Purchase today

Enter your email address here to receive updates from the team.

Jobs

User login

Boris's dilemma

Mayor still has ambitions for David Cameron's job. But his chances -- always slim in reality -- have

By James Macintyre Published 10 September 2010 14:22

"He was stuck between a rock and a hard place," said a London Tory councillor of Boris Johnson's dilemma over whether to stand again as mayor of the capital. My source, who knows Johnson, explained that Johnson knew that had he pulled out, he risked being branded a "bottler" in the inevitable subsequent attempts to find a Parliamentary seat. His ambition to return to the Commons, compete with the current Tory leadership and climb the greasy poll, would also have been fully exposed at last.

On the other hand, there are real risks in his decision to run again. Labour did especially well in London in May, and senior Tories in the city are worried about Johnson's chances of winning again amid cuts and transport hikes. Different Tories say different things about who Boris fears most of his potential Labour opponents Ken Livingstone and Oona King. But there are always bluffs in that game, as there were when Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell deliberately put it about that Michael Portillo -- not Kenneth Clarke -- was the opponent they feared, as confirmed in Campbell's diaries.

My hunch is that Johnson has come very reluctantly to this decision. There was something unusually flat in his normally Wodehousian tones today. He maintains that he has "more chance of being decapitated by a Frisbee" than reaching Number Ten. He still wants it. But the reality may be sinking in that the plan has taken a knock back now. "He didn't really have a choice in the end," concludes my source. Johnson's best hope now is fighting Cameron and George Osborne on cuts and Crossrail, distancing himself perhaps a little more subtly than he has up to now, and remaining one of the most powerful Tories in the country. The fresh dilemma for him is that if he wins, he is locked into London for another term. if he loses his reputation will have been damaged before the early re-entry into the Commons that some say he seeks.

Whatever happens, there will be further clashes between this particular Tory and the Cameron top team, almost certainly starting at the Conservatives' conference in a few weeks' time.

Tags: Boris Johnson

More from James Macintyre

View the discussion thread.

5 comments

Sat, 2010-09-11 01:00 — khoodeelaar!

You say that Boris Johnson is "fighting Cameron and George Osborne on cuts and Crossrail".

So what is the 'fight' over Crossrail about if it isn't about cuts as well? Unless of course you are repeating the fakery that Crossrail is above everything else especially everything ordinary, mundane! That CrossRail is some sort of extra terrestrial phenomenon that is untouched by earthly requirements of rationality reason let alone of evidence. This is probably so because it is crass. It never had what is ordinarily understood as the economic demand behind it. It was a pretext confected by Big Business as a ploy to be used to loot UK public of £Billions under a miasma of contracts. What an ocean of difference there exists between the dwindling transport infrastructure of London – BUSES and tubes – and this fantasy. For SEVEN years now we have asked its peddlers for an empirical, logical, evidential correlation between the transports needs of London and this crassly confected Big Biz scam. And for seven years, its peddlers have failed to provide any. Why have they failed? Not for want of trying. But for lack of any correlation. There is none. And you do your calling a grave disservice by acting as a repeater of the fantasy. We had asked you back in April a series of questions that have remained unanswered about your then promotion of Crossrail. We doubt you will be able to change your record now. Not especially in a week which has witnessed the revelations about another near miss disastrous on the London underground and confirmation of loss of hundreds of jobs on the existing transport networks during Boris Johnson’s occupation of the Onion. On Thursday night, the BBC carried a so-called debate about Cuts and London. In doing his peddling for Big Business the LSE's [London School of Economics, as opposed to the 'London Stock Exchange']] marketing token Tony Travers exposed his ultimate ignorance when he said IN EFFECT [not in the exact words used here in this interpretation] that as a few £Millions had already been spent on Crossrail, it would be a folly NOT TO INCUR the £Billions of debts on it by still going ahead with it! With touts posing as ‘scholars’ like that peddling the Crossrail scam, no wonder that it comes across as crass every time one its touts utters for it! Scrap it. And quit peddling it. And this applies as much to the ‘New Statesman’ blogger as well as it does to the ITV London and to BBC London outlets. As it does indeed to Boris Johnson. And to Ken Livingstone. Every single one of those touts has failed to show the evidence justifying the £Billions of EXTRA debt that CRASSrail entails.

Fri, 2010-09-10 14:56 — swatantra

Jonhson has gained a great deal of experience running London. Just watching him dealing with not answering ny questions questions at Mayors QT City Hall shows that he will be a formidable candidate, but hopefully he will be beaten. His brand of extreme Toryism is not wanted in London. He has backtracked on many of his extravagant policies and promises and indeed reversed his position on others on cuts and crossrail, much to the chagrin of No 10.
If defeated, he should not take it for granted that he can just walk into another safe Tory seat.