JUST BORIS: A Tale of Blond Ambition (56 page)

‘So, on the day of the poll we stitched together Boris’s team in what was really a chaotic way. We certainly didn’t have time even to
think
of vetting! We came up with the names on Thursday morning and after winning the election started offering the jobs on Saturday morning.’ But this by no means meant that Boris had a proper functioning team in place. On the point of signing, Bowker added to the sense of disarray by dramatically pulling out. Another sympathetic, but hard-nosed businessman was swiftly approached. And fortunately, Tim Parker agreed to take up the challenge – and for a nominal salary of £1 a year. Meanwhile, another Boles’ idea was inviting in Simon Milton, leader of Westminster Council, who became adviser on Housing and Planning. James McGrath, the 34-year-old Australian who, as Crosby’s number two during the election campaign had done so much to get Boris elected, was to come in as Boris’s director of strategy.

Meanwhile, the tricky question of Boris’s family had to be tactfully dealt with. ‘They all wanted jobs in City Hall afterwards,’ fumes a very senior Tory. ‘The other Johnsons are like baggage who come with Boris everywhere. They were all around us all the time; they turned up at all the parties. Stanley wanted the Environment job, for instance, and was really pressing for it. Can you imagine what it must
be like round the Johnson family dinner table, all of them giving their views over each other’s voices?’ There were even rumours that Boris’s younger brother Jo would be pitching up as the mayor’s head of strategy before McGrath was shoehorned into the job.

A week after Boris’s election as mayor in 2008, Rachel advanced the dynastic feel still further when she appeared on BBC1’s
Question Time
as her elder brother’s most devoted and determined cheerleader, promising viewers many years of ‘Boris-induced sunshine.’ In answer to virtually any question, Rachel claimed his victory had brought the Tory party to ‘a collective orgasm.’ In a flash she brushed away an off-piste inquiry about Scottish devolution with the comment: ‘I’m not sure I will be physically able to answer a question that’s not about my brother.’

But this time it was made clear that Boris would not be allowed to hire his family and turn City Hall into a mayoral version of the
Spectator
– or
Johnsonator
, as it was known at one point when so many Johnsons were writing for it.

Despite – or rather because of – all this furious below-water paddling, Boris wanted to make a quick and eye-catching announcement on his team. The one he
could
make that Monday was the appointment of Ray Lewis (director of EastSide Young Leaders Academy and an increasingly frequent presence during Boris’s electoral appearances) as Deputy Mayor for Young People. Billed as a former prison governor and pastor, Lewis was credited with inspirational work on keeping disenchanted young men out of gangs and out of trouble. Black himself and respected within his community, his inclusion fitted nicely with Boris’s stated themes of a multi-ethnic team at City Hall and tack ling crime and anti-social behaviour through self-respect, hard work and aspiration. He was certainly an interesting foil for an Old Etonian member of the Bullingdon – and Boris’s supporters pointed to this as evidence of a changed perception of social problems. They argue that campaigning for mayor had extended his sights beyond his own privileged lifestyle for the first time.

Marina, too is credited with helping to instill in him more of a social conscience – and in part backed his mayoral ambitions as a means for
Boris to make a difference in the way that being MP for Henley could not. He also made his own comparisons between his former, mostly well-heeled constituency of Henley and the far more socially diverse city he was about to represent. ‘People’s preoccupations are very similar in Henley and parts of inner London,’ he said, but, ‘the scale of the problem is much bigger,’ he now realised. Being an MP for a comfortable Oxfordshire seat, he went on, had protected him from ‘really having to deal with issues that relate to modern Britain.’

If that last comment sounded slightly wistful, then perhaps it was. At this time he wrote a farewell letter to his Henley constituents betraying his surprise at having become mayor, seemingly tinged with certain sadness. A week after his victory, it appeared in the
Henley Standard
:

There had been one very good personal reason why Boris really did not want to give up his old life and become mayor. Just days before the election when victory seemed ever more likely, he had been unusually candid with Brian Paddick as the pair waited alone to go into a BBC radio studio. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to manage financially,’ he confessed. Boris was ‘very concerned that he was going to win,’ recalls Paddick, ‘because of the money.’ No doubt he would not like the thought of possibly earning less than Marina, but there was also the issue of being able to continue paying his children’s school fees (which must come to nearly £100,000 a year) and maintain two large houses on the then mayoral salary of around £140,000.

