Boris johnson

Though the reshuffle, which continues today, saw very little movement at the top of the government, fans of the changes believe the Prime Minister still managed to remove one large obstacle to growth by taking the two women - Justine Greening and Theresa Villiers - opposed to a third runway at Heathrow out of the Transport department. Tory MPs I spoke to yesterday know that this will be one of the big rows of the autumn, as the commission examining aviation capacity gets to work. Some believe the government should get on with the decision, upset a few MPs whose constituencies are affected (including Vince Cable, who will be more than simply upset if there is a move towards a third runway), but reap the long term benefits of more capacity.

Reshuffles always leave a pile of bruised, vulnerable ex-ministers waiting for someone to come along, pick them up and make them feel loved again. This year, that person is Boris Johnson, who can make good use of those leaving the government as allies within Parliament. This is why he popped up so quickly today to attack the decision to move Justine Greening. He said: 'There can be only one reason to move her - and that is to expand Heathrow Airport. It is simply mad to build a new runway in the middle of west London. Nearly a third of the victims of aircraft noise in the whole of Europe live in the vicinity of Heathrow. 'Now it is clear that the Government wants to ditch its promises and send yet more planes over central London.

Alex Salmond has gone rather quiet this summer. Before Britain’s season of fun, the SNP leader appeared unstoppable in his quest for Scottish independence, but the Diamond Jubilee and Olympics have halted Salmond’s momentum. The Mayor of London crystallised this feeling yesterday during one of his #askboris sessions on Twitter: ‘The Scots are never going to vote for independence...these games have done for Salmond...

Julian Assange is one of my best enemies.  For my part it was hatred at first sight.  He was only slightly slower on the uptake.  Our relationship was consummated last year when we debated in London, and he fluttered those strange dead eyes at me, and threatened to sue me, and then didn’t, and I wrote about it afterwards and revealed to the world (or Spectator diary readers at least) that his backstage chat is like aural rohypnol. Anyhow – in recent months I have not had the time to keep my hatred active.  Partly because Julian has now even discredited himself with the left.

Last week Boris Johnson was in jellyfish mode, drifting along and delivering the occasional sly sting to the coalition. Now that the Olympics are over, the Mayor has launched something of a shark attack on his Westminster colleagues. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Boris accuses ministers of 'pussyfooting' and calls for the government to 'make a very powerful statement of ambition for London' involving new infrastructure and even a new airport: 'The government needs to stop pussyfooting around. I don't think you can rely on Heathrow. Even if the government was so mad and wrong to try to do the third runway or mixed-mode, those solutions would rapidly run out of usefulness and time.

Boris Johnson has just reminded us how potent he can be at undermining the government right here, right now. At a press conference today on the Olympic legacy, the Mayor of London said: 'The government totally understands people's appetite for this: they can see the benefits of sport and what it does for young people. They understand very, very clearly the social and economic advantages. I would like to see, frankly, the kind of regime I used to enjoy - compulsory two hours' sport every day.' And there we have it. Boris deploys his old trick of appearing to flatter the government while also managing to brief against it.

Boris Johnson is the Spectator's diarist this week, and as you'd expect, his piece in tomorrow's magazine is full of wonderful Borisisms including cyclists who 'wave their bottoms at each other like courting pigeons' and 'luscious gold doubloon'. But the Mayor of London also launches an attack on America and the way 'some New York regulator' has set upon Standard Chartered. He writes: I mean, what is all this stuff about Standard Chartered? This British bank has generally enjoyed a high reputation for probity (as these places go) until yesterday, when some New York regulator apparently denounced Standard as a 'rogue institution'. Well, if people have broken the law of this country, then by all means bang them away.

What really excites Tory donors and MPs about Boris isn’t the antics on a zip wire but his ability to make Conservative arguments in an appealing and commonsensical way. The latter is the quality that Boris himself values most in politicians: it was the reason he gave for backing Ken Clarke for the leadership in 2001 despite their differences on Europe. On the Today programme this morning, Boris managed to make Conservative political hay out of the Olympics without sounding like a crass partisan.

If yesterday was the peak of enthusiasm for Boris Johnson's hopes for the Tory leadership (Guido noted that every broadsheet commentator discussed the Mayor of London in their Saturday columns), then today is very much the morning after. The first sobering voice came from William Hague as he popped up on Sky News to warn Boris against a leadership putsch. 'Boris is doing a great job as Mayor of London and people love him the more they see him, and that's great… but I think it is true to say - and certainly it is true for me - that I hope and believe that we are not looking for a long time for any new leader of the Conservative Party.

One of the criticisms of the idea of Boris Johnson as a potential Prime Minister is that he doesn’t look the part and isn’t serious enough. The argument goes that it is all very well for the Mayor of London to jape around, but quite another thing for the Prime Minister to (Phil Collins produced a very punchy version of this point of view (£) in The Times this week). But as Charles Moore argues in his column, this argument misses that ‘conventional politics is now failing more comprehensively than at any time since the 1930s, and that Boris Johnson is the only unconventional politician in the field.’ It is precisely because Boris does not conform to what is expected of a modern politician that he appeals.

Today’s YouGov poll is the latest Boris talking point. For what it is worth, it shows that the idea of Boris as leader reduces the Labour lead from six points to one. It is the first polling evidence we’ve seen that suggests the Tories would do better nationally under Boris. The Boris speculation has now reached such a level that nervous Liberal Democrats are calling up asking whether they should start taking it seriously and sotto voce inquiring as to how the Tories replace their leaders. All of this is, in many ways, hugely premature. Boris isn’t even an MP and there’s a massive difference between Tory backbenchers wondering after a drink or two about whether Boris might be a bet than Cameron and actually deciding to back him.

After Boris’s re-election as London mayor, his departing aide Guto Harri complained that the dry but effective campaign had rather taken the ‘bubbles out of the champagne'. Well, the Olympics is certainly putting them back in. Boris keeps taking opportunities that no other politician would dare to—the zip wire ride today being the latest, and most dramatic, example. The question is where does all this end, is it all just Olympics hi-jinks that will be forgotten when the flame leaves Stratford or is it just the next stage of the Boris for PM campaign? In my column in the magazine tomorrow, I say that it does seem to be more the latter than the former. Certainly, the attitude of Tory MPs to the thought of Boris as PM seems to be changing.

Boris Johnson has had a fantastic few days. On Thursday he drove a crowd in Hyde Park wild with his Mitt Romney banter. On Saturday he charmed the public with his thoughts on the Olympic opening ceremony ('People say it was all leftie stuff. That is nonsense. I'm a Conservative and I had hot tears of patriotic pride from the beginning. I was blubbing like Andy Murray.') Today, in between talking about glistening otters (which in itself is a feat: a politician getting away with talking about how wonderful it is to see semi-naked women in central London and not sounding like a dirty old man), he has emerged as ConHome readers' hot choice to lead the Tory party after David Cameron.