James Forsyth

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.

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.

There’s been a lot of attention over the past few days as to whether George Osborne is too political. But what should really worry Tories is not how political George Osborne is, but how unpolitical Number 10 is. There are far too many Tories who think that politics is something you do in opposition not government. This view is profoundly mistaken. As I say in my column this week, city mayors were a major plank of David Cameron’s vision for reviving England’s cities. Yet all but one of the mayoral referendums were lost. Why? Because voters were never shown that mayors wouldn’t just be another politician. The Number 10 machine failed to find the kind of inspiring figures who’d have made people see the merits of the idea.

The coalition is most fragile when both party leaders feel that they have a point to prove to their own side. We are, post the Lords reform rebellion, in one of those moments. Nick Clegg has to show the Liberal Democrats that he’s no push-over, that he’ll exact something from the Tories for the death of Lords reform. In the last few days the Clegg circle have been suggesting that not only will there be no boundary changes if there is no Lords reform but that the deputy Prime Minister also has fresh resolve to fight the green agenda’s corner in government. For his part, the Prime Minister is trying to reestablish his authority in his party.

David Cameron’s decision to convene an inner Cabinet of seven Tories to advise him is a sensible move. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, calling this group together shows that Cameron knows he needs help handling his party. I understand that it meets regularly with a particular emphasis on the Conservative party side of coalition management. One Cabinet minister told me recently that the Prime Minister spends more time on coalition management than any other subject. To date, this has too often been at the expense of party management. Inevitably, if you spend most of the time thinking about what the Liberal Democrats will accept you begin to lose touch with your own party.

Vince Cable’s decision to speculate publicly about a post Nick Clegg leadership race is a significant moment. To be sure, saying ‘I wouldn’t exclude it’ about running for the job is a long way from launching an actual challenge. But it is not the answer that a politician gives if they want to stop all speculation. There’s long been gossip at Westminster that Cable’s interest in the leadership has revived — and this interview appears to confirm that. It is worth remembering that Cable only didn’t run last time because he thought that the party wouldn’t pick another veteran as leader after the Ming Campbell disaster. So, there's unfulfilled ambition there.