Exploding with Ideas

London Mayor Boris Johnson, 44, has had a wild ride, turning city hall into a youthful idea factory that could position him to be Britain's next Conservative leader. NEWSWEEK's Stryker McGuire interviewed the mayor in his office. Excerpts:

MCGUIRE: City hall is fizzing with ideas, while your counterparts at the national level seem out of steam. Why?
JOHNSON: I'm not going to object too violently to that [characterization]. People expect the mayor in a funny way to be above party politics and to be thinking about the interests of the city. So you have scope to do and say things that your national party would find a little bit odd and perhaps even objectionable. One of the things about everybody here [in city hall] is that they're quite young and idealistic; they're not by any means all Conservatives, and, you know, they're full of wheezes for improving the lot of Londoners.

How do you explain to somebody who's accustomed to big cities and big-city mayors the powers you have and don't have?
In some ways, I have more powers than [New York Mayor] Mike Bloomberg. For instance, over the mass-transit system I have colossal powers. I directly raise or reduce fares for travelers. I hire and fire the transport chiefs. I set transport policy. Clearly, I don't have the same revenue-raising powers. The executive authority is there, as you would expect, but I don't have the corresponding ability to raise the funds to make those policies go.

Some commentators applaud your individual ideas but wonder what the vision is.
I have a vision exploding from every orifice! My vision for London is very simple: it's a cleaner, greener, more pleasant city to live and work in, in which you have a big expansion of cycling, a wonderful new philosophy of urban realm and public space, and you maximize the opportunities of new green technology to make the city both cleaner and more pleasant to live in. I don't want to infiltrate myself into the living room of every Londoner and tell them how they should run their lives, but I think there are inducements and enticements that you can produce as mayor that will get them doing things that will be to their benefit and to the benefit of the city.

In 2012, when the Olympics come to London, what will the city be like?
Let me paint you a picture. You fly into Heathrow …

You don't yet fly into a new airport?
Right, you arrive at Heathrow, and one of the first things you see is a maquette of the new airport. Of course, Heathrow is greatly improved. You're attended by every comfort. You take a high-speed train to Paddington. The chewing gum is miraculously gone from the streets because we've persuaded the bubble-gum companies to put a solvent into their disgusting mixture. When you get out of the station there is a wonderful bike-hire scheme. You cycle through the increasingly perfumed air of London. There is more greenery on the roofs and some of the [new] growing spaces are already bearing fruit, and here is a nut tree and there a bosky nook in which people are growing things for consumption. You cycle toward Oxford Street, and the buses are no longer standing there like a great heaving, panting red wall of metal, but a wonderful new urban-rail-network project has been instituted. You come to the river, and for the first time you're able to take a wonderful new riverboat service all the way to the Olympic Park. I hope that people will say that there has been a fall in minor disorder, that it was the right thing to ban alcohol on the tube and in the buses, and that these things have brought measurable civility to urban life. I hope you'll go to the Olympics and have an event every bit as wonderful as Beijing—but, obviously, at half the price.

You caused a bit of a stir by endorsing Barack Obama.
I liked [John] McCain. I just thought that Barack Obama would do the thing that mattered most to me. As a lover of America, a believer in America, I wanted a president who would rekindle the global love affair with America, and I thought that Barack Obama offered the best hope of doing that.

You'll remember this from The Guardian newspaper on Election Day: "Be afraid. Be very afraid. Unbelievable as it may seem, Boris Johnson has a real chance of being elected London mayor today … Imagine what it would be like if this bigoted, lying, Old Etonian buffoon got his hands on our diverse and liberal capital."
Look, one of the great joys of British politics is the exuberant polemic that both sides indulge in. I don't think The Guardian meant it with all their heart. I've wound them up over the years. I've tweaked their tails in very disreputable ways over the years.

Perhaps you've won some Guardian readers over since then.
I hope so. Some Guardian readers probably ignored that [at the time] and voted for me anyway.

© 2009