Boris Johnson will want to show
new gravitas as London Mayor
By Andrew Stevens, Deputy Editor

14 May 2008: Boris. Bozza. BoJo, even. These are all names by which Boris Johnson, London's new mayor is known in his more familiar public guise of an amiable toffish buffoon who happens to hold elected office. While Johnson already enjoyed enviable levels of public recognition in the UK, elsewhere his rise has proven puzzling. Pledging to make Greater London greater, the pro-hunting, right-leaning politician replaced the city’s first-ever mayor, Ken Livingstone, in May 2008.

Yet while Boris has become something of a British institution over the past decade, with a devoted army of 'Boris watchers' both online and in print, it has since emerged that he was not even among those considered when deciding on who to put forward for the 2008 elections (something he arguably shares with his predecessor Ken Livingstone). This in itself demonstrates the public shaping of political brands under mayoral politics, with party managers always preferring safe pairs of hands and worthy yet dull technocrats. 

Were London to have conventional British city governance arrangements with leaders selected by their peers from the city council, then neither Ken Livingstone nor Boris Johnson would ever have achieved office. That Johnson is a politician still surprises many members of the public, for whom he is solely famous as a gaffe-prone journalist of comedy value (one professional comedian sharply declared before his election, "Lovely to see other comedians getting work, but four years is a bit long for a comedy routine") Outside of this domain, his Parliamentary standing and occasional stints as a spokesman for the Conservative Party on arts and education barely made an impact away from the political geekdom of British politics. As such, the party's search for a mayoral candidate initially began with open invites to the usual array of retired cabinet members and police chiefs. Had they been successful then Ken Livingstone would probably have secured a third term in office, rather than succumb to an energetic (and superior by his own admission) campaign around the Obama-esque upbeat slogan of 'Change You Can Trust' which caught the public's imagination and saw the highest ever turnout in the short history of the London mayoralty. 

While Johnson has been considered a British institution for the 21st century, his story in fact begins in New York, where he was born in 1964. Until 2006 Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (his full name) held dual citizenship, but revoked this after a trademark Boris incident involving a dispute at immigration control when he tried to enter the US on a British passport, falling foul of post-9/11 rules which stipulate that American citizens must only use their US passport. His full name, which reads like something from the novels of PG Wodehouse, only contributes to his public reputation as the toff's toff, which was regularly pounded on by the Labour campaign during the mayoral election. His education at the elite Eton College and reading Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he served as president of the world famous Oxford Union debating society, only serves to embolden this further. Add in a Conservative politician as his father (albeit a Euro MP) and his membership of the notorious Bullingdon Club (a raucous dining society noted for trashing restaurants in the city) and you have a fully-formed aristocratic caricature, the likes of which has not been seen for many years in Britain and was thought to be extinct. Yet this is the core of Boris' branding as a politician and his supporters (and on many occasions himself) argue that he entered Eton on a scholarship and his family background is as multiracial as the city he sought to represent.  

Sidestepping the familiar tale of his background and ancestry (his great-grandfather was Turkish), it was in his campaign for the presidency of the Oxford Union that many noted the emergence of a likely future politician. The US polling guru Frank Luntz, a contemporary of Johnson's at Oxford, has noted how the aspiring union president flirted with the briefly fashionable but now defunct Social Democratic Party in order to secure the final necessary votes to gain election, in spite of his obvious Conservative allegiance. It was at the union that his persona as a bumbling young fogey first gained its proper outing and in the Bullingdon Club he met future Conservative Party leader David Cameron and Charles Spencer, younger brother of Princess Diana. At Oxford Johnson also met his first wife, the socialite Allegra Mostyn-Owen, whom he married at 23. The wedding probably portended the fate of the marriage as Johnson's biographer Andrew Gimson recalls how the future London mayor turned up to the ceremony inappropriately dressed and lost his wedding ring an hour afterwards. They divorced less than three years later. Following the divorce Johnson married the barrister Marina Wheeler, daughter of the veteran journalist Charles Wheeler and childhood friend from his first school in Brussels, where his father worked for the European Commission.  

Johnson's first steps in the world of work after graduation from Oxford (where he gained an upper second class degree) also foundered, he lasted one week as a management consultant. "Try as I might I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth-profit matrix and stay conscious," he later recalled. He was then accepted as a trainee on the London Times but was dismissed after less than a year for falsifying a quote to embellish a dull story (in true Boris fashion he misrepresented a godparent). Forced onto the staff of a provincial evening newspaper, he then secured a post on the Daily Telegraph in 1987, where editor Max Hastings (later editor of the London Evening Standard) overlooked his previous ethical breach and made him a feature writer. Johnson flourished in the role and encouraged by Hastings was sent to Brussels to act as the paper's European affairs correspondent, where he developed his trademark bombastic prose style laying into EU officials and diktats. 

