Tag: “Boris Johnson”

An edited version of this piece appears in today’s Independent. I have italicised the bigger chunks not in the Indy for any of you who may have read it already, so you can skip to those bits! Also quite interesting for journalism students to see what the sub-editors decided could hit the deck as they [...]

First things first, and a quick line the producers of POSH can use in any publicity should they wish to … ‘topical, relevant, well-written, well-cast, well-acted and very thought-provoking.’ As to what I really think about it, even a good night’s sleep has not settled the answer. Perhaps that is the sign of a good [...]

I have been around long enough to know it is unwise to believe everything you read in the the Sunday papers, but the whiff of U-turn in the Tory air has a credible aroma to it. One word for David Cameron on this … don’t. If it is true that he is dropping the Bill [...]

It is remarkable how slowly the media moves from a pre-ordained narrative that turns out to be wrong. Boris Johnson having failed to win anything like the support being predicted for him, the win over Ken Livingstone is being seen both as a big step towards Boris being the next Tory leader, and a rare [...]

I hope someone at Tory Central Office is minting a medal for Michael Fallon, the MP who so gamely trots from studio to studio defending whatever Cameron-Osborne shambles happens to be trending at the time. But last night, as he sat with others waiting for election results to come in, there came a little sign [...]

So tomorrow London decides whether Boris Johnson gets another bash at being Mayor, or Ken Livingstone a return to City Hall. Whizzing through my morning media brief, I see Ed Miliband correctly exposing the strategy that Johnson is hoping will get him over the line. This from the Independent Page 17… Ed Miliband has accused [...]

Anyone who has read my diaries knows that Ken Livingstone has not always been my flavour of the month. And during this campaign for the London Mayorlty, in some of the things he has said and done, he has thrown up reminders of that resistance to his charms. But as the election nears, there are [...]

Today’s blog is given over to a press release from a group of disabled disability campaigners who have exposed the sham that is the coalition government’s public consultation on Disability Living Allowance. It is long, but worth reading. It reveals inter alia, as Boris Johnson might say, the scale of the London Mayor’s opposition to [...]

For various reasons I have seen no news coverage and read no newspaper reports of the Tory conference since Sunday morning. This has not been a deliberate snub to one of the two ruling parties, just the result of other things getting in the way. So today I spent a little time wandering around the [...]

The next couple of days will dictate whether a crisis becomes a disaster, or another crisis managed to a relatively successful conclusion. Any crisis requires strong clear leadership, and when it is a crisis on this scale, with people fearing the loss of control of the streets, that has to come from the Prime Minister. [...]