Boris’s dream team
For most of the campaign, Dave Hill has been pressing repeatedly for Boris to name the key members of his team if he becomes Mayor, so that people can better judge whether or not he will be sufficiently cosseted by advisers for his managerial incompetence not to be too damaging.
Sadly Boris waited for Dave to go on holiday this week, then on Tuesday finally did announce one person:
A city banker who earned £36m last year will become the first member of Boris Johnson’s team if the Tory is elected mayor of London on May 1. Bob Diamond, who runs Barclays Bank’s investment banking arm
The thing is, this announcement completely negates Boris’s previous claim that he would ‘definitely not’ be naming his team prior to the election (as it would be ‘presumptuous’). By naming one member of the team, he has completely broken his word (hardly a new experience) on this.
Most interesting, though, is the fact that he has gone back on his pledge to keep quiet while only actually naming one member of what would be a large team.
Reading between the lines, what this suggests is that the real story is that for all the time Dave and others have been calling for him to name his team, Boris simply hasn’t been able to find anyone willing to commit to supporting (or rather doing all the work for) a renowned incompetent. So as soon as Mr. Diamond agreed to help, the team were so excited and astounded that they forgot their previous promise not to reveal anyone – despite its most recent airing being only the previous evening at a BBC London debate which didn’t even air until after Diamond’s involvement was announced.
And of course the obvious corollary of this interpretation of the situation is that Bob Diamond is the only person who has so far agreed to be in his team.
He certainly has a dream team all right: that’s ‘dream’ as in ‘imagined, hoped-for fantasy’.