Just days after Boris’s election, Bernard Jenkin, the Tory MP, spotted the new mayor standing alone in Westminster’s Great Hall, glued to the spot where Charles I had stood for his trial in 1649.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Jenkin.
‘I can’t believe I’m giving this up,’ Boris explained, just before submitting his resignation from the Commons.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll be back,’ said Jenkin as consolation.
Boris looked unconvinced. As a man of energetic enthusiasm, for once he looked lost. Parliament had been a disappointment. Without any achievements or progress up the greasy pole, he had left no impression other than as an unreliable chancer. Now he was even unsure whether the mayoralty would improve his route to Downing Street.
In a trance or perhaps in haste, he cycled that night back to Islington. On the way, he passed through six red lights, failed to stop at a zebra crossing, cycled on the pavement and finally through a no-cycling park. He was followed by a Sunday Mirror journalist. The publication of his lawlessness was a warning of the new peril of his life in the spotlight.1 He no longer enjoyed a journalist’s licence to act frivolously, or feign a backbencher’s powerlessness. He had become the representative and lawmaker of one the world’s great cities with the power to influence millions of lives. For the first time, his decisions mattered.
*
For Boris’s formal inauguration, he arranged that Livingstone’s key executives for the mayor’s principal responsibilities – planning, police, transport – should be seated together in the front row. All had good reason to feel anxious. Manny Lewis, the chief executive of the London Development Authority (LDA), Peter Hendy, the commissioner of Transport for London, and Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, were dogged by allegations of partisanship, chaos, overstaffing and financial mismanagement.2
Known as ‘Ken’s chequebook’, the LDA had spent £1.5 billion over four years on ‘community projects’. In the previous months, at least £159 million had been handed over to phoney ‘diversity’ projects including to extremist Muslims with few attempts to monitor whether the money was justified.3 Lewis was fired by Boris for misspending ‘tens of millions of pounds’.4 He did not protest when Boris terminated his contract.
Peter Hendy, a privately educated graduate trainee of London Transport, had astutely anticipated Boris’s antagonism. As a Livingstone loyalist, he had publicly opposed the Routemaster buses. To avoid dismissal, just before the inauguration ceremony, he had presented Boris with a transport plan to help him implement his manifesto. Astutely, he had included Boris’s beloved Routemaster. He also proposed to reverse much that he had done for Livingstone. ‘A number of people were looking for my neck,’ said Hendy, ‘including the Evening Standard, so I was always insecure. But Boris’s perverse streak decided to do the opposite. One of the great things about Boris is his generosity.’5
With one gone and another hanging on, Ian Blair, the Met commissioner since January 2005, had good reason to fear dismissal. In July 2005, after Islamic extremists had murdered fifty-two people in a series of bomb attacks on the London Underground and on a bus, Met detectives had shot Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube station. Seven bullets were fired into the Brazilian’s head. Soon after, Blair had told a press conference that Menezes’ death was ‘directly linked to the ongoing anti-terrorist operation’ even though his senior officers already knew that Menezes was innocent. During a BBC radio interview that day, Boris condemned the police for being ‘too trigger-happy’. Before he could finish fully articulating the line of thought, he was cut off by the BBC. Blair wrote to Boris that his remarks were ‘outrageous’ and ‘offensive’ and demanded ‘in the strongest possible terms that you withdraw your remarks’.
‘I have absolutely no intention of doing so,’ replied Boris, repeating that the police were ‘trigger-happy’. Blair was accused of hampering the independent investigation of the shooting. Two years later in 2007, after the truth of the Menezes shooting had been exposed, the GLA assembly passed a vote of no confidence in Blair. The commissioner’s position, said Boris, was ‘untenable’. He added, ‘A paralysing culture of health and safety lies at the heart of the Met Police.’
One year later on his inauguration day, Boris knew that Scotland Yard had become dysfunctional. An investigation into a corrupt senior officer had spun out of control and several officers were using their police Amex cards for personal use including payments for holidays and one even for his wife’s breast implants. London was also engulfed by a wave of knife crime. Among the mayor’s few powers was policing. But with Parker’s appointment as chief operating officer, Boris remained uncertain how to handle Blair, let alone the Yard. Insensitive to politics and without experience of public administration, Parker’s abrasive manner had quickly paralysed City Hall. Parker didn’t understand that he needed to work with the bureaucrats, not break them.
