Conservative party

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.

The campaign to draft James Delingpole into Parliament, revealed here yesterday, is gathering pace. Delingpole himself has broken cover to declare that he was already moving to Northamptonshire - the scene of the upcoming by-election. ‘I'm torn, I must say... though I can't claim to have taken quite as many drugs as Louise Mensch apparently has, I did make a pretty heroic go of it in my younger, longer-haired days.’ But it’s not all fun and games. ‘On the other hand, I'm skint,’ says the right-wing scribe. In a long rant against the Tories, he confirms that if he were to run it would be on a UKIP ticket - also revealed by me yesterday. So, does he want to be an MP? ‘Probably not.

Has Nick Clegg handed Ed Miliband the keys to Downing Street? Most political commentators believe that killing off the proposed boundary changes, which would have handed the Conservatives anywhere between five and seven additional seats at the next election, will result in David Cameron being a one-term Prime Minister. One of the reasons the Tories were so keen on changing the make-up of the electoral map was to counter the rise in the number of people living in urban areas across the country. In order for the Conservatives to stand any chance of winning a majority at the next election they have to target approximately 32 marginal seats (defined as requiring a 5 per cent or under swing from red or yellow to blue).

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.

In recent weeks, Downing Street has been repeatedly told by Tory MPs that if proposals for an elected element in the House of Lords were brought back to the Commons, the next rebellion would be even bigger than the 91 who voted against second reading. Downing Street, as the Telegraph reported this morning, has now accepted that Lords reform will have to be dropped and there is talk of a formal announcement to this effect as early as Monday. But, intriguingly, I understand that David Cameron does not intend to abandon efforts to get the boundary reforms through. This, as Isabel noted this morning, has the potential to cause a massive coalition row.

It's a strange old world when a Prime Minister backing his own Chancellor is worth reporting. But this afternoon the Prime Minister was asked by Sky News whether he was going to reshuffle George Osborne. Naturally, he answered: 'George Osborne is doing an excellent job in very difficult circumstances and he has my full support in going on and doing that job. He's not going anywhere.' Kay Burley then pressed Cameron on whether this meant Osborne would still be Chancellor at the next election. He replied: 'Yes.' Now, this was quite obvious anyway.

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.

Boris Johnson is one of the few politicians in the world able to clamber up on a concert stage in Hyde Park, take the mic, and whip a crowd up into a frenzy as he did last night. If you haven't seen the Mayor of London sending Londoners wild with excitement while mocking Mitt Romney, it's well worth watching below: It's impossible to imagine any of the members of the Cabinet managing to carry any of this speech off with any dignity at all, let alone the panache that Boris possesses. A Ken Livingstone Olympic rally might have struck a rather different tone had London voted in a Labour mayor in May. When Boris solemnly stalked down a road in Clapham a year ago, waving a broom aloft, he managed to turn around the mood of a crowd which had just seconds before, been booing him.