ConservativeHome owner savages Boris and issues a warning to Cameron

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Stephan Shakespeare, the owner and chief funder of ConservativeHome, has issued a stark warning to David Cameron that the Tory leader has not yet sealed the deal with the electorate and that “there is no sense that a firm mandate is about to be transferred”.

And although Shakespeare says London Mayor Boris Johnson – seen as the test case for a Tory government – has been “jolly decent” he is heavily critical of his overall plan for London:

“There’s no notable achievement, no sense that anything important will change, no grip. Real problems are not solved – in fact, there’s not even a discernable attempt to solve them. You can expect several years of the famous Boris shrug as he tells us, in his attractive manner, that there’s really not very much he can do.”

He continues:

“We hear the administration’s complaints, that the system is blocked with bureaucrats, that a Mayor has little power to make a genuine difference. Are there really more than one hundred employees of TfL (London’s own transport department) who earn over £100,000 a year? You have to go to the fifth level of the bureaucracy before salaries dip below six figures. Yes, it’s really, shockingly, true. Any action on the cards? No, sorry, too difficult. Maybe in ten years it will be better, we’re told (or maybe then it will be worse… make your own assessment.)”

He also says traffic feels worse than a year ago, but that:

“Here’s real rub: If they can’t fix these easy things, we can hardly expect them to fix the difficult things like crime. Who will make a change? Will it be Cameron? Can Cameron promise us that he will not be like Boris? Because if Cameron ends up being just a higher-up version of a do-little mayor, then for millions of people it won’t be worth the effort of voting.”

It seems that, much worse than Cameron not having sealed the deal with the electorate, he’s yet to even seal the deal with his own party.