Boris’s critics are only making him stronger

If, as expected, Boris Johnson heads off to Buckingham Palace next Wednesday to become Prime Minister, I fear that a fleet of ambulances may be required at the Guardian’s headquarters in King’s Cross – as the newspaper’s collective Boris Derangement Syndrome moves into its final, and possibly terminal, phase. All week the Guardian has been running ever-more desperate stuff in its final attempt to dissuade Tory members from voting for Boris – which looks like being as successful as its appeal for readers to write heartfelt letters to US citizens, imploring them not to vote for George W Bush in the 2004 US Presidential election.

Among it all there’s inevitably some material which genuinely does count against Boris – his taste for vanity projects like the Routemaster bus and the Garden Bridge, or his infamous, horrible conversation with Darius Guppy. But the trouble with running an unrelenting hatchet job on Boris, or indeed anyone, is that you end up scraping material which actually puts them in a good light.