How do you solve a problem like Boris?

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Boris. He’s a one isn’t he? With his off colour jokes and his jokingly invading Calais – he’s the British Berlusconi. And that’s a fair comparison really – when you think about – albeit it in a somewhat understated British way. Boris made his name in the media, rising to a chickenfeed salary of £250,000 a year. He survives through humour and bravado, rather than through legislative achievement. And he’s the kind of politician that other countries can’t quite believe we’ve elected. The next time you laugh at crazy Silvio and his madcap schemes, and think “those crazy Italians, that couldn’t happen here” – remember that you’re wrong, it has already happened here, and his name is Boris.

For all of his flaws though, Boris is an amusing and likeable character – even Ken Livingstone agrees – and he breaks all of the established notions of what a leader should look like. While we obsess about what kind of speech Ed should give, and how he can look more like a leader, Boris somehow manages it based on nothing more than scruffy hair and bad gags. Personally, I wouldn’t leave him in charge of my flat, but the good people of London have left him in charge of our great city – the contrarian bunch that they are.

There’s even talk of Boris trying to get re-elected as an MP before 2015, with the aim of becoming Prime Minister (those Berlusconi comparisons don’t seem so far fetched now do they?). Ordinarily the tacit admission that the mayor was planning to abandon (or scale back) their work for Londoners before he’s even re-elected would cause a poll slump. No-one wants a part-time mayor. Or do they? Boris has all but acknowledged that he doesn’t run the show on a day to day basis already. The poll slump hasn’t been forthcoming.

Boris is popular. So popular in fact that (like Madonna, or Beyonce) he only needs one name for you to know who I’m talking about. All of his weaknesses are somehow strengths. He shouldn’t be elected a school governor – yet here he is with the largest direct mandate in Britain. He’s an enigma made of conundrums.

So how do you solve a problem like Boris Johnson?

Firstly, by ignoring every disparaging thing I’ve just said. Boris isn’t a fool, in fact he’s remarkably intelligent, but he’s made a career out of everyone underestimating him. Perhaps that’s what we all did last time. In part that’s because Londoners are prone to their own (mis)conceptions of London. How could Boris be the mayor of our city?, asked the people of inner London. Very easily, replied the people of outer London. This time we won’t underestimate him, but we need to go further than that. We need to do what no-one else has done before, treat him like any other politician.

At the last mayoral election, too much focus was placed on Boris as someone who was singularly incapable of running London. Boris hasn’t done a good job over the past three years (his achievements amount to replacing bendy buses with his neo-routemaster nostalgia-fest), but London is still here. Boris being elected didn’t lead to a wholesale societal collapse, and he hasn’t completely destroyed the transport network. Trying to pretend that Boris is a disaster just won’t cut it this time – so he needs to be held to the same standards as other politicians. This is, by and large, where the Ken campaign are getting it right. By election day everyone should know just how many police Johnson has cut and how much he’s raised fares by. When he’s put on the spot over a specific point – or by the public – his waffle doesn’t look nearly as endearing.

Ken needs to learn some lessons too. What would Ken Livingstone do differently as mayor? He probably feels – quite rightly – that had Labour not been so unpopular nationally in 2008 he would still be mayor. But he lost. Ken needs to go through the process that the party is going through nationally. He needs to ask himself the tough questions about why he lost and articulate what he did wrong and what he’d do differently next time. At present it doesn’t seem that Ken thinks he did much wrong at all. He has remarkable self belief – and that’s admirable – but I’m not sure it helps to win elections.

There have been signs of him moving in this direction, like when he said in his conference speech that “these three years have given me a chance to listen and to see things in the way ordinary Londoners see them”. But there’s still some way to go before we get the mea-culpa that Ken might need.

What he has done is start to frame the terms of the election. For too long the campaign has been about Boris – if we make this a referendum on Boris then we’ll lose. But if we make it about why Ken is a better alternative to Boris – and having a plan for cutting fares is a start – then Ken might just have a route to victory against this most tricky of opponents.

How do you solve a problem like Boris? Don’t underestimate him, treat him like any other politician – and most importantly – ignore him as much as possible. To do otherwise is to play right into his hands.

Ken Livingstone (and Ed Miliband) can’t afford that to happen…