Boriswatch: Caesar in London

Almost as soon as the result of the London Mayoral election had been announced, the Conservatives hailed Boris Johnson’s Mayoralty as the template for a future Tory Government. They said that what London saw under Boris, the rest of the country could expect to see under Cameron. If this is the case, I would be very concerned.

My reason for this concern is simple – Boris Johnson does not believe that he is accountable to anyone and runs London as an autocrat, rather than the democrat he promised to be. The most recent example occurred on Thursday morning when he announced the resignation of Bob Quick as the head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism division. He did this despite being asked by the Home Secretary and the Police to let the Met announce Quick’s resignation. Now, fair enough, he is chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, but the Met is not just London’s force, it has a national role too, especially in counter-terrorism. Therefore, it should be answerable to the Home Secretary as well, but Boris decided he’d go ahead anyway. (As an aside, this isn’t just bad for accountability, it’s bad for the Met’s operational effectiveness – they need to have clear leadership on counter-terrorism, and not have the Mayor of London confusing their directions).

There are other examples too. Boris recently tried (and failed) to walk out of a Commons Transport Select Committee inquiry into London transport’s response to February’s heavy snowfall. His reason for this was that he didn’t like the questions and thought them partisan. And last year, when asked about charges against his Olympics advisor David Ross regarding Ross’ breach of financial regulations, his response was ‘lalala, byebyebye.’

From a man who promised accountability, this is simply not acceptable. When you are an elected politician in a democracy, you have to answer difficult questions. Gordon Brown can’t simply walk out of Prime Minister’s Questions because he doesn’t like the questions or thinks that the opposition are being partisan. This is called holding Government to account, and it’s clearly something Boris doesn’t believe in.

In a way, this is hardly surprising. Boris is a classicist and is famously a fan of the Roman Empire, so perhaps the fiefdom analogy is wrong, perhaps he sees himself more as a Caesar figure. Either way, his promises of greater accountability and greater democracy have come to nothing. This is what we can expect of a Tory Government. We know this, because they told us.