Going Mobile
by Boris Johnson

Ladies and gentlemen, as a Tory MP who seeks to modernise his party, it is time for me to make a confession. I belong to a minority, a group reviled across middle Britain for our unnatural behaviour. So many people already suspect me of belonging to this minority, so many people have caught me at it, that I can no longer bear, quite frankly, to cover it up.

For too long, I and my kind have kept our preferences in the dark, and in this bright, kind, inclusive, touchy-feely new universe, it would be hypocritical of me to hide it from you any more.

It is not only that I belong to that pathetic and dwindling minority of straight, white, married, middle-class, corpulent, Old Etonian moderate smokers and drinkers. This admission is far worse. My friends, I am a cyclist.

I am a member of that hated minority that rides a bicycle. We are the object of a particularly virulent and nasty prejudice, and deserve the fullest protection from the coarser instincts of the rest of society. Seldom have I felt the sting of disapproval, or the threat to my way of life, more keenly than yesterday; and what made it worse was that my attacker was not a pedestrian, or a motorist. She was another cyclist, what we must call a self-hating cyclist.

There I was, trundling up Liverpool Road, and using my bike as my office, when the enemy overtook. You know who I mean by the enemy: the kind of bossy, Islingtonian female who becomes a health minister in the New Labour Government.

She was wearing the fluorescent yellow zig-zag things, and cycle clips, and her streamlined helmet was properly strapped beneath her chin. She knew that I was threat neither to her nor to any other person on that virtually deserted road. And yet, as she stertorously overhauled me, in the drizzle, she yelled - howled - "Don't talk on your mobile phone!"

I am afraid I was in the middle of a particularly tricky conversation and, though I am mild-mannered, I responded tersely. At which point, she pulled up and waited, glowering, for me to catch up.

Uh-oh, I thought, now it's bike rage. She's going to bean me with her pump. "It's utterly disgraceful," she cried, "that you should be doing this when you are a Tory MP, and when it is illegal." As it happens, since I am fully aware of my responsibilities, I have studied the position, and I know that my actions were perfectly legal.

"Well," she shouted, "it soon will be illegal!" On the contrary, I told her, among the many political tasks I have set myself is to prevent the practice from ever being outlawed by Parliament. Just as I will never vote to ban hunting, so I will never vote to abolish the free-born Englishman's time-hallowed and immemorial custom, dating back as far as 1990 or so, of cycling while talking on a mobile.

"But you are in charge of a vehicle," said the self-appointed tyrant. Yes, I said: she was right, but I was perfectly capable of weaving my wobbling way with one hand to my ear. Suppose I were scratching my head. There is no law that says you must have both hands on the handlebars at all times, and it would be madness if there were. What if I had no left hand at all?

It strikes me that her objection to one-handed cycling is, prima facie, against the principles of modern anti-discrimination law. What did she have to say to that, eh? She had nothing to say, because she had already pedalled furiously on.

I meditated, as I looked at her angry back, on the difference between my temperament and hers. It is true that my habit may involve some tiny but appreciable increase in the risk of an accident. Many people would not dream of doing it, and no one would recommend it for those mad cyclists who pump around in Lycra at terrifying speed, their legs and arms like chiselled mahogany whippets.

Nor do I propose to defend the right to talk on a mobile while driving a car, though I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on.

The salient point is that, in the case of both cycling and driving, dangerous and erratic behaviour is more than adequately covered by existing law. If the police think you are driving carelessly, and are not in control of your vehicle, they can haul you over and fine you on the spot; and talking on a mobile, while driving, is already grounds enough for such punishment.

But, in the course of lengthy consultations, the police have made it clear that they do not want to be obliged, by law, to take such steps in every case; and they should, perhaps, be heeded. All the same, before millions write in and belabour me with road death statistics from Holland and Canada, let me repeat: I speak here only for cyclists, and will defend their right to cycle and phone while there is breath in my body.

The lady who assailed me on the way to work yesterday was wrong about the law; and the more I think about the harmlessness of my methods - hugging the kerb, just as ships in the ancient world used to hug the coast of the Mediterranean - the clearer it is that she wasn't really interested in road safety. She simply felt a hatred, a stark, insensible hatred, at watching a chap enjoying the use of a technology that did not exist 20 years ago.

I hope she doesn't get her new law, and that we still give cyclists the freedom to choose to take the infinitesimal risks involved. I think that is civilisation. She thinks it is barbarism. She thinks only the law can restrain people like me. I say: corruptissima republica, plurimae leges.