8 Oct 2012 10:37:03

Will Boris blow a hole through the middle of the conference planners' grid?

By Paul Goodman
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The main aim of the party conference planners is to keep their grid undented.  Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't.  Last year they did: with the exception of the row about a cat (you remember: whether or not the ownership of one contributed to a deportation decision), everything went more or less to order.  The year before they didn't: the first few days of the conference were knocked off-balance by the row about George Osborne's plan to withdraw child benefit from some better-off parents.

So far this year the planners are getting their way in Birmingham - nothing emerged yesterday to steal the limelight from Grant Shapps's and William Hague's twin assault on Ed Miliband - but a problem looms for them: Boris.  The Mayor of London has the potential not so much to dent their grid as to blow a hole right through the middle of it.  Last year and pre-budget, his naked desire for the leadership and the premiership had less potential to do this.  This year is different, and I list briefly below some of the main moments to watch for.

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8 Oct 2012 06:40:20

Could this be the Tory Cabinet of 2020? Boris as PM and the Class of 2010 holding most of the big briefs...

By Tim Montgomerie
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Please click on the image to enlarge.

The Conservatives meet in Birmingham after a very difficult summer. Deficit reduction is behind schedule. The boundary review has collapsed. After a better-than-expected speech, Ed Miliband may not be the unelectable Labour leader that Tories had hoped. A ConservativeHome poll finds exactly half of Tory members satisfied with David Cameron’s performance but a whopping 49% dissatisfied.

The party may yet recover in time for 2015. The economy should be stronger by then. Additionally, Mr Miliband is still on the wrong side of public opinion on immigration, crime and welfare. He still has no plan for the deficit, making him vulnerable to a 1992-style tax bombshell attack. Just for today, however, I don’t want to dwell on the immediate future but to look much further ahead and give every Conservative-minded reader some causes for hope. Let’s journey to 2020 and imagine what a Conservative Cabinet might look like in the post-Cameron era.

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4 Oct 2012 13:48:53

Boris attacks the Government's "lamentable" airport plans, which could cause an "economic catastrophe"

By Matthew Barrett
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Boris Johnson has lobbed another grenade at the Government this afternoon, in a speech to aviation experts at City Hall. The Mayor criticised the Government's Heathrow plans (as if Patrick McLoughlin wasn't dealing with enough at the moment) as being "lamentable" and setting Britain on a course for "economic catastrophe". A section of the speech released to the press said:

"The Government programme to address the looming aviation capacity crunch in the UK is far too slow and I am hugely concerned that their intended timetable sets a course for economic catastrophe. This continued inertia is being fully exploited by our European rivals who already possess mega hub airports that they intend to use to erode our advantage. I will continue to work with the Government and the Davies Commission; but the urgency of the situation and the lamentable attention that the Government has paid to this pressing issue has forced me to accelerate the work that I will do to develop a credible solution.”

It's worth noting two things. The first is that this speech is unlikely to have been thought up over the last 48 hours, and so his comments are probably badly timed rather than calculated criticism to add to the Government's transport worries. The second thing to note is that instead of simply calling the Government's behaviour "lamentable", the BBC's Chris Mason tweeted that Boris actually used the words "lamentable, blind and complacent". That certainly would suggest a ramping up of the level of criticism.

The timing of it is all rather unhelpful. One can see Boris' point of view: on a basic level, the Heathrow runway is not the right road to go down (what happens when the "unashamedly pro-growth" crew demand a fourth runway?), and on a political level it would alienate plenty of the Tory voters Boris, or any Conservative in London or the country at large, needs to be re-elected). But did he have to say it all so close to the beginning of Conservative conference?

27 Sep 2012 14:42:32

New Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin insists he is "open-minded" about third Heathrow runway

By Matthew Barrett
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Until the reshuffle, Patrick McLoughlin had been a whip for 15 years, serving six leaders, and two Prime Ministers - which explains why his media appearances have been few and far between. In his first big interview since being appointed Secretary of State for Transport, Mr McLoughlin has denied being appointed simply to see a third runway through, and insists he is "open-minded".

