“Ian Clement, Deputy Mayor for Government and External Relations, has resigned from the Greater London Authority (GLA) with immediate effect. He tendered his resignation to the Mayor of London this morning following the discovery of further discrepancies in the use of his corporate credit card. The Mayor has accepted Mr Clement’s resignation. His position will be filled in due course.”

You do have to wonder just what has been going on in Boris Johnson’s administration.

The man walks in dishing out vanity titles to any local big-wig, financial whizz kid, or snake-oil salesman who wants one, and then stands in amazement as they fall down around him.

And even after four of his other senior aides were forced out last year he’s still not learnt his lesson.

Last July when his then Chief of Staff (since resigned) appeared before the London Assembly he said that it would have been too “ball-breaking” for Boris to do the proper checks on Ray Lewis, before adding that:

“we all knew Ray and believed in him… It did not occur to us to doubt any of this stuff.”

The line from Boris’s spokespeople today was much the same. Clement was an elected councillor, who had been scutinised by his electorate, so why should Boris have doubted him?

But how difficult would it have been for them to have at least found this story about Ian Clement before giving him a corporate credit card? One “ball-breaking” Google search?

Or failing that, how difficult would it have been to have worked out what he was doing with that card in this past year? One quick look at his receipts?

In Boris’s statement today he said that:

“In the light of the further discrepancies in your expenses that have emerged this morning, it is clear to both of us that your position is untenable.”

But these “discrepancies” didn’t just emerge this morning. They emerged in the bulk of receipts that his own office and Bexley Council released last week. Receipts that were released only after Liberal Conspiracy’s own Dave Hill started asking questions.

Did Boris even bother to read these receipts before offering Clement his backing?

What is he doing with his time up there in City Hall?

Update: A formal complaint has now been made to Scotland Yard (by the BNP)

There was a minor outrage after he was elected and an even more minor outrage when he was allowed a blog on the Telegraph Website (clue: everybody is).

But since May there has been nothing, zero, zilch. Type his name into a Google News and you will get very little in return. But in the alternate universe that is the BNP blogosphere, Barnbrook is the stuff of legend. I mean literally. Take this story which has been doing the rounds over there for some weeks:

“Tories, Labour, Lib-Dems, Greens and other Tweedle-Dee Tweedle-Dum parties on the Greater London Assembly were all shocked last week when the only GLA member to oppose their motion on granting amnesty to illegal immigrants was the BNP’s Richard Barnbrook.”

The story had it all. The brave fearless white knight fighting for the white rights and the cowardly liblabcon betraying the masses once again.

The story had it all. It just wasn’t true:

The problem is that in the absence of any mainstream press coverage, fantasy has taken the place of reality and the berk-in-brown has become a knight in shining silver.

Worse still, the Assembly and Mayor have done their best to ignore the man. Take this clip from Mayor’s Question Time last week:

Picking up the theme he has pushed for months, that the ‘white minority’ in London are neglected in favour of the ‘ethnic majority’, Barnbrook is left almost entirely unchallenged by the Mayor.

Boris’s tactic, to ignore, in fact not even to look at the man, is an understandable one. To anyone who has been watching him for the past six months, it is clear that Barnbrook is little more than a joke.

For all his bravado, Barnbrook has little real powers or following in the capital. His BNP entourage present for his first month or so of Assembly meetings has dwindled to almost nothing and his only real attempt to mobilise Londoners was a humiliating failure.

However, in April the Times reported that Barnbrook’s election would:

“be the biggest prize the extremist Right has ever won in British politics,” says Tony Travers, a local government expert at the London School of Economics. There are no neo-fascists on the councils of Berlin, Paris or New York, he adds. “For London to end up with such a thing would be an embarrassment and difficult to explain away.”

But rather than explain it away, the mainstream media and the Mayor have sought to pretend it hasn’t happened. If we just don’t mention him then he might just go away.

But if the BNP’s flagship politician is given a free pass by the press and politicians, then it will be left to the BNP to invent their own record and to design their own future.

