An Experiment in Leadership

In Whitehall and Westminster, new thinking seems to have slowed to a trickle, with both big national political parties transfixed by the global financial crisis and defaulting to their timeworn left-right positions. Last month's Queen's Speech, in which the monarch traditionally outlines the government's entire legislative program for the coming year, amounted to a meager 683 words. Yet downriver from Britain's ancient centers of power, a very different picture is emerging. Under the leadership of one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, city hall has become something of an idea factory, humming with all kinds of innovation.

Untethered by political pressure to solve Britain's economic problems, and unrestrained by the strict left-right divide of national politics, Boris Johnson, 44, has been left free to experiment with his trademark reckless abandon. Since taking office as mayor eight months ago, he has displayed a deft populist touch by banning alcohol consumption on public transport and increasing the London "living wage" to $11.17 per hour (nearly 35 percent higher than the national figure). More than that, though, his office is brimming with ideas that could win him popularity in London and widen his appeal nationwide. Aside from pushing projects like cycling "superhighways" and community gardens, his administration is studying, for instance, a U.S.-style amnesty program for the estimated 350,000 illegal immigrants living in London; a $7.25 billion plan to build 50,000 affordable homes and get middle-income families on the property ladder; putting 440 "safety" officers on London buses; running the tube later into the evening on weekends; instituting bike- rental programs like the kind already successful in other European cities; and investing $87 million to renovate empty properties.

He has also rather deliberately staked out positions that do not toe the line drawn by his fellow Tory, opposition leader David Cameron. For instance, Johnson, like Cameron, is opposed to proposed plans for construction of a third runway at Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport. But while environmentally conscious Conservatives favor improving Britain's railway network to reduce domestic air traffic, Johnson favors construction of a vast new airport in the Thames estuary, far from central London.

But it is still very much an open question whether Johnson can win this particular battle—or, indeed, follow through on any of his ideas. Though he has modeled himself in part after Michael Bloomberg, New York's politically independent mayor, as a pragmatist who rises above partisan politics, his powers are not those of a classic "big city" mayor. His revenue-raising powers are limited. He has planning authority over London's vast public-transportation system, for instance, but while he can raise fares and impose special fees, he has no authority to impose or raise taxes. As a consequence, the sole connective tissue providing coherence to Johnson's ideas sometimes seems to be that they happen to be Johnson's ideas.

While he may succeed in capturing the public's imagination and attention, he remains a moderate Tory at heart. He will have to make tangible changes and real progress in London in order to be seen, like Bloomberg, as a political figure of substance. He is counting on the fact that the mayor's office can become a bully pulpit for new ideas and the very public face for one of the world's most important and diverse cities. "Insofar as we're able to do new things and good things in city hall," says Johnson, "it's because we have a huge popular mandate."

Not even a decade old, the mayor's office is still appealingly adolescent in its enthusiasm for new, even bold ideas. In 2000 Ken Livingstone became the first directly elected mayor of London in its 1,000-year history. Outspoken and controversial—he cozied up to Venezuela's leftist, anti-American president, Hugo Chávez, with whom he negotiated a favorable oil-price deal for London buses (a deal that Johnson has canned)—he also worked tirelessly, and used his global connections, to help bring the 2012 Olympics to London. Against widespread criticism, he tackled the capital's chronic traffic snarls with an expensive but innovative and ultimately successful congestion-charging plan for motorists. Johnson, his successor, is also an iconoclast with a knack for controversy. Educated in Brussels, at Eton College and then at Oxford, where he studied classics, he gravitated to journalism after a brief stint as a management consultant. In the sort of two-steps-forward, one-step-backward progression that has typified his life, Johnson went to work for The Times of London and was promptly sacked for making up a quote from his own godfather.

Undaunted, he climbed the journalism ladder and in 1999 became editor of The Spectator, burnishing his Tory credentials, widening his circle of influence and eventually winning a seat in Parliament, in 2001, to represent the posh London suburb of Henley. He rose to become shadow minister for the arts, but was forced out of the job for allegedly lying about an extramarital affair (the accusations were "an inverted pyramid of piffle," he said). But he bounced back again and ran for mayor of London, promising to make it a greener city and to clean up the corruption and cronyism that he said had insinuated themselves into Livingstone's government. Defying the predictions of most pundits and pollsters, he won, by a margin of 8 percent.