The Metropolis

Never Mind The Boris: Mayor of London is more of a centrist than he lets on

Adam Bienkov | Saturday 15 May, 2010 15:28

When Boris Johnson was elected as Mayor of London, the Conservatives saw it as the beginning of a new blue dawn. From the top floor of City Hall, Boris would shine out as a sign of just what the party could do when it gained power.

Yet when dawn broke after the election, the scene was nothing like what he may have expected.

In fact far from being greeted by unbroken blue, he was faced with a scene, which, in many respects was brighter red than before.

In local authorities across the city Labour had been swept back to power. In Brent, Camden, Ealing, Enfield, Harrow, Hounslow, Islington, Southwark and Waltham Forest Councils, voters turned out to hand control back to the Labour party.

In every borough but one Labour regained seats, reducing Conservative and Lib Dem majorities and pushing councils into no overall control.

The Conservatives made some small gains against a deflated Lib Dem showing in the South West, but otherwise the picture was of Tory losses across the board.

And while the Conservatives did take a number of parliamentary seats, the key targets that David Cameron needed for a majority were denied him.
‘A-listers’ who Boris had campaigned alongside, including Joanne Cash, Shaun Bailey, Phillippa Stroud and David Gold were all denied the seats the bookies and pundits had told them were theirs.

So while nationally the Conservative party made huge gains, in London voters remain far from convinced. In fact in Parliament a national swing to the Tories of 5% was converted to a London-wide swing of just 2.5%.

“It was Boris wot lost it” jeered Labour activists as many pundits claimed that London had denied Cameron the overall majority he needed to win.

The Mayor too was typically self-effacing, telling every news outlet who would listen that “this has not been a triumph.”

Yet Boris’s deference was tactically smart. As last week’s election results show, London remains a broadly progressive city and any Mayor who rules it must rule accordingly.

For a smart politician like Boris, this means governing well to the left of his own instincts. So while in his Telegraph columns he rallies against political correctness and the public sector, as Mayor he is a much more centrist and occasionally left-wing figure.

His support for an immigrant amnesty, the living wage and multicultural festivals are all well to the left of his own party.

And while the day after the election Dave, Nick and Gordon were busy negotiating power, Boris was busy exercising it. And for Boris, his first exercise was to ‘nationalise’ the failed private company Tubelines.

For many Conservative London Assembly members the existence of this “Red Boris” alter ego has long been hard to accept. But for a politician trying to keep power in a progressive city it is a mould that he has to take on or fail.

Of course the dire national finances means that Boris will face huge budget shortfalls in the years to come. For Londoners this will inevitably mean higher fares, worse front line services and bigger strains on London’s “big society.”

How the Mayor chooses to share out those shortfalls will determine how he is seen by the electorate in two years time and whether he will face the same fate that so many Conservative councillors faced last week.

These would be big decisions for any politician, but for Boris they could decide whether he rises up to bigger success on the national stage, or falls down into history as a failed one-term Mayor.

This is not the position Boris expected to be in when he took the keys to City Hall two years ago.

But if he can find no way of stemming the Labour surge, then he will be handing back the keys far sooner than he had thought.

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