Will Bo-Jo actually be the next Tory leader?

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ast week, to no-one’s great surprise, Mayor of London, television personality and senior Conservative Boris Johnson declared he would try and return to the House of Commons in next year’s general election. Given that many safe Tory seats in the London area would love to have Boris, his election is virtually a formality. But the implications of his decision are quite profound.

Many Conservatives see Johnson (let’s drop the over-familiar ‘Boris’) as electoral dynamite, the only Tory popular enough to win in London, a city where Labour as a party are currently enjoying support greater than in 1997. Johnson has defied this electoral gravity for two terms in office, and in his own way has made a big deal of the role. Whilst the Mayoralty provides a politician with the biggest personal mandate in Europe apart from the French president, the powers of the role are in fact rather limited, being mostly confined to transport, policing, and crime. Nevertheless, Johnson has been everywhere for the past six years. The London-centricity of the media, and indeed the country’s economic over-reliance on the capital no doubt plays a part, but the Mayor has used his role to act as a kind of ambassador for the city, turning up in China and India to promote investment and of course representing the city in the Olympics.

In fact, Johnson has been bone idle as mayor, merely carrying on or taking credit for many schemes introduced by his predecessor Ken Livingstone (the ‘Boris’ bikes and the Olympics spring to mind) or coming up with expensive white elephants like the barely used Emirates Cable Car. But you wouldn’t know this from the public perception, Johnson’s occasionally inspired sense of humour eliciting a ‘he may be a Tory, but he is funny’ reaction from many.

In fact, Johnson has been bone idle as mayor, merely carrying on or taking credit for many schemes introduced by his predecessor Ken Livingstone

Methinks were Johnson to fulfil his naked ambition of becoming Tory leader or even PM, the joke would wear thin pretty quickly. The Conservatives are beset with demographic problems – young people, ethnic minorities, LGBT people and Northerners just don’t like them – and it is hard to see how another old Etonian man with little understanding of people beyond the Home Counties would help. His populism may salve the threat of UKIP in the short term – but his tired robo-Tory opinions would hardly win over key demographics in the future.

But the most significant thing about Johnson standing for parliament is what it says about his view on Cameron’s hopes of retaining power. If Cameron were to win the election or stay as the largest party, he would survive as PM until he decided to give way to a continuity candidate such as George Osborne or Theresa May, as the Cameron project would have been vindicated. Johnson’s only chance of becoming leader is by serving as a break from that project – only viable in the case of a Tory defeat. Like the opinion polls, electoral arithmetic and pundits, Johnson appears to think this a likely outcome.

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Photo: flickr/BackBoris2012