Parker, who was appointed by Boris to be ‘Chief Executive of the GLA Group’ as well as Chair Transport for London had previously vigorously defended the extent of his powers.

But in a surprise move, he has now conceded that it is ‘not appropriate’ for him to undertake so much of the Mayor’s role.

“I have concluded…. that it would not be appropriate for an unelected official to chair a body which is responsible for most of the money and a large part of the brief of an elected Mayor. I also agree with the Mayor that my position as adviser does not justify my full time and exclusive commitment to the Greater London Authority, or the title of First Deputy Mayor. We have therefore decided to adjust the management structure and abolish that position.”

The position, which was only created by Boris three months ago, will now pass into the annuls of London Government history along with the positions of Deputy Mayor for Young People and Women’s Advisor.

Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Mike Tuffrey said earlier today:

“To lose one advisor is unfortunate, to lose two is careless but to lose three in four months shows the wheels are coming off this new administration. Why is Boris losing yet another advisor? Has Tim Parker discovered that running London isn’t as easy as running private business?

In fact when Parker was appointed by Boris, there was some question about how long he would bother to stick around.

In what now appears an amazing piece of foresight, George Pitcher who was an old colleague of Parker, wrote in the Telegraph:

“Parker, in Boris’s mind, will be King Stooge. Boris doesn’t understand business. Far too boring for a man of vision such as himself. Also, it’s rather “trade” for a toff from Eton and the Bullingdon Club. So Parker will be his Managing Director, he thinks, and the one who can have all those tedious meetings about budgets while Boris gets photographed with Miss Bust-Conductor on a new Routemaster.

“The trouble with this plan is that, talented as he undoubtedly is, Parker is not essentially a runner of businesses. He’s a turner-round of businesses and a deal-maker. He’s a slash-and-burn man, laying waste to unproductive factories and under-performing people. He once told me that it’s best to fire people as soon as you arrive somewhere, before you’ve got to know them. That may be just what London needs – some cost-saving at the centre, to better serve the interests of Londoners, who Parker calls “shareholders”.”But unless Parker is allowed to float London on the Stock Exchange, or organise a management buy-out of Chelsea, or break up Westminster and sell the profitable bits, he will quickly grow bored. Once he’s made something pay, he wants out.

But with ‘King Stooge’ out of the building, and with planning powers now passed back into the Mayor’s hands, we are now faced with the very real prospect of Boris Johnson actually doing his own job. These are scary times people.

On Tory Troll:
Reaction from the Labour Assembly group
Reaction from Ken Livingstone
Reaction from Darren Johnson of the Greens

More on
BorisWatch – Parker Steps Down – Reaction

Now also on the Guardian website

Because for the think tank, the ranks of which make up a large chunk of the new Tory establishment, these views are nothing out of the ordinary.

The report which basically suggests that government should concentrate most of its investment on London, Oxford, and Cambridge and shove off the rest of the country, has been unsurprisingly rejected by the Tory leader.

But as the Conservatives move towards removing powers from Scottish MPs, and removing investment from Labour supporting boroughs in London, it is precisely this kind of thinking that is coming to the fore.

In London, where ex-Policy Exchange director Anthony Browne now directs Tory policy, Boris Johnson is already pursuing a divide and desert strategy.

The strategy where the poorest are deprived of funding (most notably in the scrapping of half-price fares for people on income support) while left-wing events and organisations are deprived of investment is the logical conclusion of the ‘donut strategy’ pursued during the elections.

In fact the report which envisages a land of endless (Tory) suburbs rolling out before a deserted hinterland is donut-politics writ large. The North has failed. The North is Labour. Come on people, head to the donut rim

Of course none of this is made explicit. On the face of it, this is still a one-nation unionist party. But in deeds rather than words, the Tories continue to support their base and turn their face to the rest.

And while Labour continue to appease the unappeasable Right while frustrating those on the left, the Tories will ride to power with overwhelming support from those people the party was born to serve.

The decision to launch an investigation came after the assembly were told that the current appointment procedures were ‘adequate’ by Boris Johnson’s First Deputy Mayor.

