Boris johnson

It’s the peak of the summer party season. Half a dozen events competed for the Westminster crowd last night. The bookies at Ladbrokes made themselves outsiders by holding their booze-up on a boat that cast off a tad too early in the evening. The Adam Smith Institute hosted a bash on the Thames, while a stuffy parliament office saw the Tory Awkward Squad raise a glass to David Davis. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Palace of Westminster, whisky cocktails flowed for the Ladies and Gentlemen of Her Majesty’s Loyal Press Corps, whose summer bash was sponsored by booze kings Diageo. In the quiet surroundings of Dean Yard, a stone’s throw

It is interesting enough that Boris Johnson has attacked high-speed rail in today’s Telegraph: the Mayor is undermining the priorities of the current government (while attacking Labour a little too), and reminding them that they are dithering on aviation policy. He warns that the project’s costs will balloon to well over £70 billion. But the Mayor makes one very important comment about the government machine that should not go unnoticed. He writes: Talk to the big construction firms, and they will tell you the problem is not the cost of actually digging and tunnelling and putting in cables and tracks. Those are apparently roughly the same wherever you are in

You remember the climax of Jaws — the primeval moment when Quint the crazed Ahab-like fisherman goes mano a mano with the monster of the deep? He comes to the rear of the listing boat and straps on a leather belt with a phallic protrusion: a metal receptacle into which he shoves the haft of his puny fishing rod. And you look at this terrifying mismatch between a man’s tackle and the might of nature, and you think, ‘How the hell is that going to work?’ Such were my feelings, amigos, on a blustery day in the Indian ocean when I realised I had a whopper on the line. ‘That

Even Boris can’t help the toxic Tories. That’s the upshot of Lord Ashcroft’s latest polling, which asked 8,000 people (including several focus groups outside of London) about what they think of the mayor. Although Boris Johnson is the country’s most loved politician, he is not the voters’, or even Conservatives’, top choice as prime minister. David Cameron remains the favourite at 33 per cent to Boris’ 29: Half of those polled said that if Johnson was leader of the Conservative party, it would ‘make no difference’ as to whether they were more or less likely to vote Conservative. This is a blow to the Cameron dissenters, who have always believed that Boris

Boris Johnson’s powers of persuasion have once again wooed George Osborne. In today’s spending review, the Chancellor has put aside £2 million to investigate Crossrail 2 — a new underground line for London. The fact the Mayor was able to bag another win from Osborne — Crossrail 1 was protected from funding cuts in 2010 — is testament to the political power of both the Mayor and the capital. Boris doesn’t even have re-election to think about this time. Crossrail 2 is key to Boris’ London legacy. His grand 2020 vision is peppered with references to the new line, which he claims is vital to London’s future and work could even begin

Boy, is Boris Johnson persuasive. Not for him the anodyne policy documents that anyone else in regional or central government prefers to produce. His 2020 Vision document, launched today, is brimming with the sort of wit and turn of phrase that he deploys in his speeches and broadcasts. It says a key part of the Olympic road network ‘turned out at the eleventh hour to be about as robust as a freshly dunked digestive biscuit’, says low standards of literacy and numeracy are ‘a melancholy fact’ and a ‘savage reproach’, and offers interesting but useless facts such as ‘the world’s first traffic light arrived at the House of Commons in

For the first time, David Cameron is trailing behind his party, according to the latest polling from Lord Ashcroft. Labour has long struggled with this problem, but as the charts below show, voters now also feel more favourable towards the Conservatives than they do to Cameron himself: The PM’s allies within the party have long argued he is their greatest electoral asset, and this would make any attempt at removing him a folly. Now this is no longer the case, the dissenters have a whole new round of ammunition to fire at the leadership. Cameron need not utterly despair — he’s still the preferred option to Miliband as Prime Minister

Hardly a day goes by these days without a story about Boris Johnson and the Tory leadership. Yesterday, it was Andy Coulson’s revelation that David Cameron believed Boris Johnson would be after his job once he’d been London Mayor. Today, it is The Economist talking about ‘Generation Boris’, the more libertarian inclined voters who the magazine suggests will sweep him to Downing Street in 2020. Now, for Cameron having as his main leadership rival someone who isn’t an MP is not actually that bad, however infuriating some in his circle might find the press and the party’s love affair with the London Mayor. What’s most striking about Boris, though, is

Boris Johnson is ‘absolutely increasingly confident’ that David Cameron will win in 2015. This was the Mayor’s attempt at responding to Andy Coulson’s suggestion that he’s desperate for the PM to fail so he can cycle in and save the party, a blond messiah. Attempt is perhaps the wrong word, as it suggests Boris made those remarks off the cuff when the Mayor gives every impression that he scripts each remark with as much care as he puts into his newspaper columns. He told 5 News’ Andy Bell: ‘I’m always grateful to Andy Coulson for his career advice but I’m backing David Cameron who I am absolutely increasingly confident is

Does David Cameron have a plan for dealing with the EU? In this week’s Spectator magazine, James Forsyth reveals that No.10 has little idea of how they will actually renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Europe. Cameron’s position risks dividing the Conservative party and pushing us automatically down the road to withdrawal. On the latest View form 22 podcast, Ukip leader Nigel Farage debates the Conservative MP Kris Hopkins on whether the Tories or Ukip are the party of progress on the EU. Are Ukip a party of policy or protest? How does Farage expect to do in the European elections? And will electorate rally round the Conservatives or continue to float

One consequence of the local elections is that no Tory now denies that they need to win over UKIP voters to win the next election. How to do that, though, remains a subject of intense debate — last night’s 1922 Committee meeting with Grant Shapps discussed this point and ran massively over as a result. A large part of Nigel Farage’s appeal is stylistic. He is a technicolour character compared to the monochrome politicians of Westminster. He paints in primary colours rather than shades of grey. Now, Cameron can’t, and shouldn’t, ape this. He is not that kind of politician and would look inauthentic if he tried to be. But

As I type this, pundits in London are stiffening themselves for the tough task of over-interpreting local election results and projecting wildly unrealistic forecasts for the next general election on the back of a mid-term election in which the electorate is of an entirely different type to that which will vote in 2015. It’s a grim job but someone has to do it and it’s better that it be done with enthusiasm than with any sense of proportion. Mercifully, my friend and former boss Iain Martin is not one of those types. Be that as it may, however, he has written a column for Friday’s Telegraph that is both typically