Boris Johnson was in Vauxhall this morning to speak at the press launch of a billboard by Operation Black Vote that calls for voters to turnout and vote for parties other than the "far right" British National Party.
Boris called for unity in London and repeated his strong statements on not wanting the votes of people who preferred the BNP.
The billboard says:
IF YOU DON'T VOTE, THEY WIN
Keep the Far Right out.
For some reason several of the letters were not initially printed on the poster and were instead sprayed on by OBV before the launch started.
Candidates Ken Livingstone, Brian Paddick and Sian Berry were there and expressed similar sentiments to Boris about voting for mainstream parties.
The UKIP candidate was invited, we're told by an OBV spokesman, but evidently didn't show up.
Also in attendance were various representatives of ethnic groups and unions, although Livingstone - who is avoiding tonight's NO2ID hustings - decided to leave before they'd had their say.
1pm update: The Standard has a story about Boris making a pitch for ethnic minority voters...
"Boris Johnson made a bid for the capital's ethnic minority vote today by promising his policies would help Londoners of all backgrounds. The Tory candidate said his plans to tackle crime and improve transport and housing would lead to a better quality of life across the city. He accused Ken Livingstone of dividing rather than uniting communities and said the Mayor did not have an automatic right to black and Asian votes."
6pm update: When we asked if UKIP was invited OBV told us that they had to invite all candidates, but UKIP have been in touch to say that they were in fact not invited at all and that Gerald Batten their candidate is taking the issue up with them.
Is there an Operation White Vote or is this just another politically correct campaign run by self-appointed "community leaders"? Gerard Batten MEP, the UKIP, was right to have nothing to do with this racist nonsense.
Posted by: Sceptic | April 08, 2008 at 12:25
You have to admire the brass neck of Boris Johnson condemning the "far right". It was he used racist language like "picanninies" and "water melon smiles". A UKIP politician would have been court for using such terms. Johnson, for all his protests and apologies, is no better than the BNP. No true Conservative should vote for a racist just because he beat a bunch of hopeless nonenties in the party's primary.
Posted by: Sceptic | April 08, 2008 at 12:34
Before I am accused of being a troll by CCHQ stooges on this site, I should add that my friend's Kenyan wife and her family, devout Christians and natural conservatives, were deeply offended by Boris's racist language.
Posted by: Sceptic | April 08, 2008 at 13:05
"Before I am accused of being a troll by CCHQ stooges on this site"
Oh dear, do you realise this is a forum for debate not a means of updating a Monty Python script?
Posted by: James Burdett | April 08, 2008 at 13:12
It saddens me that PC has effectively stangled all kinds of humour and parody. It is also the case with Health and Safety, which has destroyed the sense of adventurism amongst school kids.
But then the penny drops. PC, H&S and Race Relations are the new industries which thrived under NuLab during the past 10 years. We do not make that many things in the UK any more but excel ourselves in Financial Services and a bit of R&D. Then of course these new industries for which one does not need any serious training except for a mickey mouse dgree in any silly subject, a few clipboards, an anorak and bingo it is a multi-billion pound totally useless business.
OBV is government spending taxpayers money using its powers of patronage.
Posted by: Yogi | April 08, 2008 at 13:58
By non mainstream paties I hope he includes in that the far-left, Left List (aka Respect who are too scared to use that name after Galloway's emabarrsing antics on BB), Greens and Lib Dems - or is this all one sided political correctness?
Posted by: Nu Contrick | April 08, 2008 at 14:02
So the wacko Greens are mainstream?
Posted by: Serf | April 08, 2008 at 15:26
This is not a joke. I have BNP report to proove it. One BNP candidate said rape was trivial. He compared it to eating chocolate. How can anyone vote for this party.
Vote for Ken.
Vote for the labour party. Vote for tolerance, and freedom. Not bullies and thugs.
Please BNP bullies expain why one of you candidates said rape was OK.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7326987.stm
Whenever I go on you tube and talk to the BNP bullies about this they remove my comments as they cannot own to how evil they are.
Posted by: BBC resport prooves BNP man thought rape was trvial. | April 08, 2008 at 15:42
Just another day in the London Majoral comedy sideshow.
Operation Black vote, i thought that was a joke. But no, such a group does exist!
Posted by: Conservative Homer | April 08, 2008 at 15:45
Don't forget that some of Kens and the Left Lists muslim friends think rape and murder of non muslims is entierly accepatble. And Paddock does't think there is any link between Islam and terrorism, even though all 200+ people currentl in jail for terroist offences are muslim. So if we are talking about voting mainsteam, lets cover all parties, not just those on the right.
Posted by: Far Left Too | April 08, 2008 at 16:12
So Boris now shares a platform with Red Ken, the pc pc and the mad greens - no wonder people vote BNP, there rest are all in it together for the migrant vote.
Posted by: Flabbergasted | April 08, 2008 at 16:35
Why isn't Boris's plan to give amnesty to illegal immigrants getting more coverage here?
Posted by: James Wilson | April 08, 2008 at 16:47
Because when you are after the migrant vote, he will do almost anything, including offer illegals an amnesty, state that you would discrimnate against white canadiates for jobs and now share a platform whith the looney left and the now PC/DC's Tory party won't have any thing said about for fear of upsetting someone
Posted by: Flabbergasted | April 08, 2008 at 17:24
With Labour's policy of mass migration, in many constituencies the new arrivals and even temporay ones can make the differnce between winning and loosing. Therefore their vote is being courted by all parties including the Tories. Unfortunately the Tories are also adopting the same PC speak and actions as Labour, Lib Dems, Respect etc
Posted by: Boris the Turk | April 08, 2008 at 18:25
The poster should have said "Keep the Extremists out". By attacking the "Far Right" there is a subliminal message here against "Right", i.e. the Conservatives who are in other contexts described as "right wing" (wing is on the edge, i.e. far, geddit?). The pathetic post by Sceptic just shows this strategy, of trying to link us with the Far Right, in action.
Boris was absolutely right to attend and speak as he did, if only to counteract this subliminal message.
Incidentally, I wonder whether Sceptic's Kenyan friend actually read the relevant Boris articles in the Daily Telegraph (or was it the Spectator, I forget), and was offended by them at the time, or is she offended by the reports of them, endlessly repeated, years later? If it was really the former, I would attach rather more weight to it than the latter. The fact that they are so often repeated suggests to me that, out of all the millions of instant journalistic words he has published, the Labour researchers came up with remarkably little. A rabid racist would have said a lot more than that over the years, wouldn't he? Whereas a rabid class warrier like Livingstone saves many of his best class war bon mots for when he has actually been in office, such as the disgusting suggestion that the 7/7 bombings were worse for having hurt members of the "working class" (middle class victims, like in Brighton in 1984, of his extremist Irish Republic friends are of course perfectly OK), to say nothing of his prison guard anti-semitism remarks, again made as a politician in public office.
Posted by: Londoner | April 08, 2008 at 18:33
Well said "Londoner" - but you've omitted Comrade Livingstone's anti-Semitism. Funny how that's OK in Lefty circles. Wonder if it's something to do with their anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian stance?
Posted by: Jill, London | April 08, 2008 at 21:29
Agree Londoner, it certainly sounds distinctly unlikely that Sceptic has ever taken out a subscription for the Speccy, or read the Telegraph for that matter.
Posted by: John Ionides | April 08, 2008 at 22:20