris as mayor? Unthinkable. It just exposes democracy as a sham - especially if people don't vote for Ken."
It is unfair to quote fashion people, but the Guardian started it. Westwood may cut a sharp jacket but she shouldn't really be let out of her atelier without a minder. Anyway, the whole Guardian piece was a mean-minded display - and probably counter-productive.
Boris's shambolic style has sometimes proved a liability - like the time he stood on his doorstep to reassure a mob of reporters his marriage was absolutely fine, and then found himself rather resolutely locked out of his own house - but Londoners prefer him to Ken Livingstone, who shares nothing with Gussie Finknottle but a fondness for newts.
All the snoozing Irish electorate can say is, "if this is the new era of cheapened and degraded politics, where do we sign?" We'd love some personality politics over here, now that ideology is dead and our economy is controlled by foreigners.
Boris may be a disastrous mayor for London, but at least Londoners know who he is, and are prepared to take a risk on him. Many American voters feel the same about Barack. When are we going to get our day in the sun?