Monsieur de Parris*
The Times writer and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris writes about Boris in Thursday’s newspaper, and it’s really quite wonderfully damning:
Boris Johnson’s new, sobersided persona is working well; but happily there does remain the frisson of watching a man apparently dipping into a mental bran tub as he speaks, as mystified as the rest of us to know what bauble of opinion or information he may come up with next.
And (having been one of Mr Johnson’s stable of writers when he was editor of The Spectator) I must challenge Ken Livingstone’s complaint that as former editor of a small right-wing magazine, the only administrative decision Mr Johnson ever took was choosing a restaurant for lunch.
This paints an exaggeratedly hands-on picture of the Boris management style. His secretary did that kind of thing. You were just lucky if Boris came to the lunch.
As he says, he should know, he was there.
So don’t fall for any of this stuff about Boris having great management experience and expertise. It’s all utter nonsense, as it seems anyone who’s worked with him (and isn’t desperate for him to become Mayor, so keeping quiet) will acknowledge.
* Chambers Dictionary informs me that Monsieur de Paris is a euphemism for the public executioner (at the time of the French Revolution). Since these paragraphs amount to a public execution of Boris’s fantasies about having a managerial reputation, it seemed appropriate.