JUST BORIS: A Tale of Blond Ambition (50 page)

Boris did make the odd public appearance towards the end of the year – such as in late November, when he announced that he would create a Mayor’s Fund to raise millions for youth charities. True, he wrote a piece in the
Evening Standard
on knife crime and praised the work done by Ray Lewis with black boys from disadvantaged backgrounds at the Eastside Young Leaders Academy. But Boris’s near-invisibility allowed Ken to quip: ‘I’ve sent the police out to look for him – I’m afraid he might have been kidnapped.’

The Tory feeling was also that his appearances such as they were, were sporadic and poorly planned, and that Boris was relying on his fame and charisma to wing him through. While these attributes had served him extraordinarily well so far, they were hardly a match for beating the formidable Ken and his Labour Party machine. George Osborne, who was in overall charge, started briefing the Tory activist website
ConservativeHome
that he was concerned at the campaign’s ‘worrying drift’ and that there was ‘disappointment that the Henley MP is not yet firing on all cylinders.’ It was part of a concerted effort to corner a reluctant Boris into accepting outside help. The Leadership was right to be worried – ‘The team needed some grown-ups, they were out of their depth,’ said one person who was closely involved. ‘The whole thing was a peculiar shambles.’

Still apparently semi-detached, Boris was nevertheless trying to bolster his office off his own back. In November, David Willetts lent him his young assistant Chris Cook for six weeks (Boris trusted Cook from when he worked from his staff annexe in Westminster and
fortunately, he was also rated by Central Office). However talented, it was nevertheless the case that he had been working for the Tories for just two-and-a-half years and while that made him a veteran compared to some of the campaign team, it was hardly the sort of battle-hardened experience Boris needed. ‘It was unbearable when I arrived,’ Cook recalls. In the absence of proper direction, at least one team-member resorted to seeking help from what Cook dubs, ‘a trendy American political pot-boiler.’

‘The big problem was that the disorganisation led to some real on-the-hoof decision-making,’ recalls Cook. One such issue was the third runway at Heathrow. Boris and his team ‘were of a view’ that he was going to come out against it, but no final decision had been made about the call or when it would be made. But somehow, in a blunder symptomatic of the lack of discipline, the policy slipped out without any strategic planning. ‘When it started going wrong, he came to me, with his head in his hands, saying, “I don’t think they know what they are doing.”’

Cook set to work on deciding the attack lines against Ken, but found he was working virtually alone. ‘There was no political leadership and no discipline,’ he recalls. ‘People would just get distracted with ephemera and leave important things like media planning much too late. No one was checking that Ken’s claims on various things were actually true, breaking the first rule of political campaigns.’ Nor would Boris take the lead himself. ‘Boris wanted to be liked, he wanted to outsource responsibility for getting it going,’ explains Cook. ‘He wasn’t going to go in and do the shouting; he was looking for someone to sort it out. But he did not want to bring in people from Central Office – he wanted only people who were loyal to him.’

Boris was also reluctant to let anyone else write his speeches or monitor the ones he had written, but this led to an inevitable log jam. ‘I told him that you actually want people to say, “oh, one of those boring political speeches!” We had to make him sound like an administrator, a mayor. But he would always bugger around with everything. It led to things not being ready for print runs or briefings.’

With just six months to go until the election, time – and patience – was running out. It was not so much Ken as the Liberal Democrat
candidate Brian Paddick (who had recently left the police after 30 years), who brought the matter to a head for, as a former deputy assistant commissioner, he knew his subject well. And as another populist maverick, Paddick was swift to call for the resignation of his former boss, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, over the fatal police shooting of an innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, on 22 July 2005 in the aftermath of the London bombings. It was an opportunistic move by Paddick, on the very day of his nomination, against an increasingly vulnerable Commissioner (who had long been a major Tory target for what was perceived to be his politically-motivated style of policing). The Met had been found guilty of ‘corporate failure’ and a series of errors that had endangered the public. Boris had given a quote claiming the Commissioner’s position was ‘untenable,’ but had failed to go further, leaving the way clear for Paddick to reap the political capital. Senior Tories thought Boris had been left looking strangely passive and underpowered.