Boris returned to his new office in City Hall, a glass egg with stunning views across the Thames to the Tower of London and the City, and opened a cupboard to discover bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. ‘Rows and rows of glistening bottles,’ chortled Boris, ‘left behind by Mayor Livingstone.’ Boris would drink the wine. He also cancelled City Hall’s daily subscription for forty copies of the Morning Star and closed down the Londoner, a newspaper published by Livingstone to promote Livingstone. That saved £1 million a year. Finally, he fired one hundred GLA staff including Emma Beal, Livingstone’s partner and the mother of their two children. Paid £96,000 a year as an ‘administration manager’, Beale had, at Livingstone’s request, facilitated first-class travel to Cuba and numerous destinations, and delivery of a £2,500 crate of fine wine. Boris’s new media spokesman, Guto Harri, discovered that many of Livingstone’s records had been shredded but some invoices for his entertainment and travel had been overlooked in filing cabinets. They were kept just in case Livingstone stood in the next election. His humiliated cronies left City Hall waiting for their revenge.
In July, just eight weeks after his victory, Boris became headline news again.
In the rush to recruit his team, Boris was unaware of the process and pitfalls of public appointments. Vetting each person’s background was crucial. Among the first appointments was Ray Lewis, the founder of an academy in east London for Caribbean youths, victims of parental neglect which had led to a life of crime. Lewis, a jovial Samaritan, exposed the left’s refusal to admit the special needs of black youths. Lewis had presented himself as a priest and a magistrate, but soon after his appearance with Boris, his official CV unravelled. Although he had been approved to sit as a magistrate, his appointment had not passed the final hurdle. More importantly, east London church leaders claimed that Lewis had been defrocked because of allegations of financial and sexual misconduct. Although Boris believed the accusations were politically motivated, Lewis resigned.6 Distraught about asking for Lewis’s departure, Boris telephoned to commiserate. ‘I really regretted it,’ Boris would later say, ‘because he’s a man with a fantastic amount to offer and I felt we should have handled it better … I could have protected him better.’7
Soon after, Bob Diamond, the former chief executive of Barclays Bank, resigned as his charity adviser. More trouble followed when James McGrath, a political adviser working with Lynton Crosby, made an ill-advised comment. In a conversation with Marc Wadsworth, a Labour activist, McGrath was told by Wadsworth that some immigrants disliked their lives in Tory London. ‘If they don’t like it here,’ replied McGrath, the dissatisfied immigrants ‘can go home’. Wadsworth accused McGrath of racism. Instead of supporting McGrath who was not racist, Boris fired him. Again, Boris had clearly made a mistake. In 2016, Wadsworth, all the while proclaiming his innocence, was expelled from the Labour Party when charges of anti-Semitic incidents that were deemed ‘grossly detrimental to the party’ were upheld.
Three high-profile casualties in the new mayor’s first nine weeks persuaded Simon Milton, his senior planning adviser, to tell Boris the truth. City Hall was chaotic. Boris looked puzzled. ‘Boles doesn’t understand local government or London,’ continued Milton, ‘and you can’t decide what to do.’ Boris was already failing to engage with his responsibilities – planning and transport – and his administration was in turmoil. ‘You’re supposed to be in charge,’ said Milton. Boris, he realised, did not understand the machinery of government – how to staff it with loyal, talented advisers and, more important, how to get City Hall’s roughly 700 officials to make and implement the right decisions – the decisions that he, as mayor, wanted. During his study of the classics and even as a journalist, he had never been exposed to the bureaucrats’ decision-making processes. He sat in his office without an inkling where to find a single lever of power. Administration was an unknown science. ‘Mr Johnson’s summer honeymoon,’ declared the Standard, ‘is fast ending. The autumn will decide whether he can really govern the city.’8 Just as his critics predicted, Boris appeared to be ‘an inexperienced blunderer’.9
First Boles left. ‘Boles failed,’ concluded Marland, ‘because his life was all about Boles.’ Then Milton focused on Parker’s manner. ‘I’ll go if this continues,’ warned Milton. Faced with that ultimatum, Boris agreed to Parker’s departure.10
In the midst of City Hall’s turmoil, that year’s twentieth stabbing victim had died. Six men had been murdered in six days. All those deaths, Boris acknowledged, had been ‘endlessly ignored’.11 One hundred days after his victory, he conceded the job was ‘bigger than I expected. Much, much bigger, more intellectually challenging than anything I’ve ever done.’12 Then followed a surprising confession: ‘Over the past few weeks, it has become increasingly apparent that the nature of the decisions that need to be taken are hugely political and there is no substitute for me, as directly elected mayor, being in charge.’13
To the surprise of Professor Travers – the LSE professor who had agreed with the verdict that a Boris mayoralty was unlikely – the chaos did not damage Boris’s popularity. Boris was seen as a good man. ‘The public,’ recorded Travers, ‘saw the mistakes as evidence of Boris’s authenticity.’
