From Stephan Shakespeare an excellent postscript to Boris Johnson’s re-election as Mayor of London in a city that is natural Labour territory at a time when everywhere else the Tories were getting a drubbing.
You don’t win London by luck. And you don’t win London, at the very moment when 50% of its electorate are saying they would vote Labour at the next general election, just because you are likeable and funny. Look at the polling: the majority credit him not just with charisma, but with doing a good job – even a significant fraction of Labour voters approved of how he handled his first term as Mayor.
That is the key fact about Boris. Beneath the golly gosh public schoolboy upper class twit image is an incredibly shrewd political brain. What is more his four years as mayor has now shown that he is also a savvy and efficient administrator. Interestingly enough many working class Londoners recognised this aspect of Boris and broke with their tribal loyalty to Labour in sufficient numbers to vote for his return to City Hall. It seems that they have latched onto something that has bypassed most of the commentariat.
Boris is competent. He is charismatic, likeable and competent. He is quite separate from the Conservative Party machine and competent. He is low tax, anti EU tough on crime and competent.
Boris is one of the few politicians of any party who combines brains with charm and humour. They are three very useful skills to have when running for anything. I am not sure whether Boris will be a future Prime Minister, but one thing will be sure, if he does decide to go for it, nobody will say to him he hasn’t had any experience of running anything… unlike Messrs Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, Milliband Mi and Balls.
If I were David Cameron I would be feeling rather nervous about Boris – and if I were George Osborne I would be giving up any hope of becoming leader because the one word you cannot now associate with those two is COMPETENCE.
For the moment, at least, Boris is the only Tory game in town…..