What also seems clear is that the old Johnson ‘tramp dread’ fear of descending into poverty had made an unwelcome return, however ludicrous. As a successful barrister, Marina’s earnings alone would sustain most families in considerable style and despite his endless
quest to make his fortune Boris is hardly the master of bling. Although he spends on hand-made shoes (from Tricker’s of Jermyn Street), when asked the name of his tailor, he likes to reply Boden – the mid-market mail-order business run by fellow Old Etonian Johnnie Boden, rather than an establishment in Savile Row. He also has a reputation for not putting his hand in his pocket for staff drinks. In fact, those around Boris constantly wonder what it is that he does spend all his money on.

Wherever the money goes, Boris thought it unlikely he would be able to keep on his £250,000-a-year
Telegraph
column, considering what trouble journalism had inflicted in the past on his political sights. When elected, the problem no doubt gnawed away at him until salvation arrived in the form of the editor of the
Daily Telegraph
, Will Lewis. Having been informed by the
Telegraph
number crunchers that Boris’s column added 15,000 sales on its weekly Monday slot, within a couple of weeks of the election he visited the new mayor at City Hall to persuade him to stay on. He had, in any case, failed to find a suitable replacement during the four months Boris had taken off during the mayoral campaign. Lewis was also worried in case Boris signed up with the
Standard
after the paper had backed him so strongly in the election – although it is unlikely the London paper would ever be able to match the
Telegraph
’s fee. Boris was delighted at the approach – even more so when the City Hall authorities gave him permission to accept it as there was deemed to be ‘no conflict of interest.’

But while keeping the column meant the school fees were more than covered, Nick Boles was appalled that Boris was still trying to keep hold of his journalistic career. ‘I was furious,’ recalls Boles. ‘In a classic Boris way, he didn’t mention it. But when I found out, I told him, “Look, you’ve just got one of the greatest jobs in British public life – you’re the Mayor of London – and now you’re saying you’re going to take a half-day or so a week to be a part-time columnist!”’ After a great deal of ‘discussion’, Boris was persuaded to hold off another week before he restarted the column on 17 June with a rather half-baked piece about cycling without a helmet. But his minders also extracted another far bigger concession from Boris that led
to him squealing with fury: ‘It’s outrageous! I’ve been raped! I’ve been raped!’

In fact, Boles ‘ganged up’ with Guto Harri to extract a promise from Boris that he would give a fifth of his £250,000
Telegraph
fee to charity as a means of quelling any criticism. It was decided that half was to go to a ‘Boris bursary’ for students of journalism at the London College of Communications and the rest in support of the teaching of Classics at state schools in the capital. Boris was forced to agree, but he continues to feel resentment at being strong-armed into the commitment through what he refers to as the punitively high ‘Boles tax.’ ‘I feel a bit guilty about the column hoo-ha,’ Boles commented later, after the bid to re-elect Boris in 2012 had begun. ‘It hasn’t harmed his work as mayor and it has helped him maintain his national profile.’

Boris does not appear to have given away the full 20 per cent, however, which by the end of his third year in office should have amounted to £150,000. He told the
Evening Standard
on 14 May 2008 that he would give £25,000 a year to the journalism bursaries and the same amount to Classics in state schools projects, but even his office put the total donation figure in June 2011 as ‘more than £50,000’ rather than the £150,000 pledged up to that point. Aides in part blamed tax and national insurance for the shortfall, but much of that should be reclaimable. City Hall is not forthcoming with complete figures but what is known is that by June 2011, he had so far donated only a total of £20,000 over three years (compared to the £75,000 pledged) to fund six bursaries for a sports journalism course at the College of Communications, with another final sum of £10,000 expected. He had also not given ‘nearly as much’ as £75,000 to a new charity set up by Friends of Classics to support Latin and Greek teaching in state schools, although according to co-founder Dr Peter Jones, he had donated ‘a good whack.’ Undoubtedly, Boris has given a tidy sum but it appears a long way short of what was publicly promised in return for resuming his column. There is also no future commitment for his second term, should he win. Once again Boris seems to have been reluctant to part with his cash, whatever his moral if not legal obligations.

