This is the rather sexy Matt O’Connor, candidate for the English Democrats. To me he looks less like a prospective mayor and more like a camp funky house DJ from Essex – the kind you see on the CDJs down your local Illusions Nitespot. What is not so clear in this photo but is more obvious in the printed election materials is that he’s actually sporting some rather fetching blonde highlights.
Nevertheless, despite his slightly gay appearance, Matty is no lightweight campaigner. According to his website he is a “Designer, Author, Social Entrepreneur and Political Campaigner,” and the “founding father” of Fathers for justice (how many grandchildren does that give him?).
O’Connor’s election video is actually pretty stylish, at least compared to the Christian effort below. Despite his Jonathan Ross-esque vocal affectations, fast edits, chiaroscuro lighting and a prominent soundtrack give a cinematic glamour and urgency to his political rhetoric.
And what rhetoric it is, in perhaps the most derogatory, sophistical sense. He claims to remember England as it used to be, “a green and pleasant land where children were safe; a country that gave the world the English language, democracy and the Magna Carta.” Mr O’Connor has a long memory, Magna Carta was issued in 1215. One also wonders where else in the world he thinks the English language could have possible come from.
Matt actually has some interesting things to say about surveillance and the curtailment of civil liberties. He sees these as running counter to English notions of liberty and individual human rights. Unfortunately pegging such issues to ignorant nationalism does little to state their case. People like O’Connor discredit the libertarian movement.
Matt also has a massive chip on his shoulder about Scottish devolution, claiming that English voters subsidise 
cushty social policies north of the border. If what he says is true, this is another interesting area for debate. But O’Connor’s simplistic nationalism again mars the discussion, he spends more than half the video – remember, a party election broadcast for the London elections – whinging about the issue. Some of his campaign imagery verges on racism, according to fellow blogger ourkingdom.
It is difficult to see how the English democrats could position themselves as viable candidates in a city so multicultural as London. I am mixed race, while I’m happy to call myself British I would hesitate to call myself English, which I see more as an ethnic group. English branded things simply don’t have any appeal to me. Some 30% of Londoners are drawn from ethnic minority groups; what these people want is a candidate that promotes unity, rather than division. Matt O’Connor may have tasted fame with Fathers for Justice, he’s unlikely to with the English Democrats.
Filed under: London Mayor, Uncategorized , english nationalism, fathers for justice, London, London Mayor, politics
