London mayor

Given that Zac Goldsmith once likened the possibility of himself running for City Hall to ‘a suicide mission‘, it comes as little surprise that not everyone in the Tory camp is ecstatic about the Richmond Park MP’s rumoured London mayoral bid. Mr S understands that there are concerns that after Labour increased its control of the capital in the general election, the Old Etonian, who is currently the odds-on favourite to be the Conservative candidate, may be viewed as too posh to appeal to the more diverse London boroughs. As a result, Steerpike hears that there is growing support in the Conservative camp for Syed Kamall to go for the top job. As the working-class

With Ivan Massow currently vying to be the next Mayor of London, the businessman released a campaign video this week explaining who he is and why he is running. In the video, he claimed that he was an unlikely candidate for mayor given that he is gay, dyslexic and an ex-alcoholic. While he’s putting it all out there, Mr S thinks it might be worth mentioning that Massow also boasts an impressive collection of erotic art. Joan Collins recently mentioned it when recounting to The Spectator a meal she attended at Massow’s home to celebrate her Damehood: ‘That evening our future mayoral hopeful Ivan Massow threw a grand kitchen supper in his house where,

This week Sol Campbell was named as a bookies’ favourite to be the next Tory candidate for Kensington after Sir Malcolm Rifkind stepped down following a cash for access scandal. While Rifkind’s resignation has sparked a debate over whether MPs should be allowed to have second jobs, the former Arsenal footballer thinks there is a simple solution. When Mr S caught up with Campbell at the 6th anniversary Amos Bursary dinner at the House of Lords to raise funds to help African and Caribbean British young men realise their ambitions, Campbell said MP salaries should be increased to over £67,000. ‘They should raise the salary, then you would have more diverse candidates,’ he told Mr S. However, Campbell shouldn’t have to worry too much

Shocking news belatedly reaches me that the Labour MP Margaret Hodge has pulled out of the race to become the next Mayor of London. I am not sure how London will cope without this colossus, but there we are. She said: ‘I actually think the time is right for us to have a non-white mayor.’ Oh, DO you, actually? Is it possible to be more patronising than this? Why does the colour of a candidate’s skin matter one toss, you privately-educated, minted offspring of a multi-millionaire? It may well be that the best Labour candidate for mayor – David Lammy – happens to be black. But to suggest one should

The 2012 London mayoral election may barely have finished, but already there’s speculation as to who might run — and win — in 2016. The current favourite is Boris — despite suggestions that he’ll be back in Parliament with his sights set on the Tory leadership by then. And the second favourite? It was David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham who was tipped as a potential 2012 candidate and has hinted that he might be interested next time. But today he’s been overtaken — in the eyes of bookies Paddy Power at least — by another Johnson who’s hosted Have I Got News for You: Labour’s Alan Johnson. This

Yesterday evening, I was at City Hall in London to watch the Mayoral proceedings unfold. While the evening delivered the expected result of a Boris victory — incidentally, YouGov was the most accurate pollster once again, with Peter Kellner calling 52 vs 48 to Boris at 7:30pm — it was a tense affair. Missing ballot boxes and broken counting machines in Brent and Harrow delayed the final announcement until nearly midnight. Amid the confusion, I managed to speak to Dan Hodges, Blairite blogger with the Telegraph, who said early on he still believed that Boris would prevail and discussed Ed Miliband’s egging in Southampton. The LSE’s London election expert Tony

Boris Johnson’s victory in London is a remarkable achievement. He has won re-election in a Labour-inclined city against the backdrop of a Tory-led government making cuts and a country in recession. He has defied the national trend and, indeed, the trend in the capital itself given the results in the assembly elections. This triumph proves his vote-winning credentials in a way that his victory four years ago, secured in very favourable circumstances (Labour was in a poor state as Gordon Brown stumbled from disaster to disaster), did not. In Downing Street, there’s relief that Boris made it over the line; a Labour victory in London would have made this undeniably

Here, CoffeeHousers, is this week’s episode of The View from 22 podcast. In this episode, Leah McLaren returns to the Spectator a decade on from her infamous cover story attacking British men to explain how she’s now fallen in love with one (0:30). James Forsyth and Neil O’Brien from Policy Exchange examine the Tories’ lack of progress in the North (6:48) and how elected Mayors will help. Fraser joins in for a discussion of today’s local elections and why Labour has the most at stake (16:10). You can listen below with the embedded player or subscribe through iTunes. As ever, we’d love to hear what you think, good or bad. 

As we enter the final stretch of the campaign for London Mayor, YouGov have a new poll putting Boris four points ahead of Ken. It’s a touch better for the blue team than the 2 point lead YouGov found last week, but not as comfortable as the 8- and 10-point leads shown by ComRes and Survation respectively. Despite dropping a bit further behind Boris, Ken does not seem to be suffering from Labour supporters turning their backs on him. Indeed, he now gets 92 per cent of those Labour general election voters who express a preference between him and Boris — the highest level of party loyalty YouGov have found

Boris Johnson has granted a killer interview to the Sunday Telegraph, where he has unleashed a full-on strike against government. Such a move is calculated to draw a distinction between Boris and the flailing government. The most notable attack is saved for his arch-rival — the chancellor — and the upcoming battle(s) he would face upon re-election: ‘We’ve saved Crossrail from the jaws of death – aka George Osborne….I don’t mind having a row in Whitehall, I don’t mind how much plaster comes off the ceiling, providing it’s done in a robust and sensible way and London gets the money it needs.’ Boris does not go easy on the rest