A bored Boris Johnson is bad news for Cameron | Dave Hill | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Quote:

Did he or did he not threaten to quit? The story that Boris Johnson said he'd resign as London's mayor if the government cuts its £5bn contribution to the Crossrail train link budget originated in a Sunday newspaper over an August bank holiday weekend. From these details we may be tempted to draw certain conclusions. City Hall has issued a flat denial. Meanwhile, the Financial Times has confirmed the strong impression previously given by transport secretary Philip Hammond that the future of the new east-west line is secure. Some trimming and paring may be required, but the Treasury's axeman is looking for his big killings elsewhere. Yet even if we dismiss the Johnson "threat" headline as a silly season feeding of that ever-buoyant market for Boris-Dave rivalry yarns, its mere existence alludes to a longer and deeper political negotiation that's been under way since the general election. A Tory-led government bent on slashing public spending was the last thing London's power-ravenous Tory mayor needed, what with its installation of Cameron (rather than the vastly more exciting and talented Johnson, for pity's sake) at No 10 for years to come and the prospect of shrunken funding for the core mayoral functions of housing and policing as well as transport threatening his hopes of re-election in 2012. Who will get the blame if bus and tube fares soar even higher than they're already destined to in order to fill the fiscal gap, or if crime begins to rise as police numbers fall? "Good old Boris" will. And who is likely to be assigning that blame with the greatest glee? Only that horrid lefty ghoul, Ken Livingstone. This week, members of the London Labour party and affiliated trade unionists will receive their ballot papers inviting them to choose between Livingstone and Oona King as mayoral candidate for 2012. King might do better than some assume – and will deserve to – but if she wins it will be a sensation. A Livingstone comeback as mayor in 2012 would be a sensation too, but the odds are far, far tighter. Ever since Johnson's win in 2008 his allies have been protesting the death of Livingstone a little too much to convince. Their lips insist that Livingstone is history but their eyes tell a different tale. Ken-haters in the media have heaped relentless ridicule on his comeback ambitions, but their very industry betrays anxiety. Johnson is feeling it too: recent Tory blogosphere claims that Livingstone had become a critic of his own policing policies had an orchestrated, almost pre-campaign character (as well as being incorrect); if the incumbent's delay in announcing his own 2012 candidacy has not been influenced by a recognition that his predecessor as mayor could very well take back City Hall, then his more avid fans' fond belief that he is wholly untainted by the cares and calculations of every other politician has not been a delusion after all. The current mayor has a difficult judgment to make about his future, and the threat-to-quit story should be seen in that context. It will have done Johnson no harm at all – he wants Londoners to think he's sticking up for them – and is relevant to that bigger political picture too. It will have reminded Johnson's fellow Conservatives in national government, should any reminder be required, of the possible consequences of their party's very famous populist outrider choosing not to defend the capital in 2012. London would probably be handed to Livingstone on a plate, because no Tory other than Johnson could hope to beat him. It would also raise the prospect of Johnson the former mayor returning to the Commons to draw attention to himself, just as public opinion swings against the coalition in midterm. Dave fears Boris just as Boris fears Ken. I still think Johnson will run for mayor again because I can't see that he has a better option. There again, he's a man who doesn't suffer boredom gladly; even his best friends question his staying power in tough times, and running London on a shortening shoestring for another five years won't be enormous fun. Making mischief from the backbenches might yet hold greater appeal. Such a move would strike many as utterly shameless, but Boris Johnson does not blush easily.

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I still don't think that the British public would see Bojo as a contender for a ministerial or prime ministerial job.

Like Ken, he is an amusing figure in a rather dry and dreary polical landscape (even Blair was pretty conventional in his egoistical maniaco-megalomaniac ways).

For some reason or other, people see the London mayor office as "not that important" - while it is supposed to have a lot of power (not that I noticed anything, whether Bojo or Ken).

That's the problem with his choice of image - It gets him to a certain point but not further...

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