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Tory candidate Boris: King Newt's days as Mayor are numbered
Ross Lydall, Evening Standard27.09.07
Boris Johnson today won the Tory nomination to take on Ken Livingstone and promised to restore "common sense government" to London.
He taunted the Mayor with the warning that "King Newt's days are numbered" - a reference to Mr Livingstone's love of amphibians - and vowed to work constructively with the boroughs to solve the capital's problems.
He was hailed by Conservative leader David Cameron as a "great and inspiring candidate" after winning almost 80 per cent of the 20,000 votes cast for the Tory nomination.
Mr Cameron said: "I have known Boris for a couple of years and underneath that sometimes dishevelled exterior is someone with real drive, real passion, real commitment, who really understands the problems that Londoners have.
"Boris, I think, has a huge chance to give the people of London the sort of inspiring leadership they want and need and, above all, to bring people together in London."
Mr Johnson was confirmed as the party's candidate this morning after a Londonwide postal ballot in which around 19,000 Tories and 1,000 non-members voted.
He received 15,661 votes, compared with 1,869 for Kensington and Chelsea councillor Victoria Borwick, 1,674 for Hackney activist Andrew Boff and 609 for Warwick Lightfoot, another Kensington and Chelsea councillor. There were 206 spoiled votes.
Bookmaker William Hill cut Mr Johnson's odds to evens. But Mr Livingstone remains the 4/5 favourite, while former Met Commander Brian Paddick, the expected Liberal Democrat candidate, is a 14/1 outsider.
Mr Johnson greeted the announcement with a photocall outside Tory HQ at Millbank with Mr Cameron and his campaign bus - a battered old Routemaster which he has promised to return to London's streets in a modernised form to replace bendy buses.
He said he had already been on a "magical mystery tour" of London's 33 boroughs and pledged to "work with all the talent and expertise in the London boroughs." This, he said, contrasted with the "civil war" Mr Livingstone was waging with the boroughs in seeking to overrule them over housing and planning.
Mr Johnson made the provision of affordable housing a key plank of his campaign, vowing not to build "rabbit hutch dwellings" in back gardens but homes of which residents would be proud in 100 years. In a clear policy difference with Mr Livingstone, he said shared ownership schemes were the best way to help people take their first step on the property ladder.
The Mayor, by contrast, wants to use public funds to offer subsidies to developers to encourage them to build more homes to increase the overall supply.
