‘This is the Conservative party’s candidate for mayor of London?’ That was the first thought that ran through my head when I met Boris Johnson at the party’s annual conference last year in Blackpool, which I attended at the invitation of David Cameron. Boris certainly didn’t look or sound like a politician — but then again, neither did I when I first campaigned to become mayor of New York in 2001.
Back then, the pundits had a field-day lampooning my campaign. They said I was inexperienced, which was true. They said I was a walking verbal gaffe, which was no less true. And they said I had no chance of winning, which certainly seemed true.
But New Yorkers in 2001, as with Londoners in 2008, were more sophisticated than they were given credit for by the chattering class. In each case, voters looked beyond superficial tabloid stories and marked their ballots for the candidate they believed most capable of fresh leadership on a host of critical issues, including a struggling economy and the spectre of rising crime.
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