Mayor of London Boris Johnson’s willingness to redefine words to avoid political inconvenience was exposed on July 30, following a remarkable High Court judgment involving the banning of a London bus ad.
In a contrived and punitive judgment, Justice Lang reduced to differences in ‘semantics’ Mayor Boris Johnson’s intervention to halt the 2012 London Bus Campaign that Core Issues Trust, together with Anglican Mainstream, mounted to counter an ongoing Stonewall campaign.
The Core Issues Trust bus ad (‘Not Gay. Post Gay. Ex Gay and proud. Get over it!’) was a direct response to an ad run by LGBT lobby group Stonewall at the time, which read ‘Some people are gay. Get over it!’.
In her July 30 judgment, Mrs Justice Lang found that Boris Johnson did not order the banning of a bus ad in spite of clear evidence, produced in court, stating that Boris had ‘instructed’ Transport for London (TfL) to pull the advert. Although the Core Issues ad was banned, the Stonewall ad was allowed to run. Lawyers for Core Issues have consistently highlighted the asymmetry of treatment towards the two viewpoints expressed.
The Mayor’s intervention in 2012 took place three weeks before the London Mayoral election and just two days before the Mayor was due to appear at a hustings event organised by Stonewall. In May 2014, Boris submitted a signed witness statement to the High Court, claiming: ‘I did not instruct TfL to do anything’. Lawyers acting for him then proceeded to argue that when Boris had used the word ‘instruct’ he was merely expressing a point of view.
