I am not overly thrilled by a politics informed by experience that is reduced to a matrix of identity and oppression.

A politics that can decide bombs, or shock therapy, or tough love can be for the common good, is devoid of any sense of empathy any sense of how, more than, the other half lives.

I have been unemployed and homeless in Thatchers London and I had my, sole affordable transport, my bike stolen when I had just got off it looking for work.

I still feel sick to my stomache thinking about those years and the smarmy supercillious, arrogance of the eras politicians revelling in their nastiness.

Boris is a died in the die bath with his sweater on Thatcher era Tory as we shall all soon witness as the, thinly, made in China, ‘New Tory nice’ faux Gabardine comes off in the warm weather.

Boris Johnson as Mayor will be about as useful as an epidemic of Anthrax.

Then you will also remember me arguing on his side and introducing the subject of the millions of starving East Asians still under Japanese rule for whom Hiroshima was quite literally a life-saver..

Indeed it would be hard to argue that, and of course I didn’t. The ‘underneath the fall-out’ was a new qualifier added post-hoc by you!

Indeed it was not. I said Hiroshima was not “good for Japan” (as an analogy of disaster with which to compare Boris Johnson’s likely effect on London with those arguing that dropping such a “bomb” would be good for us.) Perhaps I should have said “not good for those evaporated” although you could have asked if my meaning extended outside either city before assuming I was taking the wider view you impute to me:-)

It would be similarly difficult…and equally trite to front as a counter argument… that the declaration of War by Britain on Germany was a good thing for any of the 68,000 British civvies killed in the Blitz and the 360 odd thousand British service personell killed on as a result of operations against Axis powers.

No the argument is, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in very considerably fewer Japanese casualties, than if the US had not used atomic weapons to force a Japanese unconditional surrender. For anyone that looks into the history, the arguments supporting this, are quite compelling.

I seem to remember Oliver Kamm dealt with this topic rather well a goodly while back.

I doubt you do. You can argue that Hiroshima was good for allied troops and for the rest of East asia which was suffering as a Japanese slave empire. But it is hard to argue that Hirsohima was a good thing for anybody underneath the fall-out! Likewise you can argue that Boris is a good (or bad) thing for Cameron/Brown but it is very hard to argue that such an inexperienced racist buffoon is good for London and Londoners.

Though, as it happens, I agree with both Brett’s democratic argument and the Hiroshima assertion – which is a complete no brainer for anyone that’s bothered to even casually parse the history.

Cutting off your head to spare your face. Ken has markedly more support than the government in general does – not least because of the perception that he is semi-independent of, and above, the Labour Party, and because he isn’t associated with any of its (actually relatively minor) fiascos at national level (and e.g. over PPP for the tube has been a vocal opponent of certain of them).

If Labour wants to win the next election it needs to have a serious discussion. Sacrificing one of its leading, most inspirational, figures is not the way.

And hoping for Boris to be a bad mayor is wrong too – that stinks of petty party sectarianism.

I hope (if he wins) he will be compenent, inspirational and every bit as prepared to step beyond the confines of the conventional expectations of his party – to put London, not the Tories or Labour, first.

Ah. The first appearance of the “Hiroshima was a good thing for Japan” argument this spring.

Quite right. Having been one of those 3.5 million at the time I could never, even if some of my core beliefs had changed, have voted for a party that idolised the person to whom those remarks were attributed. They still revere him. They still don’t deserve to win.