Boris Johnson once admitted to devoting "hours, days, years" in his late twenties to obsessing over former EU President Jacques Delors. He even claimed that the "pipe-puffing French socialist" inspired his best piece of writing, an article entitled "Delors' plan to rule Europe" in the Sunday Telegraph, and held aloft by Danes marching to oppose the Maastricht treaty. Yet even now Johnson cannot escape the Frenchman's legacy, especially the EU funding of "regional offices" that spawned the Greater London Authority—over which Johnson has spent a year as mayor.
That this evangelical anti-federalist owes his job to the godfather of European integration is just one of a long list of incongruities in the Johnson mayoralty. It is a supposed testing ground for a future Conservative government, yet he rejects the Cameron label. He is mandated by the largest direct democratic election of any office in Europe, but has limited power. He leads with a of cult of personality insufficiently large to disguise a lack of direction. But of all the pen-portraits of Johnson's first year in office, described variously as "a disaster" and "formidable," few have admitted the obvious: not a great deal has been done.
Certainly, much has been cancelled. Johnson has junked the extension of London's congestion charge, along with the Thames Gateway Bridge. A police commissioner has resigned, as have rather too many mayoral staff. The "bendy buses" which Johnson scorned during his campaign still snake through London's streets, and the high rises he promised to block continue to scramble towards the skyline.
At times, mayor Boris has struggled to implement even his most modest pledges, as when in April he admitted that a clutch of promised rape crisis centres would not open. True, much of the money that disappeared into underperforming (and in some cases non-existent) public projects linked to Ken Livingstone's advisers is no longer going missing. But reform has been slight.
Conservatives might claim that they don't govern by grand plans, but administrative atrophy of this kind does not happen by design. Much of the responsibility is Johnson's. He was reluctant to stand for London, is an inexperienced executive and evidently has had no plan for the capital—in contrast to Livingstone who defined London as a city-state complete with it's own distinct, pro-Venezuelan foreign policy.
Early in the campaign, Tory strategists became alarmed by their candidate's uncertainty and he was privately reprimanded by George Osborne. As the election neared Nicholas Boles, former director of pro-Cameron think-tank Policy Exchange, was parachuted in. Yet Boles's arrival, which began as an effort to protect the Tory reputation for efficient governance, unintentionally hobbled Johnson's first year, as City Hall became riddled with factionalism.
Within barely a month of victory, Boles was alarmed to find that his question "What will we achieve in the first 100 days?" was being ignored. Tory modernisers blamed senior City Hall Tories, labelling deputy mayor Richard Barnes and assembly member Brian Coleman as "the passé posse." The insiders, in turn, allied themselves with Johnson's powerful gatekeeper Simon Milton. A onetime adviser to Shirley Porter when she led (and corrupted) Westminster Council in the late 1980s, Milton is sometimes described, flatteringly, as Johnson's brain. First appointed as a senior planning adviser, his powers have grown significantly. Some even see his hand in the mayor's new enthusiasm for tall buildings.
It was Milton's attempt to consolidate power that prompted the rash of early departures in Johnson's staff. Boles left first, quickly followed by Tim Parker, the corporate raider appointed as Boris's first deputy mayor. Indeed, Milton played a decisive role in his demise, arguing that Parker's attempts to review City Hall were unproductive. "[Milton] went to Boris and said, 'Parker is acting like he's the mayor, not you. Either he goes or I do,'" explains a senior member of Johnson's office. Johnson let him go, and subsequent promised cuts in programmes have been meagre.
There were several more important resignations during Johnson's first summer. Youth Advisor Ray Lewis, humiliated for faking his credentials as a magistrate, resigned. Bob Diamond left as chair of the mayor's fund. Senior strategist James McGrath was sacked for "racist" remarks. Campaign aides were marginalised, and City Hall was purged of Cameroons—"London," the mayor has said, "is not a petri dish into which various bacilli are being introduced by Tory ideologues." Milton, meanwhile, moved up to deputy mayor—for policy, as well as planning.
Boris might have thought this a bold move towards independence, but his office seemed out of control and its influence on London limited. Even simple reforms, like the alcohol ban on public transport, were botched—it was foolishly introduced on a Saturday night, sparking a prohibition party on the Tube network.
As a newspaper columnist Johnson's appeal stems from his elegant writing, but also from his bald honesty, which, unlike so many other politicians who write, seems to be uninhibited by personal ambition. It was this reputation for confidence and truth-telling that seemed threatened in those first tentative months—even the columns themselves caused problems. Unlike Ken Livingstone, who resigned nearly all outside appointments once elected, Johnson wanted to keep writing. A natural brinkman, his reputation for failing to meet deadlines worsened in City Hall as he struggled to file his Daily Telegraph column on time. Finally, his publication day was changed to Monday, allowing him to write from home on Sunday.
And for all the pressures of office, Johnson also had to wrestle with its formal limitations. He was, for example, unable to stop Heathrow's planned expansion. He neither controls the multi-billion pound plans for London's Crossrail or Olympics. Johnson feeds into the policies of others as a mere "stakeholder," a word he surely dislikes.
He has made his mark even so, not least when he dramatically forced the resignation of Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner. It was the first time he stamped his authority on the city and stood up to Whitehall, as well as being a fine piece of stagecraft. Although he had grandly promised at Conservative party conference to wrest the responsibility of appointing the Met chief away from the home secretary, he sensibly backtracked to claiming he'd "share" the role. But a few weeks later, it was Johnson who seemed in charge when he called the Today programme on 9th April to say that he had "accepted the resignation" of assistant police commissioner Bob Quick, even though Jacqui Smith and the Met Commissioner had agreed the resignation one day earlier.
Johnson claims he has not decided whether to run again as mayor, though it's likely he will. To win again he must steer the City through its worst crisis in a generation, see off striking tube workers and begin to address London's deeper social issues—child poverty chief among them. There is a movement in the Labour party to back Ken Livingstone to run against him in 2012. But past funding scandals will not be easily swept under the carpet. At present, the mayoralty is Johnson's to lose.
If this befuddled first year is a harbinger, he may do just that. But there is at least one piece of evidence to suggest an alternative prospect. In April he struck down plans to replace Queen's Market—London's most diverse—with a 35-storey tower block. It was the sort of popular, common sense decision that won support during his campaign. Significantly, Simon Milton was known to have supported the plans and the mayor publicly shot him down. If that decision indicates his growing confidence, next year may yet be Boris Johnson's real first year in office.
