Charles Moore on Boris Johnson's London Mayoral Victory

From the Telegraph (UK):

The change of mood is the most striking thing. When I approached my London polling station early on Thursday morning, I noticed the happy bustle. Far more people were voting than is usual in local contests, and they seemed keen to do so.

Friends who were in different parts of the capital in the course of the day told the same story. The extra people voting were those who had been written out of the script of Ken Livingstone's "world city". Mainly white, mainly middle-class, mainly in work, mainly with families, they were the sort of people who instinctively describe themselves as English without trying to make a political or racial point.

For them, there was never a crock of gold at the end of Ken's rainbow coalition. They did not have their parents' suspicion of gay liberation or new ethnicities. They were genuinely tolerant. But they were fed up with being told to "celebrate diversity" in their "vibrant" city when their actual experience was of schools where speaking English was a struggle, hospitals without enough beds, and streets and parks and buses not safe for their children. No, they didn't think that all Muslims were terrorists, but they were annoyed at being assured, despite the evidence of several court cases, that no Muslims were.

For such people, it was not a good thing that London drifted away from the country whose capital it is. This "post-national" stuff might be fine for the international bankers whom Ken encouraged to run up skyscrapers, for religious leaders like Yusuf Qaradawi whom Ken honoured though he advocates suicide bombing, for the assorted ideologues on Ken's payroll; but for a normal, modern Londoner, there was a growing sense of dislocation. In 2005, multi-cultural London literally blew up in their faces.

Boris Johnson has reached these voters, not by complaining and growling, but by cheering them up. He represents qualities which they like – an amused, relaxed, unjingoistic Englishness, anti-bureaucratic, politically incorrect but not right-wing. He is like something out of the novels of Charles Dickens - a national archetype whose character flourishes in the London air.

Here's Boris Johnson's victory speech on YouTube (ht The Spectator [UK]):