The Spectator’s Notes | 12 July 2008

It is probably just as well that the Ray Lewis fiasco happened to Boris Johnson as Mayor, because otherwise it might have happened to David Cameron as Prime Minister. As soon as he became Conservative leader, Mr Cameron went round to see Mr Lewis’s Eastside Young Leaders Academy. It was a token of his seriousness about healing the ‘broken society’. If Mr Lewis had been made captain of the flagship special programme of a new Cameron administration, it would have been embarrassing. It is obviously true that more ‘due diligence’ (not a phrase once associates with Boris) should have been done on Mr Lewis. But there are some less obvious points as well. One is that the London Mayoralty is unlike anything we in Britain are used to because it is a huge enterprise consisting of only one elected person. The mayor’s cohorts do not emerge through the testing of the democratic process.