After the debris had been cleared, the mood in City Hall’s Monday morning meetings changed. Centre of attention and acting as the host of a good party, Boris alternated between jokes and seriousness to steady his administration.14 ‘My manifesto is for London to be happy, green, clean and safe,’ he said. In a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, he listened to his team’s opinions, asked questions, wrote notes and preferred to follow the mood music so as not to be isolated or disliked. His style was not coercive but inspiring, encouraging the group to support him. As a speed reader, he had usually mastered the details of a proposal. If uncertain because he did not have the facts, he tended to follow the last person he spoke to. ‘No, you can’t do that,’ Milton would say, ‘because last week we agreed the opposite.’ ‘He wants to be loved,’ some would say. His new ally, Guto Harri, an Oxford friend and experienced BBC journalist recruited as his communications director, became with Simon Milton a key aide.
*
Sitting outside Boris’s office, Milton began rebuilding the administrative machine. The agenda was to cut spending by 15 per cent, reduce knife crime, create more apprenticeships, boost tourism and protect the City’s global dominance. Four weeks later he would tell the Standard that he had underestimated Boris: ‘My job is to translate into action the ten ideas Boris has while he cycles to City Hall.’15 Boris’s foremost priority was to develop the Olympic Park.
Beating the intense international competition to stage the 2012 Olympics in London had won Tony Blair and Ken Livingstone huge accolades. Once the excitement passed, sceptics competed to predict that London would fail to deliver the project on time and on budget, and that like other host cities, the huge area in east London designated for the Olympic Park would be permanently blighted by derelict stadiums and the capital burdened by huge debts. As a keen fan of sport and mindful of the Olympics’ origins in ancient Greece, Boris took upon himself the challenge to prove the doubters wrong. Being the mayor during a successful Olympics, he calculated, would boost his profile and his popularity for the party’s leadership. He cast around to find a mastermind to build the Olympic legacy, not only for London but also a permanent memorial to himself.
Livingstone, he recalled, had advised him to employ Neale Coleman, a Marxist and close ally of the former mayor. Coleman had been automatically fired after Livingstone’s defeat but three weeks later Boris telephoned him. Although ten years older than Boris, Coleman had a lot in common with the new mayor. Both had studied classics at Balliol, both were taught Homer by Jasper Griffin, and both had the same tutors for Virgil and history. Intelligent and politically savvy, Coleman had opposed Boris but was enticed by his vision. Livingstone had failed to conceive a master plan for the future use of the Olympic stadium, the Aquatic Centre and the £490 million Media Centre. His LDA had not signed up a single tenant for the complex after the Games. Equally alarming, the Olympic Development Authority (ODA) had failed to raise £450 million from the private sector to build the Olympic village. Without construction contracts and agreements to subsequently sell the 17,000 athletes’ apartments, the ODA was responsible for a £1 billion project without any money. The biggest problem was the fate of the Olympic stadium after the Games – a potential financial albatross once the Labour government and Livingstone had agreed that the stadium should remain unaltered as a venue for athletics. In reality, the stadium was only financially viable if sold or leased to a Premier League football club, and the only realistic tenant was West Ham, a local club.16
Boris told Coleman that, unlike all other Olympic cities, London’s Games would come in on budget. ‘I’m determined about that.’ Money must be saved, he said, not least by abandoning Livingstone’s plans for temporary arenas and by using Wembley stadium. More important, he must get the legacy powers to develop the Olympic zone, a key aspect which Livingstone had disregarded. ‘We must get this sorted out,’ Boris told Coleman. At the heart of Boris’s personal vision was to develop Stratford as a new metropolis like Canary Wharf, the futuristic development enabled by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. The challenge twenty-odd years later was just as enormous. To transfer the debt and land after the Games to a new corporation required complicated negotiations and legislation. In the nature of bureaucratic turf wars, that would be opposed by Whitehall, the local authorities and Transport for London (TfL). Overcoming their obstruction would require Boris’s personal engagement and mastery of the details. ‘The biggest problem will be TfL,’ said Coleman with bitter experience. Hendy was told to prepare a plan while Boris headed for the Beijing Olympics.
