Boris johnson

The Tories had a good few days in Manchester. But one Tory had a particularly good week, Boris Johnson. A week ago, Boris looked becalmed. As we said in the Spectator, he was struggling to make the transition from being Mayor of London to being both the Mayor and an MP. But this week, he has delivered the best speech of his political life, shown new Tory MPs his talents, and renewed his relationship with Tory activists. It was telling that when Cameron paid tribute to Boris during the leader’s speech, the hall gave him a standing ovation. Now, the tricky thing for Boris will be coming up with a follow up to this and he still has several months where he has to be in two places at once, City Hall and the Commons. But he finds himself in a far better position than he did a week ago.

Maybe it was because of the contrast with Theresa May’s chilly, disingenuous monotone minutes before, but I really think Boris Johnson’s speech to the Conservative party here in Manchester was brilliant. It is a constant puzzle that senior politicians, who spend such ages worrying about how to communicate, do not learn how to make platform speeches. They make basic errors — failing to read autocues, misjudging the timing of applause. They also do not trouble to think about what makes a speech — its combination of light and shade, the sense of an audience of actual human beings both in and outside the hall.

Boris Johnson’s speech today was the best that I have ever heard him give. It was a potent cocktail of political vision, humour and optimism. But the most significant line it was about Europe. He declared that: ‘It should be up to this parliament and this country – not to Jean-Claude Juncker – to decide if too many people are coming here’ It is impossible to read this as anything other than a demand that freedom of movement rules are fundamentally altered as part of the UK’s renegotiation with the EU.

The Mayor of London dropped by the Policy Exchange tent this afternoon to take on rowing champion James Cracknell. As you can watch below, Boris Johnson claimed he wasn’t even trying but was still beaten in a 200m sprint by only four seconds. Cracknell did it in 35 seconds, Boris in 39 seconds. This makes him the fastest MP to undertake the challenge: WATCH: @BorisJohnson vs. @JamesCracknell at Policy Exchange rowing challenge. Cracknell won by just 4 seconds #cpc15 https://t.co/rZQ9VY4HFA — Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) October 5, 2015 The stunt was to promote a new report about obesity. Johnson said he was ‘fit as a fiddle’ but ‘highly doubted’ he had more stamina than his future leadership rival George Osborne.

As the Tory tribe prepares to gather in Manchester, the chatter is about two things: who will succeed David Cameron and what will happen in the EU referendum. These two issues are, obviously, inextricably linked. If Britain votes Out in the EU referendum, a prospect which while still unlikely has become more likely in recent weeks, Cameron is unlikely to be succeeded by someone who campaigned for In—as Fraser points out in the Telegraph today. But, so far, none of the expected leadership candidates have indicated that they will campaign for Out. George Osborne is one of the lead figures in the renegotiation and has always been clear that he thinks that there is a deal to be done.

When David Cameron announced that he wouldn’t serve a third term, he made it inevitable that Westminster would spend much of his second term wondering about who would succeed him. Well, in the new Spectator, Nicky Morgan becomes the first Cabinet Minister to make clear that she is interested in standing when Cameron steps down. She says that ‘A lot of it will depend on family’ but makes clear that she believes there needs to be a female candidate in the race and hopes ‘that, in the not too distant future, there will be another female leader of a main Westminster political party’. What I was most struck about when interviewing Morgan was how, when I asked her what her pitch for the top would be, she didn’t shy away from the question.

With Lord Ashcroft's claim in today's Daily Mail that David Cameron once enjoyed intimate relations with a dead pig, talk has soon turned to which unnamed Tory MP was the source of the story. With the incident allegedly taking place at an initiation ceremony for the Piers Gaveston dining society – which is named after Edward II's alleged male lover — it has been suggested that one of Cameron's Oxford university contemporaries could be the source. While Steerpike is yet to discover which MP is behind the Ashcroft tale, Mr S couldn't help but remember that one Tory MP previously got himself into trouble for telling porkies concerning Piers Gaveston.

One Boris supporter asked me this week, 'How bad do you think things are?’ The thing under discussion, it quickly turned out, was Boris’s leadership prospects. Among his camp followers, there is growing concern that Boris is being left behind in the leadership race. The Mayor’s chances have certainly taken a knock in recent months. First, the Tories winning a majority exploded the argument that they needed someone with Boris’s 'beyond politics' appeal to win outright. Then, Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader changed the calculation about the 2020 election for the Tories. Suddenly, a safety first approach - eg a non-Boris one - seems much more appealing. But there are signs that Boris is preparing to strike some distinctive positions.

Heathrow expansion is one key policy area that is affected by the recent Labour elections. Sadiq Khan’s victory in the London mayoral nomination contest means that the London Labour party will be campaigning against a third runway. Tessa Jowell was tentatively pro-Heathrow but Khan made a pledge during the campaign to oppose a third runway — one that he would find it very hard to renege on. And assuming the bookies are right and Zac Goldsmith is selected as the Conservative candidate, all of the London mayoral candidates will be campaigning against Heathrow expansion (the Greens and Lib Dems are also likely to be against it). The Labour party overall is heading in an anti-Heathrow direction, thanks to the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

Boris Johnson’s war with black cab drivers stepped up a notch today. His monthly Mayor’s Question Time session was abruptly shut down after cabbies packed out the public gallery of London City Hall to protest about what they see as Transport for London’s unfair regulations for Uber. As the video above shows, Johnson’s description of the cabbies as ‘Luddites’ did not go down well at all and the London Assembly's deputy chair decided it should end. Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association, has told the Evening Standard Boris's ‘Luddite’ was to blame, saying it was not ‘the smartest of moves but it escalated out of all proportion’.