Boris’s admittedly feeble defence was that he had agreed to leave the field to his colleague, the shadow home secretary David Davis. But the affair – a mayoral issue par excellence – alarmed the Leadership. Although Cameron made fun of him by saying: ‘Inside Boris there is a serious, ambitious politician fighting to get out,’ the seemingly affectionate joke veiled a distinct threat. It was accompanied by a summons from George Osborne for a meeting at which he pressed Boris to ‘engage’ with the fight and accept a forthright Australian Central Office staffer called James McGrath to instill the missing discipline and urgency. But Boris, fearing a Cameroon ‘spy in the cab’, fought hard against it.

Even his staunchest supporters were telling him to ‘get a grip’. Veronica Wadley, who had done more than anyone to make him the Conservative candidate for mayor, publicly attacked Boris in November 2007 for being ‘pathetic.’ In front of a crowd at the
Spectator
Parliamentary awards lunch, she icily declared: ‘You need to get your finger out!’

In December, one of Wadley’s senior reporters, Andrew Gilligan (who had worked for Boris on the
Spectator
and whom Boris had
staunchly defended in print as a journalistic hero
²
) started writing about Lee Jasper, a long-term friend of Ken’s and his director of equalities and policing. Gilligan reported that Jasper was being investigated for channelling £2.5 million from the Mayor’s Office and the London Development Agency to organisations ‘controlled by himself, his friends and his business associates’ that appeared ‘to do little or no work in return.’ More accusations and disturbing material followed and kept on coming, and the Met police were called in to investigate. Ken continued to denounce them as ‘tissues of lies’ and attacked Gilligan for waging a ‘dirty and mendacious campaign.’ But Wadley, a formidable if unemotional figure, stood by Gilligan as an ‘outstanding and fearless’ journalist pursuing investigations ‘in the public interest.’ Nothing would deter her from what she started calling ‘the campaign.’

‘Veronica put her entire being into it, frequently coming in at 4 a.m. to prepare that day’s Gilligan coverage and never later than six. Overall, she worked round the clock, seven days a week,’ recalls a close colleague. Indeed, Wadley might have added that she and Gilligan were doing more to further the ‘Back Boris’ bid than the man himself. Gilligan’s investigations were at the very least tarnishing Ken with the jaded air of
fin de regime
(and possibly much worse). In the process they were also directing the spotlight away from Boris’s faltering performance.

But while the outside world may not yet have been looking closely at Boris, Osborne and Cameron feared his campaign was quietly heading for disaster – with all this would entail for Tory national ambitions. The mayoral was seen as Cameron’s first big electoral test as Leader and if London were to be won by the Tories, the benefits in terms of morale would be incalculable. A crushing defeat, however, could damage the whole Cameroon project and the pair were no longer of a mind to cut Boris any slack. The last straw was his failure to deal with, let alone preempt, the embarrassing disinterment of his 2002 article, in which he used the words ‘piccaninnies’ and ‘water-melon smiles.’ Initially, he seemed unrepentant, defiant even – once again banging the table in fury at a private dinner over what he dismissed as ‘dirty tricks’ against him. It was a naïve, even foolish
outburst, particularly from a Conservative politician, and it played directly into Ken’s hands.

Boris’s campaign office was now moved from Centre Point to County Hall – Ken’s former HQ when he had run the GLC – directly across the river from the Houses of Parliament and within easy striking distance of Conservative HQ. Cameron himself brought in a crucial new recruit, Lord Marland, a wealthy businessman who, when previously treasurer of the Conservative Party, had raised £75 million. Now he set about creating a campaign chest of £1.5 million for Boris – dwarfing the £80,000 or so previously built up. And the cash poured in: one dinner alone raised £250,000, with high-profile donors including Sir Tim Rice and Sir Cameron Mackintosh.

This was the sort of money needed to employ professional campaigners to do a professional job. Osborne and Marland knew exactly whom they wanted and they swiftly set about persuading him to come. Marland had known Lynton Crosby, the Australian political strategist nicknamed the ‘Wizard of Oz’, since the pair worked together on the 2005 General Election campaign. He had become a controversial figure not only because of his abrasive plain-speaking style, but because some blamed him for Michael Howard’s much-criticised so-called ‘dog-whistle’ emphasis on immigration. But Crosby’s organisational skills had won him many plaudits too. Even though the Tories lost that election, Crosby had masterminded four consecutive election victories in Australia for John Howard, the country’s second-longest serving prime minister.

