Election Diary

Evening Standard5 April 2012
MAN IN THE NEWS

Michael Hodges

THE TIME OUT magazine editor-at-large announced today he had got the required £10,000 deposit and 330 signatures to run for Mayor ... but decided to drop out. The reason? "In such a tight contest I realised that even taking 10 votes off Livingstone might be enough to let Johnson win - and if that put the capital in the hands of a fatuous public school boy with a record of racism and a sneering distaste for ordinary Londoners I would have trouble living with myself. Men of Johnson's social class should be never, ever, given power over a multi-ethnic city like ours."

CAMPAIGN CAPERS

KEN and Boris have found something to agree on - they both cited George Orwell as one of their biggest literary influences. Ken picked 1984 as his favourite, while Boris opted for Animal Farm. "There you will discover when a revolutionary communist [Napoleon the Pig] decides he is going to take over the farm and spends slightly too long there [he] is transformed into the very oppressor he was fighting against," Mr Johnson said. Sounds familiar? "So Boris would keep the old drunken farmer?" Ken asked, presumably hoping the audience knew Farmer Jones wasmeant to represent a failed capitalist. "Snowball was alright." Boris quipped, referring to Napoleon's ousted rival who was, unhelpfully for the Mayor, based on Trotsky.

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