Labour Assembly Member John Biggs said earlier today:

To lose one advisor might be considered unfortunate but to lose two in two weeks looks like carelessness. Beyond the headlines there are important issues about the appointment of publicly funded staff that need to be addressed to ensure the good management of this authority.

Leader of the Liberal Democrat group Mike Tuffrey said that the problems exposed in the past two months undermined Boris Johnson’s claims to have made London government more accountable:

Boris Johnson promised Londoners an end to cronyism at City Hall with transparency and clarity about the appointment of advisers and their interests. What we heard today from Tim Parker failed to address the issues about appointments exposed by the recent resignations.

The investigation will be conducted by the Business Management and Administration Committee and will look at four key areas:

1. How did Mayor Boris Johnson pick his senior City Hall policy advisors?
2. Were proper recruitment procedures followed?
3. Was the Mayor properly advised about the use of his powers of appointment? 
4. What lessons can be learnt for future changes of administration at City Hall?

The announcement comes just two days after the Church of England criticised the decision to cancel the planned investigation into the appointment of Ray Lewis.The new investigation will concentrate on the Ray Lewis fiasco. However, it will almost certainly also touch on the legal mess surrounding the appointment of Simon Milton as well as the unresolved conflicts of interest surrounding other senior appointments.

Speaking at today’s Plenary, Tim Parker tried to gloss over the problems, but did admit that they may have been rushed:

My view is that there is a lot of pressure to get Fred or Fanny into posts so that you can say that you have got somebody there, and I do not think that is potentially the right approach.

The decision to launch the investigation comes at the end of a torrid few weeks for Boris Johnson’s administration and will further stall attempts to move the agenda away from the errors of the past two months.

But as Boris’s own band of ‘forensic’ cronies release their interim report on waste at City Hall, it is worth remembering that it is not just time itself that leads to these problems, but the people who are chosen to set the clocks.

Because when Boris ran for Mayor, he did so off the back of a series of claims from the Evening Standard which centred around Ken Livingstone and his supposedly socialist cabal in City Hall. Boris deliberately never got himself involved with the detail of these claims, but instead positioned himself as the new broom that would sweep the old dirt clean.

He was not going to tell us exactly how he was going to do that of course, or who he was going to do it with, but needless to say, a new era of accountability and transparency was going to be ushered in with the minimum of difficulty and with the maximum number of bangs for your buck.

But as the days and weeks have clicked by, it has become increasingly clear that the changes swept into City Hall have had less to do with increasing accountability and value-for money, than they have had to do with swinging the old strings of power into a new set of hands.

The audit team
First of all we had the announcement of a new ‘forensic audit team’, to investigate waste and possible corruption at City Hall. This panel of Tory axe-men was headed by the ex-editor of the Sunday Telegraph, a woman most well known for censoring criticism of David Cameron in her paper.

Their assignment, we were told by Boris’s spinners, was a clear sign that the Tories meant business about cutting waste and cronyism in politics. So why then, if they were so serious, did they not choose anyone with ‘forensic audit’ experience to be a part of that team, or if they were so concerned with establishing independence and accountability, did they not employ anyone with a political allegiance that was even slightly off-blue?

Or to put it as the BBC’s Tim Donovan did to panel chief Patience Wheatcroft yesterday, why was it necessary to employ a panel of Tories to tell the city that Tories would have spent their money differently from Ken?

The way that their findings were then fed to the Sunday papers before any evidence had even been presented to the public has also reinforced suspicions about the political motivation of the investigation. These motivations are all but conceded by ‘Bozza’s’ chum Andrew Gilligan in a report by the Policy Exchange think tank released today.

Writing about the direction of Boris’s first few months, Gilligan says:

As in all revolutions, the new regime needs a phase of revolution, when the files of the old government are opened, the official chateaux are shown on TV and the full horror of what wet on is displayed to the public. The Borisians can use this period to set a baseline.

The setting of these political ‘baselines’ has been a far bigger priority for the new Tory administration than increasing their accountability to the public. On the route to power, Boris promised full transparency from ‘day one,’ but although the interim report of this investigation has been rushed out within a month of coming to power, details of the salaries and even job descriptions of his many deputies, advisors and consultants, have still not been released to date.

