London Mayor Boris Johnson. Photo credit: CBI, http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-cbi/4882467668/in/photostream/
The background
Team GB gold medalists Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Sir Chris Hoy were the most obvious big winners at London 2012 but London Mayor Boris Johnson also seems to have struck gold. The fact that the English capital’s hosting of the Games went so swimmingly – bar the empty seats scandal at the beginning – has undoubtedly reflected well on Johnson.
Before the Games, Johnson was widely considered by the Tory party faithful to be sometimes brilliant but somewhat erratic. However, he now can boast of having delivered on a big project. In fact, Johnson’s steady rise since he became London Mayor means he’s now being hotly tipped to be the next Conservative leader, and, potentially, the next Prime Minister.
Boris’ dad dancing
The London 2012 closing ceremony went down well with most of the commentariat but plenty of Twitter users found it a bit of a let-down after the wonders of Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony. But even the killjoys on Twitter adored Boris Johnson’s ‘embarrassing dad’ dance to the Spice Girls.
Boris is the most popular politician in the UK
“Perhaps it wasn’t surprising given the paucity of talent on display (we wanted Glastonbury, they gave us the V Festival), but it’s still notable that it was Boris Johnson, rather than any of the performers, who received the biggest cheer at last night’s Olympics closing ceremony,” observed George Eaton at The Staggers, The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog, who reminded that the Games began with thousands chanting “Boris! Boris!” in Hyde Park. ”It’s hard to think of any other politician who could enjoy such a reception because, put simply, there isn’t one,” insisted Eaton, who said that Cameron “is increasingly unsettled by the Tories’ prince across the Thames.” Eaton concluded that the Olympics “will be remembered as the moment that the Tories (to their joy) and Labour (to its terror) realised as much.”
Johnson ‘gets’ it better than any other politician
Writing at The Telegraph, Charles Moore insisted that Johnson is deadly serious about becoming PM and has a very good chance of achieving his lofty goal: “As conventional Conservative politicians are tangled in the tentacles of Coalition and mired in the slough of economic despond, Boris is somewhere else. Digressive, transgressive, subversive, Boris is in the ‘wrong’ place at the right time. The crowd is loving it, and watches with increasing eagerness to see how he will return at last from the digressio to the main subject with which his adult life began.” Moore argued that, like it or not, Johnson is the politician most at tune with the times: “As you could tell from the London Olympic opening ceremony, we now have a post-modern public culture. We are ironical, eclectic, genre-subverting, fusion-cooking, mixing up Chelsea Pensioners and lesbian kisses. We are high-brow and low-brow at the same time. The only politician who ‘gets’ any of this is Boris. He can mix Virgil and James Bond, a posh accent and street cred, conservative politics and a liberal spirit. Mr Cameron is the moderniser, but Boris is the post-moderniser.”
“You could hardly think of two more different characters than Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson, but they share this one thing – this gift for being noticed, for compelling attention, for making voters think again. Of whom else, in politics just now, could this be said?” questioned Charles Moore of The Telegraph.
Boris passes the Madonna and The Simpsons test
Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian also talked up “magic” Johnson’s chances of becoming PM: “The face of the Olympic Games of 1972 was Mark Spitz. In 1984 that honor went to Carl Lewis. In 2008 Usain Bolt. And the face of London 2012? That would be Boris Johnson.” Freedland argued that being “Fun-master General at the Olympics is no qualification for the national stage,” but reminded that “Boris remains the one person in British politics who passes both the Madonna test – no surname necessary – and The Simpsons test, a character recognisable by his silhouette alone. He may be unserious, but it’s time to take him very seriously indeed.
The country’s still in a right old mess
“The Games are over. Now the race to take credit for their success begins,” observed Peter McKay of The Daily Mail, who noted that Johnson, Cameron and ex-PM Tony Blair have all been keen to present the Games as their personal triumph in recent days. Politicians seeking to exploit public excitement is nothing new, noted McKay, who said that, “for politicians and the Olympics it’s an act of desperation. We’re in a huge economic mess. Nothing the Coalition government has done in two years has improved matters. Neither has Her Majesty’s Opposition, Labour, suggested any solution that commands public support.”
