Boris johnson

Friday

Freddy Gray

Boris should ignore Lynton Crosby’s debate-ducking advice

There is a reason Boris Johnson is avoiding the TV debates, and his name is Lynton Crosby.  Crosby is running the Johnson leadership campaign — in awkward conjunction, it seems, with Boris’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds. He is a veritable TV debatephobe. He has run the last two Tory general elections, and he ordered David Cameron and Theresa May to shy away from the TV debates.  In Crosby’s view, debate-ducking is the sensible course. He sees no upside. For frontrunners, especially, if the debate goes well, there is no real uptick in support. The only way a TV debate can influence an election is if a candidate has a massive gaffe, a

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Why the Tory leadership race could now be cut short

Before this Tory leadership election started, the party’s grandees and custodians were telling me party members MUST at all costs be given a choice of candidates to be leader and our next prime minister. Now they tell me Boris Johnson is so far ahead – both among MPs and seemingly among the membership – that it would politically insane to stick to the current timetable of two candidates beating each other up in public, in front of mostly retired white men, for four weeks. “At a time when we face the greatest test for generations [delivering Brexit], the spectacle of two middle-aged men scrapping for the votes of our members, who are

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Please can we stop calling Boris ‘Mr Johnson’?

Boris Johnson has undergone a makeover and no, it’s got nothing to do with his tidier hair and vanishing paunch. While Boris’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds has been busy transforming his appearance, journalists are now doing their bit to rebrand Boris too. I’m talking of course about Boris becoming Mr Johnson. A ‘request’ from Channel 4’s Louisa Compton is doing the rounds telling reporters to ‘STOP referring to Boris Johnson as just ‘Boris’. She says: ‘He’s a politician – we shouldn’t use first names for politicians – doing so is over-familiar and gives the impression they’re our mates, or much loved comedy characters’. Leaving aside that to some Boris is a

Thursday

Taki

High life | 13 June 2019

A lady once offered to go to bed with me if I could ensure that she would write The Spectator’s Diary. This was some time ago, but what I clearly recall is that I didn’t even try. To help her land the Diary, that is. I don’t wish to start any guessing games among the beautiful ‘gels’ that put out the world’s best weekly, but to my surprise that particular lady did get her wish some time after, with no help from yours truly. (What I can tell you is that all this did not happen under the present sainted editor’s watch.) I was thinking of the Diary as I

The Spectator

Hard sums

‘Choice’ is a word that is used liberally in Conservative thinking — whether it be about schools, hospitals or consumer goods. It is when consumers have choice, goes the argument, that providers of goods and services are forced to up their game. Choice brings diversity, inspiring new ideas and allowing for their success. It is not clear that the same rule applies to Conservative leadership elections. Never before have Conservative MPs been presented with such a broad array of candidates. Ten made it to the first ballot, rather than the more usual four or five. It is hard to argue that the quality of the contest has improved as a

Robert Peston Robert Peston

The two biggest threats to Boris’s leadership bid

Now the real shenanigans begin. Boris Johnson will – barring a disaster of Johnsonian scale – be on the ballot of Tory members to pick their next leader and our prime minister on or around 22 July. And, truthfully, given that he is by a margin the darling and chouchou of those members, it is challenging to see how he can be beaten. Except for one thing. His campaign has been wholly based on Boris Johnson as an idea, a concept – the idea being that only he through his force of personality and penchant for the arresting bon mot can sequentially deliver Brexit, boost the popularity of his party

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How Boris’s campaign predicted he would get 114 votes

Boris Johnson’s campaign team has been so well-organised that it predicted exactly the number of votes he would get in today’s secret ballot, I understand. According to WhatsApp messages between his supporters, one member handed Johnson a sealed envelope with ‘114’ written in it before the result, telling him to open it once the official numbers had been declared. The reason the prediction was correct is that the Johnson operation has been running a data-intensive targeting campaign for about three months, and therefore has a detailed understanding of where each MP is, and how likely they are to support each candidate. Parliamentary ‘handlers’ have offered information on every single MP

Toby Young Toby Young

Boris’s burka gag didn’t ‘bring shame’ on the Tories

Critics of Boris Johnson were quick to seize on the fact that when Beth Rigby, the political editor of Sky News, asked a question at his launch yesterday she was jeered by some of his supporters. Jessica Simor QC, an opponent of Brexit, tweeted: ‘The road to fascism – their boos at Beth Rigby made me shiver.’ Referring to the same incident, professor Colin Talbot asked: ‘How long before he goes full Trump and starts talking about Fake News?’ Had Rigby been non-partisan, these complaints might have some merit. But the words she used when she was jeered made it sound as if she was siding with Boris’s opponents. You

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s clear lead increases the chances of a short contest

Boris Johnson has today confirmed his place as the frontrunner to be the next prime minister. In the first voting round of the Tory leadership contest, the former foreign secretary romped home with 114 votes from MPs. This means that Johnson has already surpassed the magic number of 105 votes – which means a candidate will come at least second and thereby has a place in the final two. To put the vote into perspective, Johnson won more votes than Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and Dominic Raab combined. However, the Boris Johnson camp aren’t cracking out the champagne just yet. Boris allies are keen to press that there is still a

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

End this farce and elect Boris now!