And where the GLA act only allowed for Boris to have one deputy, Boris has decided to employ five of them. And of these deputies and attached advisors, it was thought that two may not even have been legal at all.

Simon Milton
The employment of Simon Milton is especially contentious. Milton, of Dame Shirley Porter fame, was given the role of Director of Planning, a title and salary that he was soon to lose after it was pointed out that his continuing roles as head of Westminster Council and Chairman of the Local Government Association precluded him from the job.

This law of politically restricted posts, established by Margaret Thatcher as an attempt to prevent conflicts of interest and corruption was dismissed as a minor edict by our new broom Boris Johnson under questioning from the assembly.

However, despite losing his salary and title, Simon Milton still retains his same position in City Hall. A position which remains in conflict with his continuing chairmanship of the local authorities’ chief lobbying group and his ongoing ‘pillow talk’ with the planning supremo at Westminster Council.

Unelected advisors
Of the other claims laid at Livingstone’s feet, one of the key charges was that unelected advisors were given powers that they shouldn’t hold. But within weeks of being elected, it was revealed that Boris had handed full delegated powers over major planning decisions to an unelected advisor from Bexley Council.

Ian Clement was we were told, Boris’s deputy for government relations, intergovernmental relations and local government relations as well. These powers, along with his complete control over major planning decisions, are rather extensive for a man who, until now, is most famous for slashing pensioner’s meals on wheels.

Of the remainder of his advisors, difficulties remain over the separation of powers in the case of assembly member Kit Malthouse, the unknown powers of his previous campaign team, now highly paid transition team and the over-abundance of powers in the case of the ex-asset stripper and some say true boss of City Hall, Tim Parker.

And while Boris promised to immediately show details of all City Hall spending, we still crucially do not know how much each of his ‘transition team’ of PR executives, Policy Exchange wonks, and ex-campaign team members are being paid out of the almost half a million pounds set aside for their brief stay.

All of which prompted the half-damning, half-despairing judgement from the London Assembly Business Management and Administration Committee that Boris should immediately “lift the fog of confusion” that had settled over his new team at City Hall.

So as Boris continues to sweep up the mistakes of the past administration into the light of day, it is important to remember what few steps are being taken to prevent the same kinds of problems from settling back down over London again.

Because when Richard Barnbrook wrote that we should ‘blame the immigrants’ there was some suggestion that he had broken the law on inciting racial hatred.

However, as 5CC points out, what he should really get done for is plagiarism. Take a look at these two passages. The first is by Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips and is a reaction to comments made by the Children’s Tsar Sir Al Aynsley Green:

According to this ridiculous figure, the stop-and-search powers being belatedly used by the police to curb such attacks might further antagonise young people. Said Sir Al: “Anything that perpetuates the view that children are the troublemakers is a dangerous development.”

Now take a look at this excerpt from Richard Barnbrook’s latest blog post published on the same day as the Phillips article:

According to this ridiculous lunatic, the stop-and-search powers being belatedly used by the police to curb such attacks might further antagonise young people. Said Sir Al: ‘Anything that perpetuates the view that children are the troublemakers is a dangerous development.”

Now it may be that Richard Barnbrook breathes in the Daily Mail’s bile to such an extent that it just involuntarily seeps out of his skin, or it could be that he just blatantly lifted the passage. However, whatever the reason for it was, it is clear that this is his paper of choice.

And yet despite this, the Daily Mail are taking increasing steps to disassociate themselves from their number one fan. In recent weeks they have published a number of articles attacking Britain’s premier fascist party and its members, including this uncharacteristic article on the events surrounding the manslaughter of Keith Brown by his neighbour Habib Khan.

In a piece entitled ‘How the BNP shamefully tried to create a ‘white martyr’ for their own grubby ends’ the Mail attack Nick Griffin and his party for ‘cynically turning the event into a party political broadcast.’

However, for many years the Daily Mail have walked a fine line between not wanting to be seen supporting the BNP and their policies, and not wanting to alienate BNP supporters either.

