The Metropolis

For Boris Johnson, being mayor is a lot like editing The Spectator

Mike Pollitt | Tuesday 24 April, 2012 15:50

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Sharp piece by James Meek in the latest (paywalled) LRB:

“The Routemaster saga, for Johnson, was less important as a policy than as an expensive running pantomime with a vivid plot and clear-cut characters that the media could paste into white space. There was a lovely, wise old bus, and a nasty, cackling, once moustachioed socialist came and took it away and replaced it with a cruel bus, and along came Boris Whittington, who, with the help of the children in the audience, chased the cruel bus away and, in a shower of glitter and a sweep of harpstrings, brought the magic bus back.”

He makes the shrewd observation that being mayor, for Johnson, is akin to being a newspaper or magazine editor. You don’t have to get things done, you just have to anticipate, react to and create media narratives which make it appear that you’ve got things done.

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