Boris johnson

Boris Johnson was on best behaviour during a recent trade trip to the USA. But the minute his top aides left his side, out came the Mayor’s famous charm. While waiting for a flight back to London in the private lounge of JFK airport, Mr S's spy reports that Boris wined and dined a rather beautiful businesswoman. Mrs Johnson can't have been too far from Boris’s mind though, as he and his mysterious blonde friend later nipped over to duty free to pick out some Valentine's gifts, presumably for his missus back home. The two were still deep in conversation as they boarded the plane together. Both turned left, away from prying eyes. Alas, Mr S's spy turned right.

Even though Boris is building up support for his leadership campaign, he doesn’t want to have to stand in one this year. He needs David Cameron to remain Prime Minister after the General Election, and, as James reported recently, then take over following an EU referendum. That’s perhaps why the Mayor seemed quite keen on an earlier vote than the 2017 one that Cameron has officially promised. But a 2015 leadership contest, which the Mayor would certainly participate in, would come too early, partly because Boris still needs to shore up his support from MPs, and partly because he would still be Mayor. In an interview with the Evening Standard, he said he wouldn’t want to stand down early today. He said: ‘Why would I want to stand down?

Boris Johnson’s campaign to woo Tory MPs is continuing as the General Election approaches. I hear that he held another one of his suppers for colleagues at his home in the last fortnight, and that the MPs who did attend were seriously impressed. One says: ‘It was a really uplifting experience. I feel very conflicted between him and Theresa [May] as potential leaders.’ Another described the evening as ‘great fun, relaxed. He arrived with a rucksack clanking with booze and we had a takeaway curry and shot the breeze. No heavy canvassing.’ Number 10 is allowing these dinners, which involve a mix of MPs loyal to Cameron and rebels, to take place on the understanding that Boris does everything he can to help the Prime Minister get back into Number 10 on 7 May.

While Boris Johnson may be pleased to learn that Ed Sheeran has been mistaken for him, the 23-year-old singer was dismayed when a member of the public mistook him for the 50-year-old Mayor of London. Someone just mistook me for Boris Johnson and I wish I was joking — Ed Sheeran (@edsheeran) January 26, 2015 Sheeran hasn't always been so unhappy to be associated with a Conservative politician. He previously dedicated a song to the Prime Minister. 'I was playing this gig at some guy’s house and it was a very, very intimate environment, and they stopped the gig and I only had one song left,' Sheeran recalled. 'He was like ‘I’m so happy that you came here Ed. Obviously David Cameron is here, would you dedicate a song to him?

Something funny is happening in this country. Our comedians are becoming politicians and our politicians are becoming comedians — and public life is turning into an endless stream of jokes. Last week, the comedian Al Murray announced that he would be standing at the next general election in the constituency of South Thanet, the same seat that Nigel Farage is contesting. Al Murray performs in the persona of ‘The Pub Landlord’. A sexist reactionary, never pictured without a beer in his hand, forever declaiming ‘common-sense’ solutions to Britain’s problems, Nigel Farage has welcomed the additional competition.

Who are the latest contenders in the Tory leadership battle and how much support do they have? That’s the question that Tory MPs and pundits love to chew over, even though there is no contest. The latest fixation is whether George Osborne has rowed behind the Boris campaign. James looked at this yesterday, revealing that Boris might quite fancy taking over from David Cameron after an EU referendum in 2017. Of course, the funny thing is that there isn’t a leadership contest because David Cameron is currently secure as Prime Minister.

For most of this parliament, Downing Street has been thoroughly paranoid about Boris Johnson and his intentions. Any attempt by the Mayor to reach out to Tory MPs was met with deep suspicion. But now, the Tory leadership is actively pushing Boris to see Tory MPs — he was even invited to join the Whips for a Whips Supper at Boisdale last week. This is all evidence of the unspoken deal between Boris and the Tory leadership. He will be loyal and campaign hard for Cameron. In exchange, it will allow him to cultivate Tory MPs; helping him to rectify his biggest weakness ahead of any Tory leadership contest. These arrangements suit everyone involved.

Has the Mayor of London fallen on tough times? Mr S only asks after this photo landed in his inbox. On further investigation it transpires that Boris Johnson and Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev had a sleepover on the streets of London on Friday night as part of the paper's pledge to support charities ABF The Soldiers' Charity and Veterans Aid.

On 19 June 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington declared that ‘nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won’. Two hundred years later, David Cameron or Ed Miliband might feel the same way as they sit in Downing Street. Any elation over victory will be quickly overshadowed by the thought of troubles to come — in all likelihood insurmountable troubles for either man. Everyone has known for years when this election will take place, with the result that the campaign starting gun has been fired even earlier than usual. Cameron is busy prophesying economic chaos if Labour wins; Miliband is warning that the NHS won’t survive in its current form if the Tories get back in.

We've just had two years of intensive constitutional politics. Time enough, you'd think, for even London-based politicians and commentators to work out how British politics actually works. But if you think that you'd be wrong. Very wrong. Consider our old friend the Barnett Formula. Antiquated and not entirely fit for purpose - it being a 1970s convenience that was itself an updated version of the 1880s Goschen Formula - but hardly a mystery or a terribly complicated piece of financial wizardry. And yet it seems that almost no-one in the Westminster village actually understands how Barnett works. Yesterday, you see, Jim Murphy promised that he would use Scotland's share of the proceeds from Labour's so-called Mansion Tax to hire an extra 1,000 nurses north of the Border.

Coming in from the pouring rain, I make my way to the office on the eighth floor of City Hall. With its curving windows, many books and bust of Pericles tucked away in a corner, it reminds me both of a classroom and the cockpit of a spacecraft. Its occupant is waiting for me, looking a little crumpled but less dishevelled than I had expected. He greets me very pleasantly but this is what I’m thinking. Here is the most famous person I have ever interviewed. In his own way, he is almost as iconic as the Queen or Churchill, the nodding dog in those insurance commercials. He is Boris, one of a tiny handful of politicians/celebrities instantly known by their first name.

Boris Johnson is about the only politician in Britain to stand up for the rich, pointing out that while they may be annoying, they tend to create jobs and prosperity and having plenty of that is no bad thing. The Mayor was interviewed for the latest Freakonomics podcast, boasting that: "London is attracting huge amounts of international investment... London is to billionaires what the jungles of Sumatra are to the orangutan. It is their natural habitat."   Here it is the podcast - Boris is at the start:- "I'm sure you like your poor people too," replied the presenter - which is an odd question. Does welcoming wealth imply being sniffy about the poor?

'Apologies everyone and especially to our Leader' tweets Rachel Johnson after a very rude word appeared on her Twitter feed about the Prime Minister: Apparently the columnist and famous sibling was 'hacked'. Mr S knows how these things are: you go out of the room for five minutes and bam! your naughty sibling has seized your computer and written all sorts of cuss words under your name about some chap he doesn't like... https://twitter.com/RachelSJohnson/status/537283459895816192 https://twitter.

When in doubt, blame wealthy foreigners for any political problems. That goes for pols in the US and the UK alike, and even the dual-national Mayor of London is not immune. Boris Johnson opposes blanket non-dom and mansion taxes, but wants councils to ‘whack up’ local levies on empty homes and advocates closing stamp-duty loopholes exploited by ‘mainly but not exclusively non-doms'.  Through these, he explained in one Telegraph column, and with ‘the agency of some clever lawyers, they avoid a tax that is paid by virtually everyone else’.

A sell-out crowd gathered at this evening’s Spectator event: Boris Johnson in discussion with Andrew Neil about his book on Winston Churchill.