MAYORAL 08: English Democrats lose trendy figurehead

DISPUTED FALL OF MATT O’CONNOR

As the former London mayoral candidate for the English Democrats, Matt O’Connor cut an unusual figure. Looking like a cross between DJs Dr Fox and Bobby Friction, the Fathers 4 Justice founder ran a local campaign on what appeared to be national issues. It’s hard for Londoners (and especially the London media) to remember that the nation’s capital is still, essentially, a regional proposition. The cornerstone of the campaign relied on a knee-jerk sense of English identity (of which there is little – of itself, an issue of some psychological substance), an unthinking fear of what was described as the ‘tartan tax bombshell’ being dropped on London by a ‘Scottish-run government’. Videos of a British-Asian man (ethnically inclusive = check) illustrating the financial gulf between life as an Englishman and then as a Scotsman (cue funny ginger wig and accent and, therefore, humour = check) did not encourage further attention by appearing to be little more than comic sideshows – humour does not always equal accessibility.

Perhaps this was the plan, be so over-the-top that people think about you, talk about you, and the idea is sown; this brackets politics with advertising, or at least the advertising of politics, a close marriage of which anyone who has been watching the American primaries keenly will be well aware. O’Connor’s trendy appearance is explained by his background as a marketing consultant, and in his resignation from the mayoral race, the comments of the Democrats’ regional chairman, Steve Uncles, seem to recognise him as exactly that – an overpowered consultant – claiming that he “never expected to get him elected”. For his part, O’Connor’s quote seems to throw similar light on the situation:

“I don’t think they got any publicity at all and I was effectively sidelined. I think they thought I was going to take over the party or something.”

It appears they were at cross purposes from the beginning. The problem with O’Connor’s message is that there was very little at the heart of it; phrases like ‘I’m not left or right, I’m not black or white’, espoused as if they were part of a rap, the frivolising of teenage deaths through gun crime in London last year as part of a ‘bloody harvest of bullets and blades’, incessant statements about threats to democracy in Britain – a case he makes by conflating the misdeeds of a Tartan regime with the rise of the ‘surveillance society’. These are unrelated issues. Is he saying that Gordon Brown is a financial terrorist? This equation of bureaucracy with fascism as an opposition to democracy is curious indeed.

Still, as long as the message remained consistently inconsistent, strongly expressed and from ethnically diverse video mouthpieces, does it matter? Sadly for Mr O’Connor, it does.

UPDATE:
In response to a statement made by Mr O’Connor perceived to be blaming the English Democrats, the party has released the following statement about his alleged personal difficulties which we will only link to, but which casts new light on the situation if true.