It has to be Boris

The government’s failings have hampered his campaign but he must prevail

A few weeks ago, Mich­ael Gove addressed a crowd of Tory activists in the basement of a London hotel. He wanted to disabuse them of what he regarded as a dangerous notion. The London mayoral election, he said, was not about Boris Johnson vs Ken Livingstone; the stakes were far higher than one man for one city. They had nationwide implications. This is a critical moment in the lifetime of parliament, he said, which will set the trajectory for the next few years — for good or for ill. The London election was one of these very rare ‘watershed binary moments’ for British politics as a whole.

The Education Secretary spelled out the two alternatives. ‘One is that we will be re-elected, Ed Miliband’s flailing leadership will receive another blow and Conservatism will have been affirmed in the greatest city in the world and we will be on course for a majority.