Boris Watch

With the impotence of the London Assembly already established, it seems that much of it’s work will be concerned with restraining the ludicrous Richard Barnbrook. His acceptance speech portrayed him as an almost parodic example of a demagogue - berating the crowd, pounding the stand and looking every bit as if he’s been [...]

I must be going senile.  Damian Hockney, the ex-Tory, ex-UKIP, ex-Veritas and now very much ex-Assembly member has written a really rather good article at Mayorwatch on how the new London Assembly is even more supine than the last one, which isn’t saying a lot.  The Assembly isn’t designed to be able to do much [...]

So much for Big Tent Boris and the new caring, green, cuddly Tory Party.  The latest batch of Deputy Mayors has been announced and even a brief google research into the grim coterie of right wing flotsam the new Mayor has chosen to lord it over us suggests it’s going to be a long four [...]

In The Independent, Andrew Gilligan is fuming at the suggestion that the Evening Standard - to quote Stephen Fry, ‘as grossly partisan as is permissible without actually dropping pretence and coming out as a Tory Party broadsheet’ - ‘won it for Boris’. His stories were, he writes, ‘factual and measured, thoroughly and transparently sourced’. The [...]

Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy has spotted quite a few Boris watching sites out there, and makes the very useful point that with the press either expecting their reward for supporting Johnson’s campaign or in full honeymoon mode, it’s only us rank amateurs who can actually take up the mantle of checking up on the [...]

Right.  Transport.  Where to start?  Cripes.
Obviously, the transport issue everyone associates with Boris is the bloody Routemaster bus, so we’ll ignore that for now (it’s not going to happen, guys) and move on to what I think is an important disconnect between the Mayor and the wider views of more seasoned London Tories.  In particular [...]

If there’s a single word I’m expecting to sum up Boris Johnson’s Mayoralty, it’s ‘incoherence’.  The man himself is frequently described even by close allies in terms that leave no doubt that they consider him highly intelligent but mentally undisciplined, and it would be surprising if this overactive underachiever didn’t bring those qualities to City [...]

With a slight trip and a verbal slip, Mayor Johnson began his term. After milking the laughter and offering profuse gratitude, he claimed that little needed to be added to the ‘wonderful debate’ (a protracted flurry of Ad hominem, Ad nauseam). Later, he whipped his way through a few key policies. These will include:

The [...]

In the days following Boris’s triumph, journalists have been steadily creeping back to their keyboards and offering words of praise or pain. Here, we collect the best, and the most galling, of the commentary.

John Harris is not amused [Comment Is Free]

Chuka Umunna has advice for Ken [Comment is Free]

The Times has an epiphany
Frances Elliot believes [...]

I remain unconvinced that it came down to a personality contest. At least as far as American politics go, “though the assertion is common, little solid evidence exists that this is true.”
Instead, we need to look at the spatial distribution of inequalities and grievances—from the time Ken took on the mayoralty, through to the present [...]