Boris’s ex-colleague sticks the knife in

The Conservative candidate Boris Johnson comes under fire in The First Post today from Peregrine Worsthorne, who believes David Cameron’s entire new Tory project is a risk if the blond bombshell becomes Mayor of London after tomorrow's election. While Worsthorne is a distinguished former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, he was never an actual colleague of Johnson, who was then Brussels correspondent on the Daily Telegraph. But a man who was a colleague - and remains a fellow Telegraph columnist - has also put the boot in today, questioning Boris’s suitability for high office.

In the Daily Telegraph, Simon Heffer asserts that Johnson's campaign for mayor is just "one more chapter in an epic of charlatanry", claiming that the Tory nominee believes that the "public is there to serve him, not vice versa". Heffer, who has known Johnson for the "past 20 years", says that his former colleague is wrongly depicted as a buffoon, when in fact he is an "act".

Heffer writes: "The act is calculated and it has required serious application and timing of the sort of which only a clever man is capable. For some of us the joke has worn not thin, but out. Yet many less cynical than I am find it appealing. It conceals two things: a blinding lack of attention to detail, and (though this might seem to sit ill with the first point) a ruthless ambition.

"Mr Johnson is the most ambitious person I have ever met. That ought to be a commendation for high office, since ambitious people normally understand they will go further only by doing their present job well. Mr Johnson's scattergun approach to life will not allow this.”

Heffer then cites an observation made by Andrew Gimson, author of a biography of Johnson, on how he has managed to get on in life. “He has used his charm... to enlist at every stage what Mr Gimson calls ‘stooges’ to help him advance….If Mr Johnson became Mayor tomorrow, he would be the frontman for nameless others who would run London.

"Who will guide the unguided missile?" asks Heffer. "Who will support the figurehead? Who will ensure he turns up on time, or at all?"