Boris Johnson may have the personality, but what has he ever run,
asks william langley |
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By any standards, particularly the prevailing ones, life in Borisville-on- Thames sounds like a big improvement. Jokes will be funnier, lunches longer, girls prettier, the mood merrier. Squeaky clean streets lined with centres of classical learning will echo to police cries of, 'Age. Fac ut gaudeam' (Go ahead, make my day), and all will bask happily in the reflected golden glow of the great leader's custardy bonce.
Boris Johnson's run for Mayor of London is, therefore, to be welcomed. No one should take Boris, 43, for a mere Westminster eccentric. Behind the endearingly dishevelled and distracted exterior lurks both a formidable intelligence and a genuine desire to do good. If popularity could be counted in votes, Boris (right) would be well on his way.
Yet serious questions hang over his candidacy. What - apart from the Spectator, a |
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| What - apart from the Spectator, a virtual knocking shop during his editorship - has he ever run? |
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virtual knocking shop during his editorship - has he ever run? Those who worked there in his Speccie heyday remember Boris as a dream boss, not least because he never bothered to read a word any of them ever submitted.
There are, too, limits to the suitability of clownishness. If London suffers a catastrophic terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11, who, honestly, would want Bojo - the 'crikeys' and 'yikeses' tumbling from his trembling lips - playing the Rudolph Giuliani role?
The Conservative leader, David Cameron, appears to have concluded that only Boris, as the nation's best-loved Tory, has a chance of beating Ken Livingstone, the mystifyingly popular incumbent whose every action in office has oozed opportunism, laziness and self-promotion.
It isn't hard to follow Cameron's thinking that it will take a maverick to beat a maverick. Nor is it difficult, however, to see that, for all Boris's many qualities, the capital doesn't need another leader bigger than itself.
FIRST POSTED JULY 16, 2007
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