Richard Littlejohn for one has tried to balance condemnation of the party as ‘knuckle scraping scum’ with false statistics on asylum seekers and a general view of Britain as a nation going to hell in a handcart. A view shared by BNP supporters across the land.

This dilemma came to a head with this clarion call from the BNP earlier in the year. In a post entitled ‘The Littlejohn Syndrome’ the BNP ask right-wing journalists to come forward and show the country their true colours. On Littlejohn and his fellow travellers in the Tory press, they write:

The problem with assaults on political correctness is that they attract the wrong kind of people, the ‘unmentionables’. Members of the BNP, its supporters and others… are more likely to read the ‘acceptable extremists’ than they are to read anyone else in the establishment media. Their writing comes closest to articulating a lot of what the BNP believes in. And this is a pretty uncomfortable position for members of the establishment to be in.

So every now and again the ‘acceptable extremists’ make a token effort to distance themselves from the conclusion that their writing points to. In the case of Richard Littlejohn a good half a dozen times a year he launches into an absurd tirade against the ‘knuckle-dragging BNP’, presumably in the hope that somehow it will erase the fact that much of what he says is compatible with much of what the BNP says.

So if the Daily Mail continue to espouse a world view not a million miles away from that of the average British National Party voter, then their fascist supporting readers will continue to overlook the occasional anti-BNP article slipped out on the side.

But if the Daily Mail genuinely want to shake off their long-held image as the nation’s Daily Heil, then it will take more than the few ‘token efforts’ that we have seen so far.

Executives from Google and Paypal are financing the creation of new independent ‘seastead’ states which will be anchored out in international waters. Once built, anti-social millionaires fed up with those tiresome duties of having to obey laws and pay tax, can sink their millions into the project and rust their days out on the high seas.

Of course founders Patri Friedman and Wayne Gramlich don’t quite put it like that. In their manifesto: Seasteading: A Practical Guide to Homesteading the High Seas they write of new sustainable communities that will serve as models of ‘open source’ government.

Each Seastead will have it’s own rules and when one community fails, then you can just pull up anchor and join another. For Friedman and Granlich this is the Web 2.0 approach to governance, where the wisdom of crowds inevitably works for the benefit of all. And for these internet millionaires, the seastead project will prove once and for all the power and righteousness of the market. In the inspiring language of the international executive Friedman writes:

“This dramatically lower cost of switching providers promotes market feedback. If the government announces an unpopular policy on Monday, by Tuesday there may be nothing left but the capital building. This is true for any pet topic – libertarians and taxes, drug users and drug prohibition, pacifists and military expansion, environmentalists and pollution.”

However, quite what will happen to those people left lingering on the failed seasteads, isn’t made clear. But for these founding fathers, such details are irrelevant and as far as they are concerned will undoubtedly be solved by the users themselves. More important to them is the big idea itself. And like any new world, it’s creators need a big mythology, and like any religious work, their bible needs it’s parables too. First up we have the parable of Judy the Environmentalist:

Judy felt frustrated as she left the city council meeting. Her proposal to levy fines on recyclables left in ordinary trash seemed to her like such a reasonable idea, why did it ignite so much argument? Americans generated such sickening amounts of trash – all she wanted was to help cut down on it a little bit. For a town that was supposedly environmentally conscious, they are awfully close-minded around here, she thought.

She remembered that article she’d read about a Costa Rican ecovillage. It would be so relaxing and inspiring to live somewhere where everyone was of the same mind about not polluting the Earth. They could serve as an example to the rest of the world that you didn’t have to damage the environment to live. If only there was a place that was sustainable and civilized.

So what’s Judy’s answer to cutting down the city’s waste for the good of her fellow citizens? That’s right, she’s going to leave them all to wallow in it. And how is she going to set an example to these litter louts? That’s right, she’s going to make sure she never has deal with any of them ever again.