Boris’s excitement about the potential of the Olympics reflected the difference between himself and Livingstone. Unlike his predecessor, Boris was a sports fanatic. Not only did he enjoy playing tennis, table tennis and cricket, but he had been a keen rugby player. He hated the left’s denunciation of character-building through sport and gruelling hikes. Britain’s educational establishment, he fumed, had developed an aversion to games and a damaging obsession with ‘elf and safety’, denying that competitive sport taught resilience, teamwork, trust and leadership. ‘The only sport we’re excelling in,’ he said on the eve of flying to Beijing, ‘is the national sport of running ourselves down.’ Among the cynics, Boris included David Cameron, who had just cast Britain as a ‘broken society’ because ‘welfarism and political correctness’ had sapped young people’s courage and morals. ‘Piffle,’ countered Boris, refreshed after curtailing his City Hall troubles and keen to assert himself as an independent warlord. ‘Britain is a decent, compassionate and vibrant nation,’ said the proud patriot. ‘No one has broken Britain and no one ever will.’17
The publication of the ‘piffle’ snipe appeared as Boris flew economy class to China. His flight coincided with the TV broadcast of the episode of the BBC’s genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? in which he starred. Trawling through Boris’s background including Turkish, German, French, Muslim and Jewish ancestors, the researchers had discovered that through the de Pfeffels, his eight-times grandfather was George II of England.18 Like Cameron, he was a genuine toff after all.
Stepping off the plane somewhat dishevelled after eleven hours in an economy seat, the mayor was immediately asked about deriding Cameron’s opinion as ‘piffle’. Was that a bid to be prime minister? ‘Were I to be pulled like Cincinnatus from my plough,’ he replied, ‘then obviously it would be a great privilege,’ and headed for the Olympic stadium. The line was drawn. Unwilling to hide his impatience, Boris still could not understand how someone as boring as Cameron could be a potential prime minister. For his part, Cameron could not understand how a shambolic character could be so popular. Cameron’s bewilderment was about to escalate.
In the days before Boris’s appearance at the closing ceremony on 24 August, his Chinese hosts had become perplexed. Among Boris’s sayings, they were told, was ‘Love is a pyramid composed of bullshit and stupid deeds’; and ‘The chances of my becoming prime minister are as great as my finding Elvis Presley or being reincarnated into an olive.’ They were uncertain what to expect when he walked towards the podium, watched by 1.6 billion people worldwide. Undoubtedly they had also heard of the British cynics carping that he would inevitably drop the Olympic flag or say something foolish during the handover ceremony.
In anticipation of that drama, Boris had taken some care. At lunch, Guto Harri was surprised to watch him for the first time put a napkin over his shirt before he began eating noodle soup. ‘Why?’ asked Harri. ‘Because I can’t appear in front of a billion people with soup stains,’ replied Boris. As he entered the stadium with his hand in the pocket of a rumpled open jacket, he strode untidily towards the immaculately dressed, stiff-backed Chinese officials standing on a podium proud of their world-beating extravaganza. ‘There is no Olympic jacket button protocol,’ he later wrote. ‘Open or shut it’s up to you. I was going to follow a policy of openness, transparency and individual freedom. No disrespect intended. It’s just there are times when you have to take a stand.’19 Others surmised he was too fat to do up the button. Later at a party for the British delegation to celebrate the handover, amid relief that Boris had not dropped the flag, he made a speech informing his audience how Britain had either invented or codified most international sports, including table tennis, arguably China’s national game: ‘Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England, ladies and gentlemen, in the nineteenth century, it was, and it was called wiff waff. And there I think you have the essential difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner. We looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to play wiff waff … and I say to the Chinese and the world, ping-pong is coming home.’ The hilarity won Boris the celebrity he yearned. He regretted forgetting to mention that the pankration event of the ancient Greek games should have featured in Beijing but would hopefully feature in London. ‘The chief exponent,’ he later told his hosts, ‘was Milo of Croton whose signature performance involved carrying a living ox the length of the stadium, killing it with his bare hands and then eating it on the same day.’ At the end of that day, his only moan was about the cost of the phenomenal firework finale. ‘Probably cost more than the London Olympics’ entire £3.4 billion budget,’ he sighed.
After Beijing’s success, London’s Olympic budget was increased to a more realistic £9.3 billion. The project was ahead of schedule but the plans for the Olympic Park and the arenas were in danger of being crippled by the 2008 banking crash. The housing market had collapsed and the prospect of private investment in the Olympic village was wiped out. London house prices fell by 15 per cent and the cranes disappeared overnight. Some 7,000 small builders and developers were declared bankrupt or disappeared. London had a housing crisis.