Morning:
14°c
Consider exhibit A. Charismatic London Mayor, open to charges of cliquishness, beset by dodgy aides, personally ambitious, not to say egotistical, preaching grand visions while raising the Tube and bus fares for Londoners. He loves the congestion charge, tries to wring a clear Crossrail commitment out of government and is engaged in permanent feuds with his own party. Mayor Ken Livingstone: we knew you well.
And now for exhibit B. After the election that so decisively threw out Mr Livingstone, London is in the hands of an eerily familiar figure, the Borisken. A mere change of party label makes very little difference. We look from man to pig and shake our heads in wonder.
The capital still has a Mayor whose personality and self-belief are dominant characteristics of the City Hall reign. No change there then. Mr Johnson has had no fewer than three deputy mayors; a key aide had to go over a race row and an Olympics adviser for failure of transparency. Now the Borisken is in hot water over some of his public appointments too. Plus ça change.
The gap between manifesto and day job widen by the month. He arrived pledging the annihilation of the western zone congestion charge, then had to keep it on revenue grounds (might he not have foreseen this?). As in Mr Livingstone's fiefdom, it's the rest of us who pay when reality bites: painful fare rises are in store. Meanwhile, he takes on his own party with show-stopping speeches, effectively laying out a "real Tory" alternative to David Cameron, just as our Ken never stopped peddling the spectre of a reborn "real Labour" against the pragmatism of Tony Blair.
Oh, and neither has dealt with the real bugbear of London, the random inconvenience of road works conducted solely on timetables that suit the utilities companies, not the rest of us trying to get around the city. Mr Johnson tells us he is "working flat out" to banish the curse of lane closures. I feel a Borisken frisson when he says this because it reminds me of his predecessor saying exactly the same thing. And still we wait.
Indeed, if the Mayor's ardent fans look at his prospectus, quite a lot of it has fallen by the wayside. He stood on stopping Mr Livingstone's obsession with tall buildings pushed by developers. Mr Johnson has just approved a disputed 63-storey new tower in the East End.
It was truly unlucky to lose Ray Lewis, the deputy mayor who could have given real shape to his plans to help London's underclass young men. But with the personally flawed Mr Lewis went much of the energy of this pledge, and it has never been recovered.
Nowadays, much of Boris's attention seems to go into calculating how to annoy Camp Cameron by flouting many of the party leader's nostrums on tax and Europe in public. "La vendetta è un piatto che va mangiato freddo," texted Nick Boles, a Dave loyalist, showing that Mr Johnson is not the only one with a grasp of languages. Vengeance would apparently be served cold but plentifully when the Tories are in power. Mr Boles, of course, was to be the Tory candidate, till Mr Cameron showed his steel and Boris rightfully won the job.
I don't think anyone could argue he doesn't fill it. He has real presence and he is, outside the Left and the Dave-ites, genuinely well liked in London, which is a key part of a successful mayoralty.
The tone in which senior Tory frontbenchers talk about him ("Deeply annoying as he is, we have to keep him on side ...") is eerily reminiscent of Labour's strife with Ken. Both parties recognise the popular appeal of their own renegades. At the same time, they see them as self-obsessed pests, too close for the leadership's comfort to what the unreconstructed party ranks think.
I do, however, think Mr Johnson has a problem in defining what his mayoralty is about. He campaigned on crime and fear of crime but in his conference speech, the main achievement he could boast was stopping policemen patrolling in pairs (as far as I can make out, a hell of a lot still do).
There were stirring promises to do more at local level to raise educational attainment. I'm sure the Mayor can send me details of lots of projects to reassure us these are happening (as could Ken). But it doesn't feel as if Mr Johnson's considerable weight and enthusiasm is actively behind it, which is a shame, as he is a natural and unstuffy advocate of learning and should be its populariser.
Indeed, what is he really backing, other than the bankers, where his passion for the wealth-creators could not be clearer or more stripped of any inkling of criticism? At heart, he is a calculating man, like many who adopt the externalities of benign buffoonery. He believes strongly in London as a place where the wealthy should stay on preferential terms and be given the benefit of the doubt. In return, he hopes to keep wayward financial giants from wandering off abroad - and to siphon off money for his Mayor's Fund into the needier corners of the capital.
This approach is modelled on the New York reign of Michael Bloomberg, who is running for re-election in a campaign dominated by arguments about his easy-going ways with the wealthy. But the New York mayor's managerial skills are superior to our homegrown version, his core beliefs and causes better defined and more consistently pursued.
