London voters just voted out Ken Livingstone, the iconoclast left-wing antiwar mayor and replaced him with the iconoclast right-wing antiwar Boris Johnson.
Livingstone was a strong opponent of the Iraq War, and has spoken the connection between an imperialist foreign policy and terrorism at home. He has been a figurehead for the UK antiwar movement and the keynote speaker at several antiwar protests.
I don’t like Boris Johnson’s statements about Muslims, and I know I will get criticism from some of our readers for saying something nice about him, but here goes:
Johnson is not a neocon. In fact, he comes from the same sort of paleo-conservative roots as Pat Buchanan. He is opposed to British imperial dreams, and is in direct conflict with much of the UK Conservative Party.
In the last few years, he has been a strong opponent of the Iraq War, the rush to war with Iran, and Blair’s crackdown on civil liberties. Here are a few examples that we have run on Antiwar.com:
We must not let Bush wage war against Iran
I’ll go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera
Blair’s crackdown on freedom is an inspiration to tyrants
The war in Iraq was based on a lie – and policing Basra is an illusion