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Tory bid to insulate Cameron from scandal
Joe Murphy, Political Editor07.07.08
Senior Conservatives are today holding an urgent review of the Ray Lewis affair in a bid to protect David Cameron from similar scandals if he wins power.
Former minister Francis Maude will chair talks with senior party officials and one of Boris Johnson's right hand men to learn lessons from the resignation of the deputy mayor.
This afternoon's talks will be held by the Implementation Unit, headed by Mr Maude and tasked with preparations for the first Conservative administration since 1997. Its job is to ensure Team Cameron is trained to handle the levers of power and to avoid banana skins in the first few weeks in office.
Mr Maude's deputy, Nicholas Boles, who encouraged Mr Johnson to appoint the charismatic black youth leader, is expected to give a presentation on what went wrong.
Team Boris's takeover of City Hall was seen as a test bed for Mr Cameron's first 100 days in Government, with vital lessons to be learned. Mr Boles was seconded to manage the launch and report back.
The Ray Lewis affair is seen as having exposed poor preparations. According to MPs and party officials, the main errors include omitting to check Ray Lewis's background thoroughly, failing to anticipate intense media scrutiny, and terrible handling of media allegations, in particular putting Mr Lewis in front of the cameras where he ended up talking himself into deeper trouble.
Mr Maude is facing questions over his role as he is a trustee of Lewis's Eastside Young Leaders Academy. A spokesman for Mr Maude said he had not know about the allegations and his involvement with the academy is "decreasing".
The spokesman added: "There will be lessons learned but we need time to reflect on Nick's City Hall experiences."
One London Tory source said: "The appointments process has been a mess. The worrying thing is that Nick's going back to Central Office to do exactly the same thing there for David Cameron."
Mr Boles has admitted mistakes, saying on Friday the appointment was made "in a bit of a rush".
But one Tory MP said: "Boris was right to bring outside experts in and should not be blamed because one turned out to be an embarrassment. Look at the problems Gordon Brown has with his GOATs [Government of all the talents]."
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Reader views (4)
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But you can blame Boris and his organisation for not doing proper security checks. You can also blame Ray Lewis for being less than straightforward about his past record.
Two down, how many to go?
- Celia Blair, London
Boris was confirmed as the Tory mayoral candidate last year so talking about appointments made in a rush either shows how incompetent the Tories are or how they felt about his success against Ken Livingstone.
The main problem was how they were allowed to get away without naming the people who would support Boris and therefore avoid the media finding out any past histories.
The post of mayor of London is based on the system used in America and we need to adopt the system where candidates build and name their teams ahead of the election.
As for David Cameron well just goes to show how easy it is to fool him.
I and no doubt millions of Londoners are enjoying every minute of the disaster that is "Boris Johnson" its a pity the standards board cant be brought in?
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex
...but of course this is what comes when Tory Central Office is effectively blundering about working the strings behind the scenes...and unfortunately this type of chaos simply enables any new Labour leader to brand the Tories at the next General Election as incapable of running anything serious. It's early days of course, but from my experiences of City Hall when I was an Assembly Member, any crashing about by Westminster party machines led to problems - above all, the interference always betrays how little any of the parties (particularly Labour and the Tories) actually understand how the system operates...whether it be the actual powers of the body, the way it operates and where the hidden traps lie. And oddly, they really do not understand the nature of the London media and its importance in instant reporting of issues like this.
- Damian Hockney, London, UK
