Ho, ho - BoJo? No, no!

Oooh-err, cripes! He's the lovable, capering political puppy-dog, the blonde-headed mop of a Mayor of London who we all know so well, and can't help ourselves from grinning at when he's on the box! Been on the box quite a lot too, hasn't he, what with the Tories' conference and all that. Boris, though, is also probably the biggest threat to the Labour Party's electoral prospects since that recent nonsense about (chuckle, chuckle) boundary changes.

Avoiding the "soggy middle ground"

“We already know that to recapture the....seats that will make up a Labour majority, we have to become again the party that represents the hopes and aspirations of our traditional supporters. That does not require us to abandon our ideals or reject our socialist philosophy. Indeed, if we are to become again a party of power rather than a party of protest we need to say more, not less, about both our idealism and our ideology. We cannot win as working-class Conservatives or shop-floor Liberals. Nor would we deserve to win if we abandoned our historic duty to evangelize for a more equal society. It is our belief that “socialism is about equality” which distinguishes us from the grim authoritarians of the far left and the social ameliorators of the soggy middle ground. It is that hopeful, generous, confident philosophy around which we have to build popular support.”

(Roy Hattersley, Labour's Choices, Fabian Society 1983)