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[/audioplayer]Boris Johnson strides into the Uxbridge Conservative Club, asks after the barmaid’s health and sits down beneath a portrait of Margaret Thatcher. Churchill and Harold Macmillan are on the other walls. The room comes from the days when the Conservatives were not just a political party but a huge social network: a natural party of government. Times have changed, however. The Conservatives’ membership has dwindled and the party is in a desperate fight to hold on to power.
But Johnson is full of optimism. He assures everyone that this election is going to have a happy ending. He has a vision for Conservatism, too — one that has already enabled him to win twice in London, traditionally a Labour stronghold, and may be the party’s last best hope of a return to majority politics.
During the 2001 and 2005 elections, he was editor of The Spectator — which he described as being ‘by some margin the best job in London’.
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