Most Tory MPs I’ve spoken to expect Boris Johnson to break another promise and stand in a safe Tory seat at the May 2015 election, doubling for a year as Mayor of London. Parliament would be his entry ticket to the Conservative leadership raffle, should the blond ambition’s Buller junior David Cameron lose at the polls. A place in cabinet would be Johnson’s consolation prize should – splutter, ruffles hair, crikey! –Dave triumph. Johnson must find, of course, a desirable Tory constituency. Noblesse oblige is likely to see another Old Etonian, Frank “Zac” Goldsmith, seek a second term in Richmond Park. The gossip on the House of Commons terrace before MPs went on their hols was of Johnson popping up in Kensington. It’s in London, posh, rock-solid Tory; the sitting tenant, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, will be nudging 69 next time. And the local worthies value flamboyance: Alan Clark and Michael Portillo were among the past picks. We’ll see.
Labour MPs have taken to calling their leader’s youthful team “Ed’s crèche”, as the fallout over ending not mending (or was it the other way round?) union links continues. The trade union group of MPs, the party’s biggest backbench group, if hitherto a sleeping giant, is to re-form in the autumn. The draft statement of aims prizes Labour’s industrial ties, a direction of travel likely to have Miliband reaching for the antihistamines.
I discovered that the hapless Tory Aidan Burley –dumped as a parliamentary aide over a Nazi-themed stag do before dismissing Danny Boyle’s widely applauded Olympic opening ceremony as “lefty multicultural crap” – has quietly left the all-party work and pensions committee. I’m not surprised. A stentorian Glenda Jackson took a dislike to Burley, dismissing the underling with Oscar-winning contempt. Young Burley was well and truly Glenda’d.
Labour spent £6.54 for each vote won in the South Shields by-election by the victorious local lass Emma Lewell-Buck. The Shields Gazette calculated that Ukip’s second place cost it £7.97 a vote, with the Cons, a poor third, shelling out a mere £1.85 a throw. The biggest losers were the Lib Dems, each cross on a ballot paper for the yellow peril a cofferemptying £17.91 – with an embarrassing seventh place in return. Austerity doesn’t start at home for Nick Clegg.
Bob Crow the cockney express, Britain’s most recognisable trade union general secretary, turned down Big Brother. The railway workers’ leader rejected a large wad of notes waved in front of his nose to entice him into the TV madhouse. I for one can’t see Crowbar in a Lycra catsuit.
This column is taking its annual summer break and will be back the week before the TUC kicks off the political conference season.
Kevin Maguire is the associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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