Next we have the parable of Glen:

“Glen clicked off the news angrily. Another day, another half-dozen deaths from that quagmire in Iraq. And that was just US soldiers – who knew how many innocent Iraqi citizens had died? What he hated most was that he was paying for those bullets, paying for those bombs. Sure, he hadn’t voted for Bush, but the IRS took his tax dollars anyway. And not like the damn Democrats were doing much about all that military spending.

It seemed like everyone in DC was on the take. One person just couldn’t make a difference in a country this size, not unless he was a billionaire or some kind of internet-activism genius. If only he could live somewhere where he only paid for things he approved of, or at least got to choose where his money went, he’d be so much happier”

So what’s Glen’s solution to the problems in Iraq? That’s right, to no longer have anything to do with them. And how is Glen going to ensure that the country is restored to a safe and peaceful state? That’s right, by refusing to pay a cent.

And so, like the British conscientious objectors in WW2 who preached pacifism from the safety of their fortified island, Glen and his fellow seasteaders want to prove their righteousness from the platform of their million dollar buoys.

And while the afflicted of Iraq and America will continue to suffer unheeded from their governments, Glen will be insulated by the warmth of his own smugness, and consoled by the thought of no longer having to pay for a dime.

Because although some like Iain Dale will merge indistinguishably into the new establishment, others especially those on the Libertarian Right will face more of a dilemma.

Because right-wing and anti-establishment blogs have flourished under New Labour. The Freedom of Information Act and the daily soap opera that was the Blair vs Brown show have provided them with reams of winning material. They have used this material along with the tools of ridicule, rumour and humour to fight for the the golden pot of Labour destruction at the end of an ever-retreating rainbow.

However, once that pot is finally found, many will look around them and wonder just where in the hell they have got themselves and where in the hell they will go next.

The Dales of this world will revel in the glory of course, and others like Guido will probably continue to milk the Labour cash cow.

But those on the right with a bit more nouse and a bit more courage may well try to keep their anti-establishment position and set themselves up as disgruntled righties with a taste for Nu-Con blood.

And like the unofficial coalitions set up to oust Blair, new coalitions will be forged between left-wing and libertarian blogs as the Tories inevitably reveal themselves in their true Daily Mail colours.

There are already signs that this is in the post. Venomous libertarian righty Devil’s Kitchen launched his first sally against the new Tory establishment with this attack on Boris Johnson’s tube booze ban:

(Boris) is now the most powerful Tory in the country and his policies are going to give some indication of what a Tory government might be like.

And Boris’s very first act is to implement a policy that is more authoritarian than that of NuLabour’s representative. It is a policy that involves more government interference in our daily lives (and if you think that this is the end of such policies then you are even more stupid than I thought).”

Because be in no doubt. A Cameron-led government will be as disappointing to many on the Right as the new Labour government was to those on the left.

Some morsels on Europe and immigration will be tossed their way of course and a few will welcome the new regime as the glorious saviours they had hoped them to be. However, as time goes on the sheer drab monotony of a Tory government will reveal itself and like restless children, the braying masses of right-wing bloggers will look for a new toy to tinker with.

And with Prime Minister Cameron dangling on a string, there will be plenty of opportunities to play.

Now I have always thought that the ‘no-platform’ approach is wrong. To deny the far-right a voice is to give them a status that they do not deserve.

But as it is, the vast majority of the almost 200,000 people that gave Barnbrook a first or second preference vote, have never seen him speak in public. For these voters, the fact that their man has seemingly been hidden by the media, will only have hardened his appeal.

Now if over the past few months Barnbrook had instead occupied the seat of Lindsey German at the various hustings and TV appearances, then his appeal could have been dramatically reduced. Rather than being seen as the maverick outsider speaking for the ‘silent majority,’ Barnbrook would have been exposed as the racist loudmouth that he is.

Unfortunately, the media enabled Barnbrook and the BNP to pose as victims of a vast conspiracy intent on hiding and destroying them. And the more they were kept out of the the public eye, then the more they could then dismiss any revelations brought against them.

Because during the course of the campaign there were two major revelations about Barnbrook and his party. The first was that BNP candidate Nick Eriksen had written condoning rape and the assault of women and the second was that Barnbrook had been having an affair with an immigrant.

