An Experiment in Leadership

A city hall inhabited by someone like Johnson was never going to be boring, and indeed it crackles with the same spirit of wackiness-cum-unpredictability that has blessed, and cursed, Johnson's earlier incarnations. What's endearing to some—showing up at the Olympic handover ceremony in Beijing last summer looking disheveled, hands in pockets, jacket unbuttoned—is irksome to others, such as his Chinese hosts. He publicly endorsed Barack Obama for president—something no leading Tory or Labour pol in Britain could do for fear of breaching diplomatic protocol. Johnson, after all, is a man who doesn't do low-key; he not only speaks but thinks in italics, exclamation marks and capital letters, and he combines the omnivorous curiosity of a natural journalist with the erudition of a scholar who in December presented a BBC television documentary, "After Rome," on the impact of Islam on the world. No surprise, then, that Johnson's early months in office have been marked by no small amount of chaos, including the resignations of four of his senior advisers.

Johnson is as cunning politically as he is colorful personally. Much more than Livingstone, he wants to turn city hall into an alternate base of national political power. At the national level, British political leaders are creatures of their parties: elected in small constituencies by mere thousands of voters, they attain real power—like becoming party leader—by being chosen by their fellow M.P.s. Thus, the directly elected mayor of London automatically has the biggest mandate of any British political figure. Prime Minister Gordon Brown was re-elected as M.P. in 2005 because 24,000 Scots in Kirkcaldy voted for him; 1.2 million Londoners voted for Johnson. A four-year term at city hall, therefore, is a perfectly plausible launchpad to much higher office.

While it will take several years for Londoners, much less the public outside London, to come to a firm judgment about Johnson's tenure, the timing could work in his favor. His next move, if his political stars were in proper alignment, would be to succeed the 42-year-old Cameron as Tory leader, putting himself on track to be prime minister someday.

Sometime between now and June 2010 there will be a general election. Johnson will be watching from the relatively safe confines of city hall. If the Tories win, Cameron will presumably become prime minister; if they lose, Cameron could well be forced out as leader. Either way, Johnson will be seen as a rival to Cameron's presumed successor, George Osborne, 37. Osborne, Cameron's friend, ally and de facto deputy, is now shadow chancellor, and has been faulted for his lackluster performance during the financial crisis. Though there are no camps of supporters massing in public at this point, Johnson, along with former party leader William Hague, 47, tops the list of likely contenders to the leadership.

A busy mayor, of course, has no time for such crass thoughts. Asked if after one or two four-years terms in city hall he might stand again for Parliament, as he would have to do to position himself for the party leadership, Johnson arches his eyebrows and says he recognizes a "trap" question. "If I feel I've got something to say and something to offer and there were things that I could really, plausibly do, then of course I'd give it a thought," he says. "But at the moment, I have to tell you, this particular job is so all-engrossing, so demanding, it gluts the appetite for power. My cup runneth over." Of course it does. Or is that just another one of those inverted pyramids of piffle?

With Saleha Mohsin

© 2009