Imagine it. Noon on a Wednesday, question number one Mr Speaker, order, order. All the pomp of prime minister’s questions centred on one man – arise prime minister Boris Johnson.
It’s a little fanciful to indulge in such political nonsense. And we’re at least four months away from silly season. That didn’t stop the Evening Standard on Monday from making the cheeky suggestion that Boris would not only win the London mayoral election, but that he just might go on to challenge George Osborne to a Conservative party leadership challenge when David Cameron steps down. Stranger things have happened, haven’t they?
By virtue of being a mayor at a time of one of the most unpopular Conservative governments of modern times, Boris should be tainted by association. He’s not. By virtue of presiding over a ludicrous fare increase, he should be ostracised in a capital city dependent on affordable transport. He’s not.
Boris has a bizarre approach to politics: apart from looking utterly absurd, he has political nous. He can squirm his way out of just about anything (he’s part of the Teflon Generation with the PM). He has, at this point in the mayoral campaign, a strong grip on the press, particularly the Standard. This election campaign is becoming his perfect Tory leadership training course.
The Labour party struggles with opponents such as Boris. Anything remotely unique about the campaign of the candidate on the other side of the ballot paper and the Labour party implodes. John Major in 1992 did the soapbox-man-of-the-people act and undermined Neil Kinnock holding a presidential rally. Cameron drove hard the opportunity of change in 2010 and Brown gave much the same stubborn image of the decade previous. When we did something different in 1997, with hope and purpose, we trounced Major’s Tories.
While it is of course far too early to even predict who will lead the Conservatives in a decade’s time, thought should be given to the approach we as a party take to ‘different’ politicians like Boris. His personal popularity is often paradoxical. Buffoon but competent. Dopey but intelligent. Tory but more in touch than his party leader. Ken might be some of those things, but he’s not all of them. They suit Boris so well because they work together and he is adaptable.
We can’t obviously choose their next leader. Nor should we pick our leader to match theirs. But we perhaps need that individualism; the unique personal side of our frontbench needs to shine. That is how you stay in touch with the public. The electorate couldn’t care less if Dave, Boris, Nick or Ed knew the price of a loaf of bread. But they do want personality mixed with politics; they want Blair in 1997, Cameron in 2010.
That means relaxing the tight control the leader’s office has over soundbites. It is getting increasing dull and frustrating to hear about the ‘out-of-touch Tory-led government’. It makes those on the doorstep or leafleting sound like another product churned out of the Westminster machine, and if voters aren’t listening to the same words from Ed or his top team they won’t be listening when I accost them in the street. If we want to champion localism through mayoral elections for our big cities we need to differentiate ourselves in the way Boris does.
I don’t want a party full of Boris-ites. I don’t want any Labour politician to be anywhere near the buffoonery he displays. But we could lighten up a bit, relax the grip on individuality. After all, as the otherwise unpalatable Andrew Gilligan said, ‘it is better to have a serious man being a buffoon than a buffoon pretending to be a serious man’.
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Alex White is a member of Progress, writes for the Young Progressives column, and tweets @AlexWhiteUK
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Some Tories (Macmillan and Heseltine in the past, Ken Clarke and Robert Halfon today) are empathetic enough to sympathise with the powerless. It’s usually the result of a personal trauma. In Clarke’s case, we know it was being roughed up by the police for no reason while at university.
As for localism, the metropolitan elite are going to have to start trusting the party in the provinces again. Yes you will end up with some nutters somewhere, and someone will say something stupid on a monthly basis. That’s the price.
Great quote from
Great quote there from Andrew Gilligan. And why exactly is he unpalatable? Nothing to do with his very effective reports on the unpalatable Ken Livingstone, surely?
“Unpalatable” Gilligan, because he is so blatantly partisan, and has the morals of a sewer rat. Just because you (and most of Progress) don’t like Ken, with whom Gilligan is absolutely obsessed.
We need to engage more effectively with the people on the street. We can only do that if we formulate a radical set of policies in order to oppose the attack upon public services. We are currently failing to resoante with voters becasue we don`t have the answers. We need to spend money on a radical house building programme in order to create cheap affordable housing in order to promote equal opportunity onto the propoerty ladder. We also need to create affordable housing within the inner cities as oppose to creating housing for higher earners. We should accept blame for the lack of affordable housing. We had thirteen years to formulate change and we failed to effectively deliver in regard to eradicating poverty and lack of opportunity.
Ken will lose the election because he has had the Conservative press – particularly the Evening , and sundry other media outlets gunning from him since day 1. Additionally, he has received lukewarm support from a wide range of the current leadership because of his previous history. I appears that you can leave the party, join a centre right party, and come back and all is forgiven. Had they got behind Ken, he might have stood a chance of winning. Oona King, who has never so much as run a whelk stall, stood no chance of winning. I get the impression that Progress and their supporters were quite happy to back someone who was bound to lose, rather than back Ken.