I wonder how many Americans get this reference:
Boris Johnson last night notched up the Tories’ greatest electoral success since John Major’s surprise victory in the 1992 general election when he unseated Ken Livingstone as mayor of London.
Ecstatic Conservatives cheered at London’s City Hall, at the end of a count lasting more than 15 hours, as the man who had been dismissed as the Bertie Wooster of British politics took charge of one of the biggest political offices in Britain.
Hint: the Bertie Wooster of American politics is someone named Bush. Boris has a colorful personal and political history, and won because his incumbent opponent broke London’s transportation system with “bendy-buses” and an excessive congestion tax, and had no support from his party on account of being a Marxist and all (they call him “Red Ken”.) Boris had a snappy campaign slogan: “Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.”
BBC sees him as a Gussie Fink-Nottle rather than a Bertie Wooster, but I take the Guardian’s analysis as more correct. They’re obviously referring to the Market Snodsbury Grammar School awards day speech, but that was actually out of character for the newt-fancier.
Now who says politics is boring?