Brace yourself for Boris

03/05/2008 14:46

Boris Johnson's triumph has decisively turned the tables on critics who claimed he was too much of a loose cannon to hold senior office.

When he was picked as Conservative candidate for the mayoral race last year, many commentators believed the gaffe-prone Old Etonian would be unable to make it to polling day without self-destructing.

He was branded a "clown" and a "joke" by his main rivals, and the media was often more fascinated by his chequered past, his colourful turn of phrase and his shock of blonde hair than by his policy platform for the capital.

But he now has the largest personal mandate of any UK politician and has more power in his hands than any other Conservative in the country.

Under the close eye of Australian polling guru Lynton Crosby, Johnson's campaign was far more disciplined than many had expected.

There were the occasional gaffes - he told an Asian radio DJ not to try to "out-ethnic" him - and his opponents complained that he ducked out of difficult hustings and refused to put himself up for tough media interviews.

But for the most part, Mr Johnson stuck doggedly to his policy script, repeatedly voicing his concerns about crime, bendy buses and violence on public transport rather than unburdening himself of the kind of eccentric opinions which .....continued below

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have made him notorious.

The big question now is whether, without the discipline of the mayoral campaign and the restraining hand of Mr Crosby, Mr Johnson will be able to keep himself from going back to his old ways and hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Conservative leader David Cameron has already held discussions on how he can keep Boris at arm's length in order to avoid becoming tainted by any future scandal or chaos at City Hall.

With the £16 billion Crossrail project and the preparations for the 2012 Olympics to oversee, there are certainly opportunities galore for mishaps for a man whose administrative experience is so far limited to watching over a couple of dozen journalists as editor of The Spectator.

© 2012 The Press Association Limited