Brian, Borris & Ken or Larry, Curly & Mo?

I was watching News Night the other night and for once I am happy and surprised to say that my usual anger at some of the news was turned into laughter when I was treated to the Three Stooges live with Paxman. Livingstone, Johnson and the Lib/Dem guy stood in a row and answered (or in fact didn't answer) Paxman's questions in probably the best example of political farce I have seen for years. At points I was almost expecting to see Boris take a swing a Ken who would duck, the Lib/Dem guy would then take Boris' slap on the face and in turn slap Ken as he rose and turned to face him. The big questions are...who was Larry, who was Curly, who was Mo? I'll let you decide.

The candidates all bumbled over each other for the entire duration and didn't really say a lot. The highlight was when Paxman told Boris he couldn't say anything else until he gave him figures on how much more or less it was going to cost him to scrap bendy buses and replace them with Route Masters. He clearly didn't know or remember them, but Paxman wouldn't let it go and came across like a father at the dinner table saying to his child, "Right, no desert until you tell me what the capital of Turkmenistan is!!!". Is this really what we are expecting of the Mayor of London...second rate politics, argued and presented badly (although amusingly) on issues that quite frankly seem quite banal in comparison to many of the issues facing Londoners today?

I think that we need to draw a line in the sand between comedy and politics and as long as the Mayoral contests fall on the side of comedy we should seriously think about abolishing the position like we did in the 80s to the GLC. I think that we should also be aware that what works well in the US, doesn't necessarily work well in the UK. I always thought that UK politics was a little more refined and subtle than it is in the US and that mud slinging and face off debates were a bit unsophisticated, but then perhaps since the New Labour media machine dropped in, this is what British politics has been reduced to.