Now Marland worked on persuading the Australian, who had been watching Boris’s campaign from afar with increasing concern, to weave his magic in London – but at a massive discount. He told Crosby that the normal funding available in a General Election was not possible for the mayorals but taking on Boris would be an opportunity to resurrect his reputation in Britain and prove his worth to any Crosby sceptics still critical of his work.

In December, Crosby took a call from Osborne while he was ‘winding down’ on summer holiday at his in-laws’ house in South Australia. Crosby told him that he believed that Boris was ‘the right
sort of candidate’ for the mayoralty. But after all he had seen and heard – Crosby had been highly critical of Boris during the 2005 election and thought him at best ‘unhelpful’ – the Australian said he wanted proof that Boris was genuinely committed. Boris himself rang him soon afterwards to try to persuade him. ‘Our conversation led me to conclude he was serious,’ recalls Crosby, ‘but that he needed to change his approach. Talking to Boris gave me the confidence to work with him. It became clear that he knew there were issues to resolve and that he needed to put structure and process into the campaign. Someone told me that the Eton headmaster said he was the smartest boy he had ever come across but Boris had realised that that was not enough.’

With Crosby on board, Boris’s bid to become mayor, as Wadley puts it, ‘ceased to be just a very serious job application. He realised he had a chance of winning and therefore had to apply himself.’ Officials at City Hall also recognised that Crosby’s appointment meant that Boris was an even more ‘formidable’ contender. The chief executive Anthony Mayer (a Whitehall veteran who had also headed up the Mayoralty’s permanent staff since it started in 2000) took the unprecedented step in January of contacting Boris’s office to arrange a series of private briefings on ‘how to be mayor’.

Crosby – known back home variously as ‘grubby’, ‘brilliant’ and ‘ruthless’ – does not come cheap, even on the 30 to 60 per cent discount negotiated by Marland. His four months working in London on Boris’s campaign cost the Conservatives around £140,000. To save money, Crosby took up residence in Marland’s smart London townhouse in Knightsbridge. But he was an inspired choice: he is both workaholic and election addict – once joking when asked if he had met HM the Queen that there was ‘no point’ as she ‘doesn’t vote and doesn’t live in one of our target seats.’ After Christmas, Crosby flew over to London to meet Boris at his headquarters and set the right tone from the start. After years of indulgence and special treatment, Boris did not know what had hit him: he was informed that he had to ‘lift his game’ to avoid ‘letting down his team.’

Working in tandem on forcing home the message, Crosby and Marland took Boris out to dinner at Quirinale, a smart modern Italian
restaurant in Westminster. Boris arrived with the words: ‘I’ve already done it!’ Done
what
? was the reply. ‘I’ve already booked a haircut – I’m going tomorrow.’ His new chiefs realised that Boris was trying to show willing but it was an all-too rare flash of humour that night. Marland and Crosby had decided not only did they have to take control of Boris for the duration of the campaign, but that he needed an immediate ‘awakening’ to some bitter home truths. Talking softly but bluntly across the white linen tablecloth, the pair delivered a sobering message: he had to show commitment to winning. Losing, even by a tiny margin, was not an option.

‘Boris had been able to wing it all his life through charm, intelligence and bashfulness,’ says Marland, ‘and so he had really believed until then that just saying, “I’m Boris Johnson” and playing “London Calling” would do the job. We had to awaken in him the realisation that it wasn’t, and if he carried on the same way, he really could lose. We even asked him, “Do you want to win?” Because if you do, we told him, you need to focus on the fact that losing would be disastrous for you. You would be the one who couldn’t win London for the Conservatives against the backdrop of the most unpopular Labour government ever. You will give all your enemies the chance to crucify you.’ He was also warned that there would be ‘a lot of grunt work’ and that the tightest self-discipline would be required – and that specifically included his ‘personal life.’ It was made perfectly clear that the new regime would not tolerate any further unexpected revelations of philandering and they asked him to list any past misdemeanours that might still come out. Any eventuality was meticulously prepared for. As Marland puts it: ‘The known unknowns you can deal with, it’s the unknown unknowns that kill you.’