The Games that launched a PM?
Uber-popular London mayor basks in spotlight
“How’s my friend Conrad Black?” London Mayor Boris Johnson asked Friday before praising Toronto as “a beautiful place to bike.”
The mayor, whom many Britons speculate is hankering to become Britain’s next prime minister, also had kind works for a Quebec company during a brief interview. Cycles Devinci in the Saguenay has given taxpayers good value by selling more than 8,000 so-called “Boris bikes” to London. The two-wheelers, which are known as Bixi bikes in Canada, can be rented from racks scattered across the centre of the city, just as they can be in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto.
Johnson asked about Black and praised the Canadian bikes after a news conference, at which he used the London Olympics as the hook to announce that a worldclass, 100-mile, cycling road race would be held annually in the city from next year.
A couple of hours later, the headline-grabbing mayor — who once worked as an editor for two of Black’s British publications — presided over a second triumphal news conference at which he was not shy — is never shy — about providing advice to Rio de Janeiro’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, on how Brazil might make the 2016 Olympics a success.
With Paes eagerly playing the role of straight man, Johnson joked that London would be happy to export bankers to Brazil. This was an allusion to a growing gang of senior banking executives here who are the subject of multiple investigations for economic crimes involving tens of billions of pounds.
You would never know it by how he has hogged the limelight during the 2012 Olympics, but Boris Johnson had nothing to do with getting London its third Summer Games. That happened on “Red” Ken Livingston’s watch.
But Johnson’s predecessor has been almost invisible during the Olympics, while the 48-year-old Tory with the easy-to-spot, white-blond hair has been so ubiquitous that it often feels as if he is the Game’s sole inspiration, its muse as well as its Falstaff.
Johnson’s biggest publicity coup of the Olympic fortnight was to get stuck 45 metres above the ground for five minutes, hanging from a pulley on a zipline. As he twisted in the wind, the mayor made merry, waving a pair of Union Jacks. The television news shows and YouTube fans lapped it up.
Thanks to such capers, Johnson has totally eclipsed Prime Minister David Cameron since the Games began. Both are Eton and Oxford men and what most Britons would regard as toffs. But Cameron is somewhat stiff and lacks the populist touch that defines his fellow Tory, who resigned a seat on the front benches of Parliament four years ago to run for mayor.
Many commentators smell blood. They have been wondering whether — or, more likely, when — Johnson will try to usurp Cameron and if the mayor’s buffoonish public image might ultimately doom him.
As it is, Johnson, who won a second term only a few months ago, may be the most popular mayor in London’s history. Even normally doctrinaire Labour voters, who seldom cross party lines, have voted in large numbers for him twice now rather than support the rather dour Ken Livingstone.
Another advantage Johnson has is that many of Britain’s famously cynical journalists adore him and are in his thrall. Another gift is that the deck may be stacked against Cameron. He is trying to run Britain at a time when — as the Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, said Wednesday — there will be zero economic growth this year and no hope the situation will improve much if at all over the next few years.
Johnson was in jolly good form Friday, owning the room where the two news conferences were held.
Having ridden a bicycle to the ridiculously well-attended news conferences, Johnson expressed mock horror that few journalists had travelled there in the same fashion, calling them a “a derisive minority.”
As part of a daily routine that involves riding his bicycle 20 kilometres on the city’s crowded streets, the mayor said he had ridden to the gathering “wearing a suit and I am suitably fragrant.”
Referring to Britain’s somewhat unexpected recent prowess at the velodrome, he noted: “We have won more gold medals in cycling than Australia has won in anything,” and that if a British cyclist and her boyfriend were a country, the couple would rank 16th in the International Olympic Committee medals table.
Having poked fun at himself for giving Britain credit for everything good connected to the Olympics, he confessed he had just discovered that the British had not invented the bicycle. That honour went to a German count, but Johnson claimed it was equally important that an Englishman had invented metal spokes for bicycle tires.
After promising not to do anything crazy at Sunday’s closing ceremony, he further pledged “to do my best not to be too lachrymose,” as many Britons are becoming during the waning hours of the XXX Olympiad. He quickly reversed himself and said he might become tearful, too.
It’s difficult not to think about where he may wind up in the future, particularly given his comment to a question earlier this week. Asked whether he wished to become prime minister, Johnson replied: “not at the moment.”
With polls showing Johnson is the huge favourite to succeed Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party, the prime minister took the high road Friday, telling a morning talk show that Johnson was “a great titan” of their party and that it’s good for him “to be as ambitious as possible.”
Whatever Johnson’s political ambitions, they were not hurt Friday when Rio’s Paes turned to him and declared that the London Olympics “were the greatest Games ever.”