If you thought Ken and Boris were a bit weird, some of the other, more minor candidates are worth investigating. If only as a study in the pathology of what it takes to be a mayoral candidate. As Tony Travers argued when discussing the possibility of a Boris mayorality, in a piece for the New Statesman entitled 'The joke':
'There is always a possibility that the capital's voters will favour political independence, eccentricity and "having a bit of a laugh" over seriousness.'
But, even then, the line has to be drawn somewhere. Some of the candidates make Boris look like William Gladstone. Take Winston McKenzie, an independent candidate who Johnson beat to the Tory nomination. The former boxer-turned-hairdresser from Croydon has also been a member of Labour, UKIP and Robert Kilroy-Silk's Veritas. You'll see from YouTube that he has a taste for Al Capone-style headgear and rapping (watch to end for his Ken impersonation ... ).
The One London candidate, Damian Hockney, was Kilroy's most loyal footsoldier in his UKIP and Veritas days. If that's not damning enough, Hockney is a former Tory with an apparent obsession with plastic surgery and unsuccessfully tried to become the British entrant in the Eurovision song contest.
Far be it from me to deride 'colourful' candidates in the era of the grey, technocratic automaton-politician. But it's difficult to get over the sheer lack of self-awareness of these people. You might say it was 'ever thus' - at least Lord Sutch was joking.
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