After losing his status as the Conservative leadership frontrunner to George Osborne, Boris Johnson needed a special speech to revive his fortunes – and he delivered. For an address pre-briefed as “serious” there were plenty of (good) gags. Labour’s “Ed Stone” was derided as the “heaviest suicide note in history”, Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters were described as having “vested interests” and “indeed interesting vests”. But this was also, by some distance, the most thoughtful and prime ministerial speech that the London mayor has given.
Framing himself as a “one nation Tory”, he declared that while he was “the only politician to speak out in favour of bankers”, the party could not “ignore the gulf in pay packets that yawns wider year by year”. Rather than mocking such rhetoric, Labour should welcome this ideological conversion and hold Johnson to his commitment.
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