Now quite what effect these revelations had is far from clear, (although there had been predictions that the BNP would return three assembly seats). However, what is clear is that when Barnbrook stepped forward for his victory speech, he was easily able to dismiss those allegations as part of a left-wing conspiracy.

The fact that these revelations came from the Daily Mail and the News of the World were conveniently ignored. For his army of supporters, he could pose as Richard the Lionheart battling against an army of media Saladins, and as the great white martyr fighting the dark dark arts of the press.

Now if instead of being hidden from us throughout the campaign, Barnbrook had been given his fair share of media scrutiny, then he would never have been able to adopt these martyr poses. Stripped of his lion suit, London would have seen the dark heart that lurked within. And forced into the heat of the spotlight, we could have seen the sweaty berk that he is.

So as Richard Barnbrook takes his seat on the London Assembly this Friday, the British press must take their responsibilties much more seriously. The complacent ‘no platform’ approach has delivered the BNP their biggest victory yet. It is now time that Richard Barnbrook and the BNP get the media attention that they really deserve.

Related
Sunny: Lessons on how to take on the BNP

The London edition of the paper also devoted their entire Sun Says column to the race, urging their readers to pick “a new and fresh Champion for London”. And just in case their readers still didn’t know how to vote the paper included a handy how you can vote section.

Of course The Sun’s endorsement of Boris Johnson should come as little surprise. Boris is in many ways the ideal Sun candidate. Here is a public school toff posing as a friend of the working class. A man who speaks almost entirely in mockney puns without actually saying anything even mildly offensive to Murdoch and his chums.

Quite simply he is a win-win candidate for the paper. If he fails as Mayor then he provides acres of stories and if he succeeds as mayor then nothing is lost. Even if he does fail, a Mayor Boris can blame all of his failures on a hostile Labour government. This in turn would be a plus for Murdoch, as he would have yet another stick with which to whip Brown.

In fact there are increasing signs that this will be the Tory tactic if Johnson becomes Mayor. In recent weeks Boris has proposed a range of policies that the Conservatives know he has no chance of getting through. These policies include local control of the smoking ban, building an airport in the Thames Estuary, and a new pledge to retain criminal assets.

When the government says no to these policies, the Tories and their pals in the media will turn, not on Boris for making hollow promises, but on the Labour government for holding Boris back. “Here is an example” they will say, “of why we need to boot Labour out.”

So as the Tory press come out for Boris, you have to ask yourself what their real reasons are. Boris’ mates in the media, like his mates on the front bench, know full well how unreliable Boris can be. Boris has made great play of having run The Spectator but even Boris’ pals know how little he actually did. Because they all know that he is not capable of running the capital, but at the same time they don’t really care.

Last summer I was working at a national newspaper office as the Glasgow airport attacks were taking place. There was a rush of excitement as pictures of the burning car were beamed onto their screens. “Has anyone been hurt?” somebody shouted. “Has anyone been killed?” The look of disappointment when he heard that nobody had, has stayed with me ever since. Some parts of the the press want the worst to happen.

A recent advert for BBC News has Robert Peston gloating about being the first to report the collapse of Northern Rock. “There was no doubt,” he says with a smile, “that this was a BBC story.” However, as one person writing in to the channel pointed out, there was also no doubt that this was a story about lots of people losing lots of money. “What is there to boast about,” the viewer asked, “in hearing bad news a few hours before everyone else?”

So when the Tory press come out for Boris, are they really just getting the bad news in early?

This is the way the country is going they say. You won’t be voting Labour in the future so let’s get going now. Labour is last year’s news and we have a ‘new and fresh Champion’ for you. Of course they know that Boris won’t make things better, but at the same time they’ve got headlines to fill.

So when they tell their readers what’s best for them, are they actually thinking about what’s best for themselves? And with both main parties so close in policies, will these other factors come to the fore?

When the next general election comes around a change of government will mean more news. So when the press consider who to endorse, are they asking “what’s best for Britain?” or simply “what’s the worst that we can get?”