The first point of interest in Mr McLoughlin's interview with the Evening Standard is the news that Boris Johnson's omnipresence continues - he has seemingly extended his powers over transport in London:

"He has already had London’s Mayor lobbying him. “I was talking to him this morning and we agreed to set up a working party between the department and the Mayor to look at some of the transport issues he wants to develop. So, I look forward to having a good relationship with Boris.” Officials from City Hall and the Department of Transport will meet regularly under the plan, giving the Mayor a formal input into the Whitehall machine, though it is not the devolution that Mr Johnson really wants."

The second, and major, point of interest is his declaration of being open to different options for airport expansion:

"Mr McLoughlin insists he is open-minded and asks people to trust the independent commission headed by Sir Howard Davies, set up to review aviation policy. “I’m not going to say what it should do. But I hope people will see it as a very serious piece of work. It will look at all the options, be it Boris’s scheme, the Foster scheme, and others, and hopefully people will come to accept and respect it.”"

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27 Sep 2012 08:26:24

Boris Johnson leads Conservative resistance against Clegg's mansion taxes

By Matthew Barrett
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"Boris isn’t shy about lobbing grenades across the political landscape", as my colleague Peter Hoskin noted earlier this week. Sometimes he seems to want to cause controversy, sometimes he seems to want to grab attention - and sometimes, as Tory activists admire him for, he says what senior Conservatives cannot.

The Daily Telegraph reports that the Mayor of London has called Nick Clegg’s mansion tax plans "a non-starter [and] he knows it". That's not particularly incendiary by his standards, but it is the first big intervention on the mansion tax after an oddly mute few days on the issue from senior Tories, including David Cameron, and it will annoy the Treasury, who the Telegraph say are working on plans for the new tax. Mr Johnson's full quote is:

"I like Nick Clegg but he can’t be serious. These proposals are a non-starter. He knows it. I know it. The idea of a mansion tax is crazy. The idea of a mansion tax by the back door through vastly inflated council tax bills is nonsense. These taxes will disproportionately hit London and Londoners, penalising people simply because of circumstance, trapping people who in many cases are cash poor. London is the motor of the UK economy; kicking it hard makes no sense at all."

Mr Johnson is likely to have four factors playing on his mind when he made those comments. Firstly, he will know the strength of feeling amongst some senior Tories. The Telegraph names Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (who will presumably have some responsibility for administering the policy), and Grant Shapps, the new Chairman, as opponents of the policy so far.

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25 Sep 2012 15:28:26

Boris weighs in on the Mitchell story

By Peter Hoskin
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Boris isn’t shy about lobbing grenades across the political landscape, is he? Yesterday there was his column for the Telegraph, which urged Conservatives to get behind Nick Clegg — “if you leave out Europe, he is probably a natural Tory” — but which was probably as welcome as a face-full of shrapnel for the Lib Dem leader. And now, today, there are his comments about the Mitchell affair, which are similarly combustive. According to a photographer on the scene, Boris said that he is “very glad to see the police proposed to arrest Andrew Mitchell”.

The Mayor of London has since diluted his remarks, but only slightly. In an exchange with ITV’s London Tonight programme, he has said the following:

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16 Sep 2012 09:58:25

Sir John Major whispers what Downing Street is saying privately -- a slow recovery is underway

By Tim Montgomerie
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John Major was the main guest on this morning's Andrew Marr show and his interview was notable for five main things...

First, he suggested that economic recovery was probably underway. Twenty years ago Norman Lamont said that the green shoots of recovery were emerging and he was shot down for saying so. But, said Sir John, he was right. Today, he suggested, it was also probably true: "Recovery begins from the darkest moment. I am not sure but I think we have passed the darkest moment." The former PM pointed to employment and manufacturing data that suggested Britain had turned the corner, as did stock market sentiment. The recovery would be slow, he continued, but it was underway. This was Lord Bates' argument this time, last week, on ConHome.Downing street thinks the same but won't say so until there's a lot more data in. What they can't work out is whether economic recovery will lead to political recovery. Will the return of a modest feel good factor overwhelm the pain of difficult cuts?

