Can anyone remind me which magazine Boris used to edit, and what its line was on this?

He says what I’m thinking, I need crazier hair.

The Spectator…

I already HAVE crazy hair! Result!

Looks like BoJo has finally stepped out of his deputies’ shadows and started to make some of his own gaffes.

London Mayor praising GB athletes, and showing how everything isn’t terrible…gaffe?

I hesitate to call it a gaffe, because it’s a good deal more sensible than the stuff Boris comes out with when he actually remembers his lines and what party he’s meant to be in. More importantly I got the impression that he actually does believe this. Much more please, and hopefully the rest of the Policy Exchange reptiles will push off in disgust and we can get things moving again.

It’s a gaffe from Cameron’s point of view, but Cameron’s point of view is PR fluff and bollocks, so who cares?

I have to agree with Tom on this. It’s nice to see the Tories in disarray but Boris is surely on the ‘correct’ side in this one. And I don’t think anyone* called it a gaffe when, say, Ken Livingstone accused Tony Blair of waging an illegal war in Iraq at every opportunity

It seems (as Tom suggests) that an awful lot of the genuine gaffes in Boris’s administration actually have their roots in Cameron, Cameron’s clique and their ‘barmy’ Policy Exchange chums. Obviously I don’t hold out much hope for Boris making a good job of Mayor whatever happens, but I can’t help thinking there’s at least a slender chance he’d make a slightly *better* job of it if he didn’t have so much central interference. Or he might just not get anything done at all, of course.

* anyone who was opposed to the war, at any rate

He certainly sounds happier when praising Britain’s hard-working young athletes or announcing that putting public investment into the infrastructure of deprived areas cuts crime than explaining how his administration is structured this week. Perhaps inside every crusty Telegraph-reading right-wing old Etonian there’s a touchy feely social democrat desperate to get out?

In truth, it seems it’s not Cameron but Francis Maude who’s the senior Tory we need to finger* as being behind this. Boles is getting the blame, but Maude links the Parker and Lewis cases even more closely to a particular wing of the Conservative Party, rather than just Policy Exchange, much as they’d love us to blame PX for the mess.

* apologies for the mental image…

GIve me Boris’s gaffe-prone waywardness above Cameron’s soulless neo-Conservatism any day.

I mean he may be a moron, but at least he’s our moron.

Indeed, I do agree with Boris rather than Dave on this one. However, perception, as ever, is they key; I wonder if, in this respect, London is somehow ‘other’ and that the two statements can be perceived to be true by the relevant constituencies at the same time.

Broken society yeah like that tory leader’s buddy who left his wife for another man LOL.

Boris has backtracked now:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7572310.stm

Who would have seen that coming?

Boris is weak he is tory hq;s poodle.