Boris Johnson isn’t the magic bullet the Tories imagine

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/10/boris-johnson-magic-bullet-tories

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Scotland is getting a lion’s share of attention in this election, and with excellent reason. Yet London, with its 73 seats, will send more MPs to Westminster in a month’s time than Scotland with its 59. And party politics is changing pretty fast in London too, with consequences that could be almost as significant for Britain as those in Scotland.

Related: Why Boris Johnson could be bailing out as London mayor on Bonfire Night

Five years ago, in an election it lost, Labour finished two points ahead of the Conservatives in the capital. Yet now, five years on, according to the two most recent opinion polls, Labour leads in London by either 10 points with YouGov or 14 according to ComRes. If those polls stay more or less where they are, Labour will make significant gains in London from both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. If the election goes really well for Labour, Ed Miliband could gain as many as 10 new MPs from London.

The election in London matters for another reason. London is the power base of Boris Johnson, to whom many Tories look as their next leader and as a more effective vote-winner than David Cameron. Johnson – I refuse absolutely to capitulate to the habit of calling him by his first name in print and hereby urge all fellow members of the Society of Columnists and Allied Trades to do the same – has won two successive head-to-head contests against Labour in a city that has been moving leftwards in most other recent elections.

Johnson is massively lauded by his party for his ability to attract swing voters and undecideds and to eat into Labour support. He remains London’s mayor for up to a year, and he continues to have good job ratings (61% approval in the last Evening Standard poll) in that role. He is also now spearheading the Tory campaign effort in the capital in the run-up to 7 May – and he is himself a candidate in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. All in all, Johnson has some serious involvement in and responsibility for the Tory performance.

So if Johnson is as effective a campaigner and vote-getter as many Tories suppose, why are the Conservatives set to do as badly in London as it appears? If I were a Tory, I would be genuinely concerned about this question and would want a good answer. I would certainly want to take a long and hard look at the detailed results in London before assuming that Johnson is the answer to the party’s electoral problems. Having studied those results, I would also ask myself whether having Johnson at the helm would address the questions that deter people from voting Conservative. If I were an MP, I would be very tempted, as things stand, to stop the Johnson bandwagon from getting to the membership stage of the ballot.

Four weeks from now, as the election results come in, David Cameron will be learning about his future chances as Tory leader. If he is able to form a government of any kind, Cameron will stay at No 10 until sometime in the second half of the parliament. If Miliband gets to be prime minister, however, Cameron is likely to return to Chipping Norton to write his memoirs. That’s the modern way after a defeat. And it’s probably what Cameron himself would prefer.

So we are only a month away from a general election in which Johnson’s electoral reach will be tested as never before, and perhaps from a Conservative leadership contest in which his presumed popularity would be a potent factor. This latter is a contest for which many in the Tory party are already actively preparing. It is a very live issue in the party.

It is widely assumed that an early contest would favour Johnson while a later one, after the putative EU referendum, would be less advantageous. Though not yet an MP, Johnson is the bookies’ favourite at 5/2. According to his backers, Johnson would be the one person in the field – which would probably include Theresa May, George Osborne and a candidate from the unreconstructed right – who could attract the voters whom Cameron would have twice failed to persuade. Johnson’s team have already prepared a campaign slogan that sums all this up: hope, happiness and Heineken.

Yet Johnson’s ability to refresh the voters others cannot reach rests on a substantial amount of electoral sand. In a nationwide YouGov poll taken last month after Cameron had indicated he would not serve a third term, more voters thought Johnson was up to the job of being PM than May and Osborne. But Londoners, who have lived under a Johnson regime since 2008, had much the lowest view of his prime ministerial abilities, with just 20% support. It’s the traditional Tories in the south of England – who vote Tory anyway – who were most likely to think Johnson was up to it. Scots, for instance, think he is even more out of touch than May.

Surveys put Johnson behind Ed Miliband, not ahead of him, on whether he understands ordinary people

Johnson’s popularity is beyond question. People recognise him, they think he is likeable and they don’t think he is like other politicians. This means they give him the benefit of the doubt in ways that more traditional politicians can only dream of. But surveys put him behind Miliband, not ahead of him, on whether he understands ordinary people, an issue that has dogged the Cameron Tory party to this day. There is no guarantee that the groups of voters with whom the Tories struggle – women, black and minority ethnics, northerners or Scots – will respond favourably to Johnson.

The danger from the Tories’ point of view is that they may persuade themselves that Johnson is a more attractive potential leader than those voters whom the Tories need believe he is. Lord Ashcroft warned his party of this danger two years ago. The question voters would ask is “Are You Serious?” he cautioned. When Ken Livingstone was the alternative, Johnson was attractive, and the fact that he was a Tory more incidental. When the traditional Labour party is the alternative, the attraction diminishes and the unattractive aspects – including his Toryness – may even loom larger.

That is why the Tory party should listen carefully to London. Johnson supporters may argue that any Tory failures are more Cameron’s fault that anyone else’s. But London has been Johnson’s town for seven years without it benefiting the Tories more generally. It would be an enormous gamble for the Tory party to assume that Johnson is a game changer when so many voters seem to think he is not the change they would welcome.