Following his stint in Brussels, he became assistant editor of the staunchly Conservative supporting Daily Telegraph and its chief political correspondent. It was around this time that he first became associated with The Spectator, the august conservative political weekly, for which he was a columnist until promoted to the editor's chair in 1999. His first foray into elected politics took place at the 1997 General Election, where he unsuccessfully contested the Labour-held seat of Clwyd South for the Conservatives. His increasing prominence led to his first appearance on the popular TV current affairs panel show Have I Got News For You, the other media vehicle for which he is most commonly associated, having since made the joint highest number of appearances (equal to that, ironically enough, Ken Livingstone) and even presented the programme. He was then rewarded with the nomination for the safe Conservative seat of Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire upon the retirement of former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine, for which he was elected to Parliament in the 2001 General Election. In spite of his entrance into public life proper, he remained a prolific journalist, editing The Spectator until 2005 and continuing to pen columns for the Daily Telegraph. In fact his election to Parliament increased his writing output, with more TV appearances and columns for other publications, firmly embedding him in the public consciousness at a time when his party was viewed as unelectable and a relic of a bygone era. His collected journalism frequently topped the non-fiction bestseller lists. 

Boris' first job in politics was as Conservative spokesperson for the arts, appointed by party leader Michael Howard in 2004. He remained editor of The Spectator however and even found the time to pen his first novel, Seventy-Two Virgins, but many pondered how much longer the polymath could remain with feet in both camps. 

The Spectator, mostly regarded as a fusty conservative weekly magazine of right-wing commentary and wine reviews, had become energised under Johnson's leadership and witnessed an increase in its sales figures. That year it also became briefly known as The Sextator, firstly on account of editor Boris Johnson's tabloid exposed affair with one of its writers (memorably denied by Johnson as "an inverted pyramid of piffle") and then publisher Kimberly Fortier's affair with Home Secretary David Blunkett. The image of the magazine as a hotbed of extra-marital sex initially came as an embarrassment to the Conservative Party, with Michael Howard dismissing Johnson for having lied about the affair (Blunkett was later forced to resign on account of many revelations which followed). 

The revelations came as something of a boon for the media, with TV adaptations and theatre plays covering the scandals at the magazine virtually as they happened. After a few days of journalists camped on their doorstep, Boris' infidelity was forgiven by his wife Marina and his rehabilitation back into the political frontline begun by Michael Howard with his cheery endorsement of the errant MP's behaviour at an awards ceremony not long after. Following the 2005 General Election and his Oxford contemporary David Cameron's election as party leader, Johnson returned to active duty on the frontbenches of the House of Commons as party spokesperson on higher education. After an inauspicious start in the job, another set of tabloid allegations surrounding an affair with a journalist surfaced, though his party leader regarded it as a private matter and left him in post. To complement his cultivated buffoon-like young fogey image, he could now add the tabloid epithet 'Bonking Boris'. Clearly the revelations did neither his political prospects nor the magazine any harm, though he finally relinquished the editor's role in late 2005. While higher education spokesperson for the party, an iconic pose Boris image was used on posters distributed at English universities as part of its recruitment campaign among students, confirming his cult status among the public at large, an enviable mantle for any politician. 

In addition to his trademark unkemptness and often incoherent speech, Boris has since become known to the British public as something of a controversy merchant. Notwithstanding his earlier brushes with notoriety, Johnson's articles for the press have frequently landed him in hot water with his own party, English cities and even entire nations. The most notorious of which was not done under the actual pen of Johnson but was approved by him as an editorial for The Spectator, where he managed to offend the entire city of Liverpool by accusing its inhabitants of wallowing in "vicarious victimhood" (a reference to an on-going hostage crisis in Iraq featuring one of its inhabitants and the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster in which 89 people died). He repeated the feat again in 2007 when he claimed the city of Portsmouth was "arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs". A diplomatic protest was issued by the High Commissioner for Papua New Guinea in London when Johnson accused its inhabitants of engaging in "orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing". He later joked that he would add the country to his "global apology itinerary". 
 
As noted, Boris was not the Conservative leadership's first choice of candidate. It was always most likely that the 2008 London mayoral election would fall before any General Election and would therefore act as the first big electoral test of both Gordon Brown and David Cameron. It therefore provided the best opportunity to give Project Cameron its first proper road test and at the hands of the more sceptical London electorate, which had until that point backed Ken Livingstone's brand of independent progressive governance. Cameron and his advisers originally envisaged selecting a candidate from a pool of trusted London figures sympathetic to the Conservative cause (former cabinet minister Michael Portillo, Olympics chief Sebastian Coe and former Metropolitan Police head John Stevens were all approached) by a US-style open primary, the first ever in Britain. 

In the event no big hitters came forward and the party were forced to delay the process. It has been suggested that a Boris candidacy was first mooted by Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley, but a number of websites have also claimed to have been behind the momentum to draft Boris. Either way, by the time he emerged as the frontrunner for the nomination the party had exhausted all other options and banked on what was seen by many as a risky strategy, given his past indiscretions and shambolic persona (though it would equally be as hard to paint his Labour opponent as prudent with his choice of words on occasion). Ultimately it would be both of these that would propel his candidacy and set him on course for the mayoralty, as he received 75% of the votes cast to decide the nomination, beating three unknown London councillors in the process (two of whom were elected to the London Assembly in 2008 and may feature in his administration as such). Having learnt of his (assured) victory in the selection contest, Johnson gave the opening speech of that year's annual Conservative Party conference, appearing before New York mayor Michael Bloomberg while Arnold Schwarzenegger looked on via a video-link, ready to introduce Bloomberg to the delegates. Johnson's rambling speech was memorable for inducing laughter on the part of the California governor, who asked his aides "Who is this guy? He's bumbling all over the place." The clip was shown constantly on British TV, suggesting that Johnson lacked the potential to be taken seriously as a prospective mayor of a city with the global presence of London.  