Tick-tock, tick-tock, the Brexit clock doesn’t stop. October 31st is the deadline and the next prime minister will barely have a moment to catch his breath before he has to make some vital decisions for the future of our country. That’s why, for the sake of the national interest, this farcical Tory leadership contest should be concluded as soon as possible and Boris should be made prime minister. Boris has got this, as they say. The first round is now in and it is obvious not only that, with 114 MPs behind him, he will make the final two. Everybody realises that he will win from there. The longer his

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Greener than thou

Even before the government this week announced a legally binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, the Tory leadership contenders were competing fiercely to establish their green credentials. Andrea Leadsom has vowed to declare a ‘climate emergency’. Rory Stewart has upgraded it to a ‘climate cataclysm’ and wants to double the amount of foreign aid spent on climate change. Sajid Javid says he would treat fighting climate change like fighting terrorism. Even Boris Johnson, who once called wind turbines a ‘hideous Venusian invasion’, has leapt on the 100 per cent carbon-free bandwagon, marvelling earlier this week about wind farms and solar panels. While the leadership

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s horror at the prospect of prime minister Boris

Should Boris Johnson become Prime Minister it would be a calamity for his country and for Europe. That’s the view of Le Monde, a newspaper that declares it’s time for France and the rest of the continent to stop ‘regarding him as a buffoon’. In an editorial headlined ‘Boris Johnson at the head of the UK? No thanks!’, the left-wing paper said that Britain’s answer to Donald Trump is a danger to European stability, although clearly not as much as the Brexit Party. Since the party’s formation earlier this year, Le Monde routinely describes them as ‘extreme-right’, which must come as something of a shock to Claire Fox and millions

Matthew Lynn

Boris-onomics is what Britain needs

A few jokes. A sprinkling of tax cuts. A few more jokes. A couple of flashy new buildings. And then back to the jokes. As Boris Johnson launches his pitch for the premiership – and takes a commanding lead among Tory MPs – it would be easy to dismiss his economic programme, along with the rest of his plans, as flimsy self-promotion, with about as much substance as one of his columns. After all, he is leaning heavily on his record as London mayor to prove his credentials and most of his critics will dismiss that as irrelevant. But hold on. In fact, Johnson’s record as mayor was exceptionally good. And his time

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boring Boris? Johnson opts for risk-averse campaign launch

It was the launch event everyone was waiting for. After weeks of keeping a low profile – a submarine campaign according to critics – with just one newspaper interview, the leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson emerged this morning to officially kickstart his campaign. However, rather than opt for a circus tent, waffle freebies and thinly-veiled attacks at colleagues like some of his rivals, Johnson’s event at Carlton Gardens proved rather tame. The former mayor of London was introduced by a new Cabinet supporter – Geoffrey Cox. Part of a carefully choreographed strategy to show Johnson has support from across the party, Cox took to the lectern (as he did for Theresa

Boris Johnson

Full text: Boris Johnson launches his Tory leadership campaign

It’s a measure of the resilience of this country that since the vote to leave the EU and in defiance of all predictions, the economy has grown much faster than the rest of Europe. Unemployment has fallen to the lowest level since 1972, exports have soared, English football teams have won both the Champions League and the UEFA cup by beating other English football teams, and inward investment has soared to a record £1.3 trillion. It’s almost as if the commercial dynamism of the British people is insulating them from the crisis in our politics, and yet we cannot ignore the morass of Westminster, where parties have entered a yellow

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Boris Johnson dodges the question on his cocaine use

After spending some time in the shadows ahead of the first round of voting in the Tory leadership contest, Boris Johnson officially launched his campaign today, giving a speech in central London where he reiterated his intention to take Britain out of the EU by 31st October. Unsurprisingly, considering his confusing array of past comments on the topic, the topic of drugs was soon brought up. Johnson was first asked if he’d ever committed a crime, to which he confessed to occasionally breaking the 70mph speed limit. Honing in, the former Foreign Secretary was then asked directly about his use of cocaine. Citing an interview Johnson gave to GQ in the

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Rory Stewart is a reminder of what Boris Johnson used to be

Britain is not quite in the grip of Rorymania. He gave a properly impressive speech this week and he has spoken with honesty and clarity about politics and policy. But Rory Stewart isn’t going to be our next prime minister and it’s hard to see him remaining in Cabinet for much longer. He’s a hit on Twitter, but Twitter is not real life. Most voters still don’t know who he is. None of that means what Stewart has done during the Conservative leadership election is irrelevant or unimportant. He, like Matt Hancock, has run towards conversations about difficult and important things like social care when many of their colleagues have

Tuesday

Michael Ezra

Tax cuts are welcome, but Boris’s proposal is not the best

The source of government revenue is a mystery for many people, but one thing voters do remember is that they are taxed. When people open up their pay slips, the income tax deduction stares them in the face. The sight of it is galling, and the higher the percentage taken, the worse it is. This is true even if there is a sense that, like a foul-tasting medicine, it is a necessity. So this aversion to tax explains why Boris Johnson’s pledge to raise the level at which the higher rate tax band of 40 per cent kicks in – from £50,000 to £80,000 of earnings – is electorally attractive. This remains

Steerpike Steerpike

Rory Stewart: would you trust Boris with the nuclear codes?

Rory Stewart has not exactly had the most orthodox of campaign strategies to become the next leader of the Conservative party. The dark horse of the leadership race has built up a cult following by heading out across the country, recording hand-held campaign videos and having conversations with various members of the public. And he decided to continue this trend of unorthodoxy once again today when he officially launched his leadership bid: in a small circus-tent in the Southbank in London. There, the international development secretary used his launch to put forward his vision for the United Kingdom. But it was Stewart’s view that the frontrunner Boris Johnson could not

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Boris Johnson: everything about you is phoney

Rather rashly, Boris Johnson published The Churchill factor: How one man made history in 2015. It was without historical merit, or intellectual insight, but Johnson did not intend readers to learn about Churchill. The biography was not a Churchill biography but a Johnson campaign biography, where we were invited to see our  hero as Winston redux. Both ignored party discipline and conventional routes of advancement, after all. Both were great company. Churchill stayed in the wilderness for years making a fortune from journalism, and so has Johnson. Churchill was a man of principle and so is… Hold on. That doesn’t work. It doesn’t work at all. For when we talk