Bringing an all-women group of Guinean soldiers to Trafalgar Square for an Africa Day festival. Having a mug of tea with firefighters from Dagenham. Calling your transport commissioner ”mate”. Cycling to work. Mocking ”crazed Thatcherite neocons”. Appointing a black deputy for young people. Was this really the first week’s work for London’s new mayor, dubbed the most right-wing office holder in Britain by one disgruntled London assembly member?
There was a mood of jubilation among the Tory (Conservative Party) establishment in the British capital last week as an elite born to rule but excluded from power for a generation savoured having their Etonian, Oxford and Bullingdon Club-educated hero in the £12-billion City Hall hotseat.
But Boris Johnson confounded them, and his critics, by channelling the spirit of Red Ken (his Labour predecesor, Ken Livingstone) for much of his first week in charge. His most striking announcements — appointing the east London youth worker and former prison governor, Ray Lewis, as deputy for young people and organising Africa Day — could have come straight from Livingstone’s bible.
While Tories partied at their return to power Johnson, rather self-consciously, tried to strike a serious and businesslike note during his first seven days. The mayor may have arrived at his offices at 9.35am last Thursday looking slightly flustered, but he had, aides said, begun every day of his first week with a phone call to his chief of staff at 7am, followed by more work calls during a family breakfast and, on most days, his customary cycle ride to work.
As London basked in sunshine the blinds were pulled down at City Hall and its new mayor threw himself into seven days of hard labour. His close-knit team whisked him from photocalls to meetings with staff, allies and political foes. ”It’s about getting on with it and delivering rather than the PR-ing and spending time with photo opportunities,” said one senior aide, explaining the media-proof cordon around Johnson for much of the week.
The mayor’s first steps ”were drawn by the media grid”, observed Mike Tuffrey, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the London assembly. ”The transition team he was trumpeting before the election was a media-planning process, rather than a governance process.”
Only twice during his first seven days did Johnson let his hair down. Last Sunday he posed for pictures in Trafalgar Square wearing a police officer’s hat at a jaunty angle. Then on Wednesday, 10 hours after his austere announcement at High Street Kensington tube station that drinking alcohol would be banned from London’s public transport network, the mayor grabbed a flute of champagne as he was drooled over by Tory celebrities at a party to celebrate the 180th birthday of the Spectator magazine.
The lavish bash at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Mayfair was, said Matthew d’Ancona, Johnson’s successor as Spectator editor, what the mayor liked to call ”a bloody good bacchanalia”. Swigging bottles of Pol Roger and picking at seared scallop canapés, most guests were there to crown Mayor Boris and hail the return of the natural party of government, in London at least.
Even though Johnson was unquestionably among friends, raising his thumb for a picture next to Joan Collins, he was careful not to share their triumphalism. ”Are you giddy on power?” joked one guest lightly. Johnson narrowed his eyes suspiciously. ”I’m working pretty hard at the moment,” he said. He soon eschewed the champagne and stuffed both hands schoolboyishly in his pockets, leaving the bash before 10pm.
That Johnson’s de facto coronation at the Spectator party was witnessed by figures more usually associated with New Labour, including former Blair aide Angie Hunter, author Kathy Lette, and even Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg may be a sign of power ebbing away from the government. The new consensual Team Boris may claim to show that the Conservative establishment itself is changing.
Apart from one young staffer who swished through the building in formal black tie, coat and tails, Johnson sought to display a less showy Conservatism. In his first week, however, Tories have been unable to hide their glee inside City Hall. ”The Tories are like a bunch of overexcited schoolboys. They really are bouncing around and they’ve got every right to — it’s an incredible achievement,” said Green party assembly member Jenny Jones.
The press delightedly reported that in his first address to his staff Johnson, who as mayoral candidate was dubbed Robo-Boris for his newly tamed mop and studiously sensible soundbites, had, as mayor, performed his first U-turn: Johnson was joking again. He reassured staff he was no more a ”crazed Thatcherite neocon” than his rival Livingstone was a ”socialist who would hang the last 4×4 driver off the guts of the last non-dom”. He promised staff they could call him by his first name ”without fear of being fined £5 by Tessa Jowell” — a reference to the Labour minister’s threat to fine colleagues who referred to him as ”Boris” during the campaign.
”This is the welcome end of political correctness in London,” was one Spectator guest’s verdict on the Boris era. But Johnson’s first seven days as mayor marked a concerted effort to be seen as sensitive to the hopes and fears of multicultural London. The day after he turned up to support the Sikh New Year celebrations in Trafalgar Square he announced his highly symbolic first appointment: Lewis, a former governor of Woodhill prison young offenders’ institute, was made one of his deputy mayors, with special responsibility for young people.
Lewis, who described the surprise job offer as ”one of the maddest days of my life”, runs a project weaning teenage boys off gang culture in what Johnson described as a ”magnificently untrendy bootcamp style of discipline”, which, he said, should be a model for up to 100 Saturday or ”respect” schools that could be created with financial assistance from his new mayor’s fund, drawn from super-rich City donors.
Although the mayor’s powers over young people and their education are limited it was a recurring theme in his first week, cropping up in a Friday 70-minute breakfast with Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, who had telephoned Johnson at 1am on his victory night to congratulate him on his win. Praising Bloomberg’s ”inspirational leadership” Johnson gave his counterpart a garish shirt on which was printed the London tube map.
”He wanted to give something a little bit more personal and quirky than the norm,” explained an aide. The London mayor received a crystal — not so big — apple paperweight from Bloomberg. The business end of the meeting was to set up an exchange programme between the cities, which will allow officials and policymakers to visit each other and swap ideas.
Afterwards, Johnson turned his attention to the London assembly, who must scrutinise his work and met for the first time last week. Labour assembly member John Biggs declared that ”beneath his [old Engish sheep] dog exterior our new mayor is probably the most right-wing elected office-holder in the UK”, as the Greens, Lib Dems and Labour made up a narrow majority in the chamber against pro-Johnson Conservatives, the largest single party in the 25-member assembly.
Giving an informal private speech to assembly members Johnson said his mission ”above all” was ”ensuring transparency and value with everything we do in this building. I can’t do anything about that without your hard work.”
He did, however, display a glint of steel beneath his week-long charm offensive, sacking the chief executive and chairperson of the London Development Agency (LDA) last Thursday. He dedicated this day to the unsexy business of establishing a new ”forensic audit panel” headed by Patience Wheatcroft, former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, which will review the much-criticised LDA.
Johnson’s opponents were cautiously impressed, but wondered if he really had a handle on his mayoral powers. ”He’s said many of the right things. What he hasn’t done is show a commanding grasp of the levers of power,” said Tuffrey. ”The test will be does he really get a grip on these levers and use that to make substantive change?”
Jones added: ”It looks as if the campaign did put some thought into the first week and so they have hit the ground running. He hasn’t convinced me yet that it’s Boris making the decisions, and we elected him, we didn’t elect his advisers.” — Â