Nooooo !

I love London. Dirty and impoverished though it may be (at least the bit where I live is) - I don't think anywhere else has the same diversity, history and vibrancy.

SO WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?

How did this city get a racist, elitist, over-privilidged Tory buffon as its mayor?

I'm still pondering it - so far I can think of three things:

Like The Sun in 1992 - it was The Evening Standard 'wot won it' - the voice of Middle England inside the capital has been running a vendetta against Ken since the 1980's and it has finally paid off.

The 10p tax fuck-up - the fiasco of a Labour government tinkering with the tax system to ease the burden on the middle classes by shifting it to the lowest paid. Whether it was a policy decision or whether someone hit the wrong button on their calculator it is unforgivable and try as he might Brown can't take it back.

Morons with short memories who didn't think of the horror of bringing the Tories back in. Make a protest vote against Ken by all means but the whole point of the transferable vote system is that in doing so, you don't have to cut your nose off to spite your face. Any Lib Dem, Green or Left List first preference voters who didn't transfer to Ken frankly need their heads examined.

Possibly there's a silver lining and people need to experience again an ascendent Tory party, particularly one run by Old Etonians, to re-discover what politics is all about and get radicalised. But I fear that it doesn't work like that and that the shameful turning point of the fascists winning their first seat in the London Assembly may be a taste of things to come ....