JUST BORIS: A Tale of Blond Ambition (57 page)

On Wednesday, 7 May 2008, Boris announced a ban on drinking alcohol on public transport. It was a curious decision because temperamentally he does not like banning things but the idea is said to have come from Lynton Crosby’s disgust at the behaviour of his compatriots on the tube. It also met the need – in the absence of anything else – for a decisive, populist and eye-catching initiative for his first week. Even more curious, though was that he was photographed that same evening sipping Pol Roger champagne at the
Spectator
’s 180th birthday party at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Mayfair – an event his presence completely overshadowed.

‘I saw how much Boris was enjoying being the star,’ remembers one guest. ‘Every camera was trained on him and Cameron, who looked really annoyed, was just ignored in the scrum – it was like a coronation.’ It was only when someone asked him ‘Are you giddy on power?’ that Boris began to look nervous. He stopped drinking the champagne, stuffed his hands into his pockets and left before 10 p.m. That incident, and his continued resemblance to a ‘human laundry basket,’ did not stop him from becoming London’s most sought-after guest, with
Tatler
magazine hailing ‘the priapic Bozza [as] pure party Viagra.’

By the end of the week he had launched an investigation into hundreds of projects funded by the London Development Agency to be led by Patience Wheatcroft, a former financial journalist and ex-
Telegraph
colleague who would go on to become a Tory peer (but did not find the dirt on Ken, Lee Jasper and others that had been expected). He had also drunk tea with fire-fighters in Dagenham, called the Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy ‘mate’, invited an all-women group of Guinean soldiers to Trafalgar Square for an Africa Day festival, mocked ‘crazed Thatcherite neo-cons’ and cycled to work; he had also instructed staff that they could call him just Boris, without fear of being fined £5 by Tessa Jowell.

On his first Friday he played the international statesman when he received the billionaire mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. Together with the Ray Lewis appointment, this was not a bad week for a man denounced by the
Guardian
and others as variously evil, a clown, a racist and a bigot. Boris even began telling friends how much
he was enjoying having ‘real power.’ He told the
Guardian
: ‘Every day I wake up in a state of wonderment that I have been elected – obviously knowing that millions of other people wake up in a state of wonderment that I have been elected too!’

There was also a little wonderment in some quarters at his unexpected ruthlessness. Boris set about dispatching people he presumably thought were those ‘dogs in the manger’ mentioned in his speech. Members of the old guard who were paid off included five of City Hall’s most senior women, such as Ken’s partner Emma Beal, who had been his administration manager. That left only two influential women on a staff of nearly 800. The most important was the young, highly competent Roisha Hughes, Boris’s private secretary and a former aide to Labour minister Tessa Jowell, credited by many as being ‘the toughest person in the building.’ One senior insider notes that Boris ‘quickly became very dependent on Roisha to hold the whole thing together.’ Although Hughes, like Ann Sindall, is once again not thought to share Boris’s political views, she is known to have ‘become extremely committed to his personal wellbeing – he is able to attract that kind of loyalty.’ The other woman is Munira Mirza on the relatively junior portfolio of arts. On the whole, Boris does not gravitate towards women of power but prefers them in an assisting, non-competive, role.

It all added up to an initial impression of pace and energy, one that Boris was intent on creating against the continuing private fears of senior Tories that a series of mayoral gaffes would scupper the Party’s chances at the next General Election. But it did not help that Boris was characteristically late for two official functions in his first week. These included a meeting with Prince Charles, when Boris arrived drenched in sweat and over half an hour late after boarding a tube travelling in the wrong direction whilst being mobbed by a group of middle-aged London-Chinese women (and not noticing for several stops). Nor the fact that after only three weeks in the job – and promising to work ‘flat out’ – he went on a week’s family sailing holiday on the Dalaman coast of Turkey.

Further cracks soon appeared. First,
Private Eye
started questioning the veracity of Ray Lewis’s CV, pointing out that he had not actually
been a prison governor but a member of the bottom management grade in prisons, known as governor grade 5. A further blow came when Bob Diamond, Boris’s very first appointment, resigned from the Mayor’s Fund after just six weeks, pleading lack of time. But then came Boris’s first real test on what he knew to be his most vulnerable ground – race.

