Boris's First Week

My latest for Guardian Cif:

How is Mayor Johnson shaping up so far? In the week following his conciliatory victor's speech, he's been working hard on looking the part and acting on promises. His first appointment was the black youth worker Ray Lewis as Deputy Mayor for Young People, charged with tackling the roots of teenage crime. They appeared together at Dagenham fire station on Tuesday morning, literally round the corner from where BNP councillors sit in opposition to Labour. Was the choice of location symbolic? Lewis sidestepped the question niftily. Adept, impressive and with no political past, he's just the kind of new friend New Boris needs if he's to exemplify what he claimed in that speech - that the Conservative Party has changed.

But will there be further evidence? As I write just about every subsequent recruit has been a straight down the line - some would say hard line - Tory. On Wednesday Johnson announced that Assembly Conservative group Leader Richard Barnes would be his understudy and that the leader and deputy leader of Westminster City Council, Sir Simon Milton and Kit Malthouse respectively, would be key lieutenants. Malthouse, a firm opponent of the Congestion charge, has become a member of the Assembly, winning the wealthy West-Central seat. Milton goes back to the dark days of Shirley Porter, as his local Labour opponents are reminding journalists enthusiastically.

Ian Clement, now ex-leader of another Tory borough - Bexley, whose residents backed Boris in droves - has been named deputy mayor for Government Relations. Clement respected and did business with Ken Livingstone and will now try to do so with the Brown regime. But a "Forensic Audit Panel" set up to examine spending has a decidedly no prisoners look about it. Former Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft chairs, among others, Stephen Greenhalgh and Edward Lister respectively the Tory leaders of Hammersmith and Fulham and of Wandsworth Councils, proud cost-cutters both, to look into "waste and maladministration." This was announced on Wednesday morning. The chair and chief executives of the London Development agency were axed that afternoon. Another Westminster man and hedge-fund manager Harvey McGrath will replace them.

Lewis aside, then, the people's blond looks deepest blue so far. But it's early days. The true complexion of his regime will take a few months to appear. Dave will be watching closely. So will the Labour Party. And so will the whole country. The style and the substance of Johnson's mayoralty will be the most conspicuous example of Conservatism in power since John Major left Downing Street. With Gordon Brown having, at most, a year to crawl from the wreckage of all last week's disasters it is vital that Labour in London exposes any weakness in the Johnson mayoralty soon and ruthlessly.

Despite the efficiency of his opening week - culminating in a visit this morning from his New York counterpart Michael Bloomberg - even his best friends acknowledge that The Blond could go off the rails. Listen again - from 19.30 in - to his former editor Charles Moore on The Week In Westminster (or read my transcript) describing an ambitious, imaginative, unorthodox and unreliable "genius" who might lack grit when the going gets difficult. Opposition Assembly members won't have forgotten the muddles Johnson got into over his bus policy and his view of personal liberty during the campaign. The Assembly's powers to restrain a mayor are puny, but when it questions him he sits alone for a long time. During the campaign he was charged with incompetence. It may yet be made to stick.

Then there's policy. Like every politician all mayoral candidates overstated the capacity of the police to reduce crime. Will Johnson's promises to chair the Metropolitan Police Authority, cut bureaucracy and introduce crime maps and "zero tolerance" prove effective or even be kept? The outgoing MPA chair, Labour group leader Len Duvall, gave over three days a week to the role. Can Mayor Johnson spare that much time?

In housing, Labour AMs fear that Johnson's promise to "work with the boroughs" rather than bossing them about to produce 50,000 "affordable" homes will mean indulging the reluctance of Tory authorities to provide them and further concentrate the poorest in the poorer parts of town. A London that becomes still more unequal thanks to an Old Etonian Tory mayor would not be a great advert for a future Cameron government. In transport, does Johnson stand the slightest chance of delivering a "no strike" deal with the unions? Will his "21st century Routemaster" ever materialise?

In that midnight speech Johnson said he knew that London had not been transformed into a Conservative city overnight, acknowledged its grave inequalities and stressed his need to show that he and his party can be trusted. If a year from now he has started to match those words with achievements, or if he hasn't but Labour has failed to capitalise, then David Cameron's hopes of moving into Downing Street will have been substantially improved.

Also in original hardcover.

Comments

[angela]

"... the people's blond looks deepest blue so far." It must be hard to find Labour or Lib. Dem. people who are prepared to set aside partisanship and serve in Johnson's Mayoralty, because they might have fear of antagonising their own party. It is not just that he is opting for Tories. Kate Hooey was criticised.