Second, Major urged the Conservative Party to unite behind David Cameron. There is, he said, an "inevitability" about division and leadership speculation in politics. For the last thirty years the Conservative Party has been divided in different ways - first between economic wets and dries and then, in the 1990s, over Europe. “If the Conservative Party has learnt anything," Sir John told Andrew Marr, "it’s that regicide is not a good idea.” The man who benefitted from Lady Thatcher's "regicide" and went on to win the 1992 election as a result, praised the Mayor of London as an "attractive, able" politician who is "doing a supremely good job". Boris Johnson is not in parliament, however, and keeps saying he has no intention of challenging David Cameron. People talking of a leadership challenge were filling newspapers but weren't living "in the real world". The party, Sir John said, needed to remember that "disunity costs votes".

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12 Sep 2012 08:08:03

Boris would eliminate Labour's lead in the opinion polls (but Team Cameron think growth will do that too)

By Tim Montgomerie
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What are we to make of the latest YouGov poll in The Sun which suggests that Labour's lead over the Tories would just about vanish if Boris was Tory leader?

What hypothetical polls cannot measure is what would happen if a bloody and acrimonious leadership election was necessary to replace Cameron. What this snapshot poll can't measure is whether support for Boris will fade as Olympic memories fade. Will people become bored with the Boris routine? On the other side of the equation, however, these polls don't measure the unknown upside of potentially switching to Boris. Boris could stand on a balanced, full-spectrum manifesto. He could offer a referendum on Europe, a new 10p tax band for lower-paid workers and could put new generation stars like Sajid Javid, Liz Truss, Priti Patel, Andrea Leadsom and Dom Raab at the top of his team. He could represent a decisive break with the compromises and hard choices of the Coalition period.

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10 Sep 2012 18:58:05

Dave and Boris go about celebrating the Olympics in their own divergent ways

By Peter Hoskin
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If there was one line in Boris’s post-Olympics speech that summed up the whole it came after his gag about British athletes, sofas and sex. “I can get away with that,” he said by way of an aside — and that’s precisely the point. He can get away with it, certainly in a way that other politicians can’t. He can joke about us socking it to the French and the Germans. He can talk of “paroxysms of tears and joy”. He can even praise the efforts of G4S. And the crowd laps it up, as they did today. By the time Boris had finished, they were chanting his name yet again.

This was in illustrative contrast to David Cameron, who — completely unsurprisingly — has been more sober in his appearances today. Of course, he too is trying to reflect some of our post-Olympics glow, but he is using more formal methods such as the letters of thanks being sent out to the Games volunteers, praising them as “an essential ingredient in a remarkable summer”. His own speech at the culmination of the Olympics parade, outside Buckingham Palace, was full of similarly fitting words for the occasion. “The whole country salutes your brilliance,” he said to the assembled athletes. He left G4S off his list of people to be thanked. And, of course, the crowd processed all this and didn’t whoop and holler half as much as they would for Boris. There are even some suggestions that the Prime Minister was booed a little, although I didn’t hear it myself.

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10 Sep 2012 10:27:14

The Boris Manifesto looks to be taking shape

By Peter Hoskin
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The Games may be over, but one of the main political stories that emerged from them keeps on running. This morning, Boris Johnson has twice had to deny that he’s working to undermine David Cameron. Will he sidle into Zac Goldsmith’s seat of Richmond Park & North Kingston and have a shot at the Tory leadership? That’s a rumour straight from “cloud cuckoo land,” apparently. And what about the inquiry he's establishing into airport capacity? Is that a rival to the government's own? No, no, no, it's all part of the same process, he says, and he’s “flummoxed” as to why anyone would think otherwise.

But, despite Boris's denials, these continuing stories are significant for two reasons:

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