Just weeks into his administration he fired one of his own appointees – James McGrath – over a comment he had made before the election that was now published and denounced as racist. McGrath had been responding to a claim that some black people might leave Britain if Boris became mayor, saying: ‘Let them go if they don’t like it here.’ In turn, he said that he had been quoted out of context and although clearly an ill-advised response, Boris might have left it at that. But knowing that he needed to prove his credentials on race, Boris first admitted that McGrath was ‘not a racist,’ but then decreed the remarks made it ‘impossible’ for him to keep his job.

It was a ruthless and perhaps necessary decision – and was immediately backed by Cameron, who was similarly seeking to decontaminate the Tory brand. But it was not universally welcomed. McGrath, who with Crosby had done so much to get Boris elected, resisted it for as long as possible. Iain Dale, the Conservative blogger, spoke for many Tories when he wrote about what he saw as Boris’s disloyalty and hypocrisy: ‘James McGrath is a no-nonsense Aussie. These remarks could have been made about any group who “don’t like it here” – white, black, whatever. What [Boris] should have done is stand by the man who has stood by him through thick and thin over the last eight months. Instead, Boris has hung James McGrath out to dry in the most despicable and cowardly manner possible. Having defended Boris over his “piccaninny” and “watermelon” comments I am now wondering why we all bothered. It may be a good thing that Boris has made a rod for his own back. It can go where his backbone should be.’

It was an unusually savage attack, but only the start of Boris’s trial by fire. Less than a fortnight later, on Wednesday, 2 July, Boris’s bêtes noires at the
Guardian
approached him with questions about Ray Lewis’ past – in particular, sexual and financial allegations concerning his time as a Church of England clergyman. On the Thursday, Boris
declared he had ‘every confidence’ in his ‘tremendous deputy.’ But by Friday night, following a day of frantic talks between Tory Central Office and City Hall, Boris seemingly changed his mind and accepted Lewis’s resignation, ‘with regret’. In the interval, it had emerged that Lewis had been investigated three times by the Metropolitan Police over allegations of blackmail, theft and deception. No action was taken in any case – although he was in his absence barred by the Church.
Private Eye
’s revelations on Lewis not having been prison governor were also confirmed. But the final blow had been when it was discovered that he had never practised or even been formally appointed as a magistrate. Boris had used the fact that he was a Justice of the Peace to vouch for his integrity at a crisis press conference (an event universally derided as a ‘shambles’ and ‘farce’). Not only had Boris lost his perfect answer to questions about his views on race, once again he also looked like someone who was pathologically incapable of doing his homework. Significantly, he has hardly held any press conferences since.

Boris had now lost two key aides in less than two weeks. Now all the fears about him being a loose cannon resurfaced with a vengeance. There was talk about him going up in flames and the conflagration burning the entire Conservative party. Interestingly, the former leader Iain Duncan Smith – to whom Boris had shown precious little loyalty – was one of the few to come out and attack the media for ‘crushing’ Lewis, whom he branded a ‘good man.’ But most others in the Party rapidly distanced themselves from the whole affair, and particularly Boris. Inside City Hall, Boris started to admit to those staff he trusted most that he did not ‘have the faintest clue’ and began quietly to seek advice.

An exhausted Boles – now the brunt of much of Boris’s frustration – was only too glad to be leaving City Hall that weekend as the flak intensified. ‘Boris was vituperative about Boles,’ recalls one senior official, as the Mayor tried to offload the blame. Boles was replaced by Tim Parker, who joined at the end of June, taking on the title of first deputy mayor and the chief executive role Marland had envisaged. It had been announced majestically at the end of May that he would implement Boris’s vision efficiently and effectively.

Parker is said to exude ruthless competence and Boris and his backers obviously hoped that he would streamline City Hall in the same way, with perhaps similar techniques to those he had used on companies. But it was not the best of starts with the City Hall staff. Indeed, Parker’s job-slashing reputation from his time at Clarks, Kwik-Fit and the AA earned him the soubriquet among the unions of ‘Prince of Darkness’. That did not stop him from getting on with his job, though. And what a job it was – chief executive of the entire GLA Group (comprising the Greater London Authority, Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police Authority, the London Development Agency and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority) and chairman of Transport for London. That left little mayoral for Mayor Boris to do beyond Planning – and in any case, the highly effective Milton was already dealing with that.

