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From mayor to where? Why Boris Johnson’s London tenure does not bode well for the PM job

He was mayor for eight years yet it’s hard to point to any significant achievement

Richard Godwin
Sunday 16 June 2019 17:41 BST
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Johnson can no longer speak for the capital – if indeed he ever did
Johnson can no longer speak for the capital – if indeed he ever did

It says a lot about Boris Johnson’s campaign to be prime minister that his main strategy has been to hide behind the curtains. He used to specialise in jumping out from behind them. But since the Conservative leadership contest began – indeed, since he accidentally-on-purpose helped the nation towards Brexit – he has shrunk from scrutiny. “I don’t know what he believes, he won’t talk to me, he won’t talk to you, he won’t talk to the public,” as Rory Stewart noted to Andrew Marr.

Is he now a Bannonite no-deal neo-imperialist – our Trump? Or a One Nation cosmopolitan type, because, look, he’s had a haircut! If his handlers don’t lift the shroud, he can be all of these things. And so his campaign is confined to the haunted antechambers of the Conservative subconscious, where fantasy Boris can roister around on a runaway pig, high-fiving Churchill, yah-booing Corbyn, making Islamophobia and hardcore deregulation seem like a tremendous jape, before advancing on Brussels to help himself to an infinite supply of cake.

It’s a clever strategy because in the factual realm his achievements are non-existent. He has no ministerial record to speak of, as no one who actually knows Johnson trusts him. David Cameron didn’t. Theresa May made him foreign secretary, true, but more on a keep-your-enemies-closer principle. He proved exactly as distractible and reckless as you might have expected.

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