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Saturday 22 November 2008

Boris is the kind of Tory I’d vote for: which means he can win

Boris is the kind of Tory I’d vote for: which means he can win

Rod Liddle urges his friend to stand for Mayor of London and demonstrate
what modern Conservatism can do — if you let it

This is partly because, like all politicians, he is sometimes required to talk anodyne or disingenuous rot, but unlike the remainder, he cannot keep a straight face while doing so. It is partly the self-parodic Etonian burbling and the hilarious hair. But more than any of this it is a certain warmth, that vital thing, a sense of humour and the intimation of an intellect too diffuse and rebellious to be corralled by a chief whip or Conservative Central Office. The danger for David Cameron is that at some point in the future, in the near future, Boris will go ‘off message’ when faced with the competing, irresistible, demand of common sense. It is faintly disappointing that he has not gone off message very much so far (he has been appallingly well-disciplined, in fact). As mayor of London it would not matter one bit if he was off message in perpetuity, to his heart’s content. The danger for Boris is that his party loses next time around and he is left on the margins in a middle-ranking shadow ministerial job, wheeled out occasionally for Question Time and the like when the producers feel they need a human being on the panel. That’s a waste, isn’t it? He will be worrying right now about whether or not to take the offer of his party’s candidacy; worried, I would guess, about doing the wrong thing by his constituency in Henley-on-Thames and whether or not high office — which is what he yearns for, oddly enough — will be lost to him forever as a result. I suppose too that he worries that fighting the mayoral election while serving as MP for Henley might signal a lack of resolve to both constituencies, although Cameron would surely not wish him to stand down from Henley in the interim. One way or another, Boris is needed by the Conservative party.

Ironically, the template for the independent, wilful mayor of London is one drawn up by Ken Livingstone. The only possible downside of Boris running is that it might cheer up the leadership of the Labour party, which would love to see Livingstone hammered in his own back yard. That could happen: Livingstone’s popularity may be chimeric, more rooted in his ‘otherness’ to the political mainstream than in is lefty credentials. Boris has that too; he is a similar sort of beast in many ways, except without the newts.

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