The City is waking up to a harsh Johnson reality that’s going to bite it and the rest of us

The pound gave up its pre-election gains as optimism that the PM would tack to the centre evaporated, writes James Moore

Boris Johnson is starting to show his true face and it’s as bad as his critics feared (PA)

When it comes to the two prevailing views of Boris Johnson, the City convinced itself that the more benign one is true, that he really is the pragmatic One Nation-type Tory it got to know as London mayor and that he would revert back to this type if only he got his majority.

You can sort of understand it. It isn’t just in the Square Mile that people have been predicting a tack to the centre ground by a prime minister less reliant upon the extremists of the European Research Group.

Trouble with that assessment is that everything this man has said and done since entering parliament has demonstrated that Bad Boris – the hard right-wing populist; Trump with a thesaurus – is the real deal.