In response to Jeremy's call to sacrifice London...aaargh!!!

Jeremy Hargreaves in his blog suggests that 2 years of Boris in charge of London will be enough to scare the country in the general election off the Tories forever; unfortunately the comments aren’t working on his blog so I can’t tell him what I think of that idea! So, I’m going to have to post my response here:

So, Jeremy, the thing is, I don't think Boris Johnson would act as a vaccination.

One of the things about Boris is that he has a distinct 'Boris' brand which is separate from the Conservatives. The Tories knew this when they chose him; it's similar to Ken's brand which is distinct from Labour.

This distinct brand means that Boris is far more attractive to Londoners than the Tories would be.

A Boris win would allow the Tories to capitalise on that heading to the General election, though.

I think Boris will screw up London because he is incompetent and inexperienced; but I’m not sure that this will come through in the 2 years between a Boris win in London in 2008 and a General election in 2010, firstly, because Boris will have a honeymoon period and, secondly, because it normally takes a couple of years for things to unravel.

In the event that he has no honeymoon period and his incompetence is shown up early enough to impact the General Election the Tories will be in a good position to distance themselves from him. Boris isn’t using the Tory brand to get into power and therefore the Tory brand will not be so contaminated by his failure as you may hope.

A win for Ken; well I don’t think that’s going to have any impact on Labour’s electoral chances.