It was never meant to go this far…
Today’s Times has a lengthy but not particularly substantial article about the contest, and how Boris and co are already drawing up plans for his first month in office. (Presumably the plans will include working out how best to climb down on all the unachievable policies he’s been promising during the campaign.)
The last paragraph is quite revealing:
One person as surprised as anyone at the turn of events is Mr Johnson himself, if one account of a recent meeting with the Olympic Delivery Authority is to be believed. On being told that, on being elected, he would be expected to attend the closing ceremony and receive the flag for London, Mr Johnson is said to have worriedly consulted his diary before complaining: “But I’m in Tuscany that week!”
On reading that, I remembered something it’s easy to lose sight of amid the deeply worrying success Boris has had in the opinion polls, and the disturbing fact that he’s the clear favourite with the bookies to win.
The thing is, it wasn’t supposed to go like this: Boris was the Conservative party’s last choice for their Mayoral candidate, after they’d approached a large number of big names and begged them to be their candidate but been turned down. Only then did they turn to Boris, who in typical style spent several days giving out mixed messages about whether or not he would run before finally agreeing to do so.
He never imagined in his wildest nightmares that he’d ever actually have to do the job, though. His application form for the position of Conservative Mayoral candidate (leaked to the media last year, perhaps by a dismayed party worker worried about the damage he’d do to the party’s reputation!) looked like it had been dashed off in about five minutes. It included such useful answers as:
How much time could you give to the role of Conservative Mayoral candidate? Please be as specific as possible.
A great deal.
Basically the whole idea of standing for Mayor was just a big jolly wheeze. Since StopBoris.org launched we’ve heard from a number of people familiar with Boris who have seen how quickly he tires of things once they become serious tasks requiring proper, sustained attention. Perhaps a constant need to be excited by new and shiny things, discarding yesterday’s three-minute wonder at the first opportunity, is an endearing characteristic of an eccentric person, but it’s not endearing in someone aspiring to be Mayor of London, a job in which they’d be in it for the long haul.
Boris simply doesn’t have the dedication to tasks, the personality to get to grips with details and take large strategic decisions based on properly digested information, or the willingness to be constrained to a single job requiring serious hard work on pretty much every day for four years.
He would never have signed up for this candidacy if he’d realised it would go this far, and neither would his party, now frantically trying to surround him with enough officials to cushion him from doing the party damage (not so keen on ‘small government’ now, are you Boris?). Boris was in this for a few months of high-profile self-publicity, which is all he has ever been interested in.
So all things considered, it’s not surprising that he would have already booked a trip to Tuscany this summer, some time ago, on the assumption that he wouldn’t be Mayor. Let’s do everything we can to make sure he doesn’t have to cancel it.