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| Why Boris Johnson could be bailing out as London mayor on Bonfire Night | Why Boris Johnson could be bailing out as London mayor on Bonfire Night |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| Boris Johnson has just appointed a new deputy mayor. Yes, he already has a heap of those but this one is special because he’s recognised in law. The London mayor’s statutory deputy is required to take the helm at City Hall if the captain of the ship expires, drops out or goes overboard. His existence is a reminder that Johnson could be bailing out of his present job in politics as early as Bonfire Night, six months before his second term as mayor is due to end. I’d have a few quid on it if I were you. | Boris Johnson has just appointed a new deputy mayor. Yes, he already has a heap of those but this one is special because he’s recognised in law. The London mayor’s statutory deputy is required to take the helm at City Hall if the captain of the ship expires, drops out or goes overboard. His existence is a reminder that Johnson could be bailing out of his present job in politics as early as Bonfire Night, six months before his second term as mayor is due to end. I’d have a few quid on it if I were you. |
| The man who’d step up to take is place is his fellow Conservative Roger Evans, who represents the London Assembly constituency of Havering and Redbridge. Evans is sane and steady: safe hands, sound mind and all the rest. He’s been handed his new role because his predecessor, fellow AM Victoria Borwick, has become Tory candidate for the solidly Conservative Kensington parliamentary seat and is divesting herself of other responsibilities. | The man who’d step up to take is place is his fellow Conservative Roger Evans, who represents the London Assembly constituency of Havering and Redbridge. Evans is sane and steady: safe hands, sound mind and all the rest. He’s been handed his new role because his predecessor, fellow AM Victoria Borwick, has become Tory candidate for the solidly Conservative Kensington parliamentary seat and is divesting herself of other responsibilities. |
| Londoners need not be alarmed. It is a view widely held that an early departure by Johnson wouldn’t make much difference. For one thing, much of his attention has long been directed towards a crumbling Gothic palace upstream rather than his duties in Sir Norman Foster’s glass globe by Tower Bridge. For another, most of the daily graft of mayoral business is led by the highly experienced and formidably able Sir Edward Lister, the former veteran leader of a firmly Thatcherite Wandsworth Council. He is “Steady Eddie”, the sober straight man to the “Boris” comedy confidence trick. He’s the fixer, the nudger and winker, the master of the art of getting the things his boss approves of done. | Londoners need not be alarmed. It is a view widely held that an early departure by Johnson wouldn’t make much difference. For one thing, much of his attention has long been directed towards a crumbling Gothic palace upstream rather than his duties in Sir Norman Foster’s glass globe by Tower Bridge. For another, most of the daily graft of mayoral business is led by the highly experienced and formidably able Sir Edward Lister, the former veteran leader of a firmly Thatcherite Wandsworth Council. He is “Steady Eddie”, the sober straight man to the “Boris” comedy confidence trick. He’s the fixer, the nudger and winker, the master of the art of getting the things his boss approves of done. |
| Why wouldn’t Johnson go earlier still? After all, he’ll almost certainly be MP for suburban Uxbridge and south Ruislip in six weeks’ time – bet he’d have preferred the glamour and super wealth of Kensington - and even more of a player in the big Westminster game than he has been from across the Thames waters for several, tedious years. The platform the mayoralty has given him for advertising his Tory leadership and prime ministerial ambitions will become less important once he’s hogging the adoring media limelight in the Commons. | Why wouldn’t Johnson go earlier still? After all, he’ll almost certainly be MP for suburban Uxbridge and south Ruislip in six weeks’ time – bet he’d have preferred the glamour and super wealth of Kensington - and even more of a player in the big Westminster game than he has been from across the Thames waters for several, tedious years. The platform the mayoralty has given him for advertising his Tory leadership and prime ministerial ambitions will become less important once he’s hogging the adoring media limelight in the Commons. |
| If David Cameron is still in Number 10 after the election, Johnson will surely be in line for a large government position, even if, as Cameron has signalled, he’d have to finish being mayor first. If Cameron loses, Johnson will be elbowing his way even more hungrily to the front of the queue to be his fellow Bullingdon boy’s successor. He is already the People’s Choice. | If David Cameron is still in Number 10 after the election, Johnson will surely be in line for a large government position, even if, as Cameron has signalled, he’d have to finish being mayor first. If Cameron loses, Johnson will be elbowing his way even more hungrily to the front of the queue to be his fellow Bullingdon boy’s successor. He is already the People’s Choice. |
| One reason he’ll continue being mayor until November – or at least maintain the appearance – is that jumping ship sooner would look bad. As well as seeming over-eager, any mayor doing so more than half a year before the end of the four-year mayoral term would trigger a mayoral by-election, which the Greater London Authority thinks would cost the taxpayer £12-£15m. The scheduled May 5, 2016 poll would still take place anyway. Such expense would not reflect well on “Good old Boris” and his political opponents aren’t thirsting for two mayoral elections back-to-back either. | |
| After that Bonfire Night threshold, though, he’d have every incentive to give up the mayoralty, whatever the general election result, and would have options for claiming this was reasonable and even responsible. To be a London MP and mayor at the same time is thought acceptable, at least for limited periods – after all, the prime minister is an MP too – but to combine the job with being a party leader or national government minister would be taking the rise to a degree even Johnson, with his candidly-expressed policy on cake – to have it and eat it at all times – might not get away, with even he wanted to do. If accused of putting personal ambition before his responsibilities to London, he could insist that the nation’s needs must come first. | After that Bonfire Night threshold, though, he’d have every incentive to give up the mayoralty, whatever the general election result, and would have options for claiming this was reasonable and even responsible. To be a London MP and mayor at the same time is thought acceptable, at least for limited periods – after all, the prime minister is an MP too – but to combine the job with being a party leader or national government minister would be taking the rise to a degree even Johnson, with his candidly-expressed policy on cake – to have it and eat it at all times – might not get away, with even he wanted to do. If accused of putting personal ambition before his responsibilities to London, he could insist that the nation’s needs must come first. |
| What he would also get away with, by plausibly insisting that he had no other choice, is any short spell of overlap that might result from the Tories picking him as their new leader at the end of a process completed more quickly than last time, when Cameron was installed in the December following an Tory election defeat the previous May. They’d have good reason to do this, especially if a minority Ed Miliband premiership looked set to crumble by the time the leaves start turning brown. What a circus. What else is new? | What he would also get away with, by plausibly insisting that he had no other choice, is any short spell of overlap that might result from the Tories picking him as their new leader at the end of a process completed more quickly than last time, when Cameron was installed in the December following an Tory election defeat the previous May. They’d have good reason to do this, especially if a minority Ed Miliband premiership looked set to crumble by the time the leaves start turning brown. What a circus. What else is new? |