It was not only Boris’s colleagues, however, who had severe misgivings about him resuming regular journalism. Anthony Howard, a friend of his parents’, was just one of several political commentators who deemed it ‘an absolute scandal,’ declaring: ‘It may be true that he bashes it out on a Sunday morning – it reads like it. But the Mayor of London should have better things to do and not allow himself to be distracted. It’s totally inappropriate.’ But the fact is that many well-placed Tories believe that Boris may well have decided not to stand for a second term as mayor without the column. Politically, of course, it would have been unacceptable to ask for a large mayoral pay rise, particularly during a downturn. ‘You cannot stand up to Londoners and say you cannot live on the salary of the Mayor because it is a bloody good salary,’ says one Conservative close to Boris. ‘But actually he can’t live on the salary he has – or at least not the way he lives. After he became mayor, Boris bought a posher London house and has also done up the old constituency house in Thame. I can well understand why it was non-negotiable for him.’

Nevertheless, Boris is sensitive to public criticism about being both a highly paid mayor of London and one of Britain’s best-remunerated journalists. In July 2009, in an attempt to play down his dual role on the BBC’s
HARDTalk
programme, he unwisely prompted another burst of outrage from public sector unions and others when he dismissed his
Telegraph
contract as ‘chicken feed.’ Realising his mistake, he tried unsuccessfully to turn the tables on his interviewer, Stephen Sackur, by asking about his own BBC salary. It is an offence/defence tactic he has used frequently since – but it failed on that occasion.

From the start, Boris was also concerned that his natural writing exuberance would once again land him in trouble politically but he was given undertakings by the
Telegraph
that senior editors would ‘baby-sit’ his column and guide him away from any potentially incendiary ideas. As one very senior
Telegraph
executive puts it: ‘We consider it our duty to nurture and protect him – sometimes from himself. His copy is painstakingly checked every week for any unexploded political devices likely to damage him. That protection service is part of the deal and on more than one occasion, Boris has
been steered off subjects or views that would have got him in trouble. We are effectively starfuckers. Boris is the Wayne Rooney of the
Telegraph
and we do everything in our power to make him feel wanted.’

While the editorial staff have long been indulgent of their star, the commercial side of the
Telegraph
has from time to time been rather less enamoured. Particularly annoying was an occasion when Boris put up a newsworthy column on his personal website in apparent contravention of copyright. The early release of his column on strike-busting laws ahead of the Tory Party Conference of 2010 allowed the
Telegraph
’s rivals access to his thoughts even before they were printed. This rather impudent move, which benefited Boris with a great deal of extra media coverage, prompted an outburst from one executive: ‘Just who does he think pays his fucking wages?’

Just after the election, July 2008 also saw the death of Marina’s father Charles and a thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey attended by large numbers of the BBC’s top brass and other distinguished mourners from the media, military and Foreign Service. Boris was the only senior politician to attend, but Dip was too distressed to go. Charles had known for some time that he was fighting a losing battle against his cancer and before he died, he made it perfectly clear how angry and distressed he was over Boris’s infidelities and the humiliation and pain they brought on his family as a whole, not just his daughter. ‘Boris would listen to Charles more than almost anyone,’ says a family friend. ‘But who knows what good it did.’

Meanwhile, back at City Hall, Boris was still shoring up his own side. Kate Hoey, the Labour MP, was a good catch and agreed to come in as sports commissioner while David Ross, the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, was hired as Olympic adviser. So, with a hastily arranged team stitched together in this way, Boris at last appeared to have the nucleus of his own mini-government in City Hall. Flanked by Tower Bridge on one side and HMS
Belfast
on the other, his Praetorian Guard could focus on trailblazing a new form of Conservative rule while David Cameron could still only dream of making policies and seeing them put into action.