Boris’ new recruits

The latest hire for Boris is Patience Wheatcroft, former Sunday Telegraph editor. She will lead a “forensic audit panel” into exactly what Mayor Ken got up to. The rest of the board are good people: Stephen Greenhalgh, leader of low-taxing Hammersmith Council, who will have a fair idea of where bodies are buried, and ditto Edward Lister, Leader of Wandsworth Council.

It may sound daft having a journalist lead this, but Wheatcroft’s appointment makes more sense than first meets the eye. I used to work for her when she was Business Editor at The Times and she specialised in taking company accounts to pieces. She had a rare gift for finding the story buried in the footnotes. 

When Boris was sworn in, he made a crack about “shredding machines quietly puffing and panting away” in City Hall. But as his detractors will rapidly come to realise in the coming few months, this was no joke.