Several months after his selection as mayoral candidate, the party announced that the campaign would be overseen by Australian Lynton Crosby, the electoral strategist noted for securing three victories for premier John Howard. However, both Crosby and Johnson's other commitments prevented the campaign from beginning in earnest until the New Year, causing jitters among Conservative high command, who had begun to visualise a third Livingstone victory. In the event, the onset of national woes for the Labour Party, which lurched from one crisis to another with every week that passed in early 2008, and the emergence of several scandals at City Hall unearthed by the investigative reporting of the ailing Evening Standard (which had a Johnson victory over Livingstone in its sights as its swansong) assured Johnson of a cruising triumph over what he constantly referred to as "the Labour mayor" (thus denting Livingstone's popular independent image).

For its part, the Labour machine unearthed several earlier provocative statements by Johnson about the ethnic minorities, suggesting that the people of Congo were "flag-waving picaninnies" who broke out in "watermelon smiles" at the sight of British visitors such as Tony Blair and the Queen. While Johnson played down the remarks as taken out of context, the Labour campaign repeated them constantly, inferring that the Conservative candidate was unsuitable to be mayor of a multi-racial global city such as London. The remarks placed critical distance between Johnson and celebrity figures, who routinely turned out for Livingstone, but voters seemed dissuaded of their relevance. In any case, the Conservative campaign spearheaded by Lynton Crosby, based around marshalling the core Conservative vote in outer London and ignoring inner city areas likely to be favourable to Livingstone, as well as virtually keeping the candidate from view (and keeping him in tidier attire and off the alcohol when the cameras were around), may have angered political reporters covering the campaign, but it paid off superbly in the event. 

For his part, Johnson pledged a wide-ranging review of the GLA's finances and spending commitments, more accountability and reviews of the Congestion Charge and London's overseas offices. He has also pledged to bring back the tourist icon Routemaster red London buses, which his predecessor pledged to retain but failed to do so. Whether Johnson is able to do this or can justify failing to do so (critics point out that without any other market for the buses a manufacturer could not develop them) will be an early test of his taking to the mayoralty, having never held executive office. Just as the socialist firebrand Livingstone left office a fully paid-up convert to global capitalism and an advocate of the City of London's financial institutions, Johnson's own maverick tendencies may yet be tamed by the complexities of governing the sprawling beast that is London. 

The man who once told voters that "if you vote for the Conservatives, your wife will get bigger breasts, and your chances of driving a BMW M3 will increase" is married to wife Marina Wheeler and they have four children, Theo, Milo, Lara and Cassia. Johnson is the author of one novel, Seventy-Two Virgins, an account of his 2001 election campaign Friends, Voters, Countrymen, and three collections of journalism, Johnson's Column, Lend Me Your Ears and Have I Got Views For You. 

Johnson is the first Conservative to be elected to the mayoralty, which was introduced in 2000 by the then Labour government of Tony Blair under its package of constitutional reforms. In the 2000 and 2004 elections, Conservative candidate Steve Norris (a former minister and businessman) came second to Ken Livingstone, who enjoyed the confidence of both the London electorate and, eventually, a national government which remained in the political ascendant. However, the predecessor body to the GLA, the Greater London Council (GLC), was under control of the Conservatives for half of its 20 years of operational existence, first under Desmond Plummer and then Horace Cutler (himself very much the showman). So in spite of the belief that the capital is more 'radical' or 'progressive' than the rest of England, its electorate, particularly in the suburbs, can suggest otherwise.  

The Boris tide, which also saw the Conservatives increase their share of members of the 25-strong London Assembly, followed the 2006 electoral wipeout for Labour in many of the 32 London Boroughs, with the Conservatives replacing Labour as the dominant party in London local government. As such, the party now holds the mayoralty, the most seats in the London Assembly and leads the London Councils' association. While the party can demonstrate numerical political dominance of London's local government scene (the Labour Party still has the lion's share of Parliamentary seats among the 74 in the capital), it will be interesting to watch how it adapts to the realities of devolution. In 1998 the party opposed the creation of the GLA and in 2004 its local government team posed in front of City Hall to declare that 'Regional government is fat government' (as part of then leader Michael Howard's opposition to devolution).

Those with even longer memories might recall that it was a Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher that abolished London's city government under the pretext of "streamlining" it. Having since elected the suave modernising David Cameron as leader, the party now speaks a language of localism and city mayors while retaining the familiar mantra of reduced public spending. Therefore it may be possible for Boris to make a go of the office of mayor and appease the smaller government tendency within the party, a pragmatic line that only the introduction of the GLA could ever have made possible, whether the Conservatives care to admit it or not.