Parker took the office next to Boris’s on the east side of the building that the Mayor liked to call the ‘onion.’ He had to share it, though, with Milton – who by now had left Westminster Council to become another of Boris’s deputy mayors. Milton was a legend in Tory circles for a 20-year career of presiding over highly rated local services and low council taxes while, as a modern Tory who was openly gay, avoiding the tag of ‘hatchet-man’. Although physically weakened by cancer and the gruelling treatment for his illness, his brain and talent for administration were as sharp as ever. Even so, in what was perhaps always destined to be one of London’s greatest-ever bureaucratic turf wars, the smart money was on the curly-headed Parker to win.

Parker began by describing London’s voters as ‘shareholders’ and public services such as the Police and the Tube as the city’s ‘core products.’ He had a natural distrust of the public sector and those steeped in its culture but most importantly of all, since he was chief executive and first deputy mayor, Parker insisted that everyone including the appalled Milton should report to him. He had been led to believe that he would run London while Boris served as a figurehead.

‘Parker had been a chief executive of huge organisations and like all chief execs, in a way he was a bit of a control freak,’ recalls a key City Hall official. ‘But then Boris realised
he
had to make the decisions, if
politically he was going to have to defend them.’ And there were some decisions that the chief executive wanted to make – such as his idea of abolishing free travel for children – that were not politically viable. Boris saw the pure financial argument, of course, but to back such a policy would scupper his chances of being re-elected.

By now Parker had alienated most of Boris’s other key aides, including Guto Harri, the colleague closest to Boris. He and others began to warn Boris that Parker was ‘exceeding his brief ‘ and acting as if he were mayor himself. Incredibly, Boris still failed to take charge and avoided the obviously necessary showdown. In desperation, Anthony Mayer – who was about to retire – decided to take Boris out to dinner and hold a ‘very serious chat about how things were going.’ He chose a deliberately dark corner in Joe Allen’s, a relaxed Covent Garden basement restaurant favoured by politicians and the theatre crowd; somewhere they would not be interrupted by star-struck diners. Mayer, who had not only served Ken for eight years but had been principal private secretary to three ministers in Whitehall (including Heseltine) ordered a couple of bottles of his favourite Zinfandel Californian wine – most of which he drank, as Boris barely sipped from his glass. Finally, after exchanging the usual pleasantries, Mayer dabbed his lips with a napkin and delivered a forceful message: ‘Boris, you’ve got to start being
mayor
. Go out there and be in charge! It always takes a few months to get the hang of it but now you have really got to get a grip!’

To his credit, Boris took the exhortation from the old hand ‘extremely well.’ He seemed to lap up the advice that Mayer could offer and the pair parted later on good terms. It had been made crystal clear that City Hall was not just a larger version of the
Spectator
– even with the best ‘Stuart Reid’ character in the world, Boris could not afford to be semi-permanently out to lunch. He had to get down and get dirty, to run things himself. Mayer noticed an immediate change in his approach after that momentous evening but was in no doubt as to where the problem originated. Boris lacked his version of Ken’s ‘cadre’ and when he unexpectedly won the mayoralty, he was consequently isolated and vulnerable to panicky – and arguably, disastrous – appointments, such as Lewis and now Parker. After 40
years in national and London government, Mayer knew all too well that the idea of a symbolic mayor was never going to work: Boris did indeed need to ‘get a grip’ and Parker had to go. There was room for only one mayor.

Parker was to become the third of Boris’s advisers to depart within as many months. Days later, the two men met for the ‘divorce’ lunch to hammer out the details at a South Bank restaurant overlooking the river, near City Hall. The atmosphere was not exactly amicable, but not overtly unpleasant either. Perhaps with Mayer’s words ringing in his ears, Boris said he had now realised that he wanted to be a ‘real’ mayor and Parker returned that if he could not make the decisions, he could not do the job. Both men were astute enough to realise they had not only misunderstood their respective roles and how they could be divided up, but also themselves and their own drives.