Boris Johnson has helped me to start liking London again

About 18 years ago, I began to tire of London, while not, as far as I can tell, tiring of life. I’ve been dreaming of a rural idyll since then. I’d always thought this was because the birth of a child means you look at the world differently. It’s acceptable for an adult to choose to live in a dirty, dangerous, increasingly alien city – but it’s not necessarily the best environment for youngsters.

For a variety of reasons – mainly that my wife hasn’t lost patience with the place, we live in a jolly nice part of the city, the prospect of being stuck in some provincial TV or radio station reporting on cats stuck up trees lost its lustre after I visited some of these places, and my son got into a decent (albeit eye-wateringly expensive) local school – I decided to stick rather than twist, on the understanding we’d move to the country in 2012.

Well, we’re not going to – not for a while, at least. One of the reasons for this change of heart, I realised last night as I watched the announcement of Boris Johnson’s distressingly narrow victory in the London mayoral election, is partly a question of politics, but, more importantly, one of personality.

It could, of course, be a coincidence, but my disillusionment with London roughly dates from Labour’s 1997 general election victory. My distaste gathered pace in 2000 and continued to deepen for the next eight years – which, I now realise, coincided with Ken Livingstone’ baneful reign as Mayor. London started to become bearable for me again approximately four years ago – around the time Boris Johnson was elected mayor.

I only identified this possible connection between my attitude to the capital and its political figurehead yesterday around 5pm when doubts began to arise about a Boris victory which had seemed certain until then. All my previous loathing for London, a sense of claustrophobia, of not belonging, and a powerful desire to escape almost overwhelmed me: I suppose it was a mini-panic attack.

It lasted until the very moment whenthe returning officer announced that, after second preference votes had been taken into account, Boris Johnson had been re-elected. The world tilted back on its axis. I went to bed happy.

In 1997, of course, there was no Mayor of London, and after Labour's landslide election victory, London was almost entirely controlled by Labour councils and MPs. The election of Livingstone in 2000 – years after we’d all assumed the repulsive, hate-filled lizard had been deservedly consigned to the political scrapheap – simply deepened the sense of living as an internal exile under the jackboot of an occupying force.

This reached its apogee when, after the 7/7 bombings, the rebarbative little swine tearfully claimed the attacks were aimed at “ordinary working-class Londoners” – as if all the middle class Londoners murdered or injured that day simply didn’t matter. How derangedly prejudiced would you have to be to come up with that statement? And what would the reaction have been had a Tory Mayor talked about “middle-class Londoners” in similar circumstances? (I’ll skate over the lying, the cronyism, the support for Britain’s enemies, the anti-Semitism etc. – I recently dealt with other aspects of this truly vile man here.)

Of course, on a practical level, it’s silly to care too much about what London's mayor gets up, because they actually have relatively power – but the incumbent somehow seems to embody the spirit of the city. Boris Johnson is big, sprawling, clumsy, clever, cultured, unpredictable, expansive, shaggy, naughty, exotic, amiable, very funny, immensely likable, a traditionalist at heart, and altogether unique. Which, if one were to try to describe the best aspects of this often maddening, occasionally magnificent city, would add up to a pretty good attempt.

Whatever their politics, most Londoners genuinely like Boris – just as most of us don't exactly cotton to Livingstone (I suspect many of those who voted for him on Thursday cant stand the little blister). Liking the city’s mayor has allowed me to start liking London again.

Thanks, Boris!