Mr Johnson's young team, though keen and presentable, lacks policy weight and experience and can come across as slight. So far, the one really big idea to emerge from the mulch of City Hall and its arguments about cycle paths is "Boris airport": the relocation of London's main airport to the Thames Estuary. It is based on the assumption that, despite Mr Cameron's pitch for the eco-vote, there will be air-capacity expansion under the Tories. I'm pretty sure this will be the case. So the idea may not be as silly as many think. Alas, the Mayor has no clear notion where the funding will come from. Neither has anyone else.
Let us part Boris from his airport for a few years, then, and try to find him something else to do. This is, very likely, a two-term mayoralty, since Mr Livingstone's faith in his own comeback skills must be balanced against the cruel fact that he may be past his vote-by date. Labour so far shows no sign of raising any credible alternative candidate.
There is one striking difference between Ken and Boris which is crucial. The old mayor was wrongheaded but you couldn't doubt what he wanted. His successor is a fascinating but more puzzling and elusive creature. I wonder what the Borisken is really all about.
Reader views (7)
There are three major differences between Ken and Boris, though.
Firstly, Ken is a workaholic; he brought about a huge number of projects across a vast range of areas of life, from transport to race relations. Boris seems to be scrapping most of that - he simply is not prepared to put the same commitment and hard work in.
The second difference is that Ken brought benefits to the masses while Boris looks after his banker friends first. Scrapping the higher-rate congestion charge for the most polluting cars while replacing 70-seat bendy buses with almost seatless minibuses is just one example.
Finally, Boris lacks the vision Ken had. Ken started energetically with reforms such as the congestion charge; but they always were merely a first step towards a higher goal - a concept of a city that would be sustainable in every respect. Boris, sadly, does not seem capable of long-term strategic planning of similar caliber. He'll meddle through for his four years; but the people who voted the buffoon in for a joke, already now don't find him very funny any more.
- Gerhard Bissels, Mitcham, Surrey
And now for exhibit B. After the election that so decisively threw out Mr Livingstone, London is in the hands of an eerily familiar figure, the Borisken. A mere change of party label makes very little difference. We look from man to pig and shake our heads in wonder.
It looks like Anne failed to check the Mayoral Election result when she wrote this piece:-
Mayoral Result
Boris Johnson - 1,168,738
Ken Livingstone - 1,028,966
Majority - 139,772
If Anne thinks this is a decisive victory able to last 2 terms then she is deluded as those who belived Boris!
There have already been many people who have written on this site saying he has let them down both in his failure to remove the WEZ and now Artic buses have been removed passengers are finding his seatless sardine cans mean they are back to standing on wet pavements in rush hour while outside rush hour these buses run almost empty and waste millions of pounds extra in running empty buses.
The unnessary fare rises to make up for his failure to extend the LEZ and removal of WEZ show how he is only interested in small cliques and has no interest in real londoners who struggle to pay fares at a time when wages are stagnent.
Boris had a choice on fares and has chosen to hit the poor so he can pay back his old school chums in their rolls royces in west london.
The fact is had Boris been properly held to account before the election he would never have been elected!!!
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex (ex Islington ec1)
Maybe he is, but at least he isn't Ken. Amen to that.
- Nobby Clark, Perth, the Scottish one
Very astute and humourous article!
Funnily enough I was thinking about this exact theory when listening to Ken Livingstone on the radio recently.
As someone who campaigned vociferously amongst young voters and my local community for Boris to become Mayor, I am beginning to become very annoyed and disheartened that he is reneging on his major manifesto pledges which differentiated him from Red Ken - namely scrapping the Western Congestion Zone and protecting London's amazing skyline.
Boris - PLEASE listen to the people who voted you in and stop morphing back into Ken Livingstone!
- Anon Pc, London Compound,Londongrad,EUSSR
Wonderful, a politically astute writer at the Standard.
This article says what is on every Londoner's mind. People do not want the policies of Ken that is way he is gone. Nor do they want someone who panders to the City at the expense of Londoners. No one will vote for Boris aka Ken again but come the next election, will Londoners who vote get more of the same? If so, what kind of democracy gives voters the same person whichever way they vote?
- Val Keller, London UK
Let's not forget, though, that people still actually like Boris and trust him to do a good job whilst at the same time putting a smile rather than a scowl on the face of Londoners.
- St, London
Boris is just waiting for the mid-point of the next Tory Government when total failure to mend the broken economy and the rest of broken Britain causes the Tory Party to dump Cameron and look for a new leader untainted by the Cameron Experiment.
- D Dare, Kenton England
