Published: Thursday, 24th April, 2008 08:00
Richard Benyon's Westminster Diary
By Richard Benyon, MP for Newbury
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Newbury MP Richard Benyon
IT IS with mixed feelings that I contemplate my friend and neighbouring MP, Boris Johnson, becoming Mayor of London.
If he beats the newt fancier he will, in time, have to relinquish his Henley seat.
I will be sad to lose him as a neighbour because I enjoy working with him and find his pleasing wit and razor sharp mind a constant source of amusement. We have joined forces on a number of local issues.
Despite all that is going on with the mayoral election, Boris gets properly wound up when one of his Henley constituents is hard done by. His eternal enthusiasm is infectious.
During elections there has been a sort of tradition where West Berkshire and Henley Conservatives have held a joint meeting for voters in Streatley and Goring.
These were well attended events when Michael Heseltine was Henley’s MP but Boris was an even greater draw.
This was a problem in the 2001 election when Goring’s vast Village Hall was double booked with the dog training club. The formidable Barbara Woodhouse figure in charge was not going to yield to the crowd gathering outside so we squeezed into the small committee room at the back.
Such were the crowds that the windows were opened and people sat on the grass bank outside to hear the great man speak. It felt rather biblical.
If elected, what sort of Mayor will he be?
He will have no time for Red Ken’s empire building. The Mayor’s office is full of strange lefties on six figure salaries doing, well, no one is sure quite what.
Ken’s style of bureaucratic centralised control fails to deliver for Londoners.
He has created a system of patronage for funding that is proper old style left-wing statism.
Boris will concentrate on making London safer by doing all sorts of up-front policing stuff, backed by unlocking the enthusiasm of voluntary bodies.
He will gear up the funding through his Mayor’s fund, an innovative proposal to winkle substantial sums from city institutions. I think Londoners are bored of embarrassing love-ins with dodgy Latin American politicians and preachers of hate, such as the appalling Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
Boris offers them an end to such nonsense, less meddling control-freakery and more effective solutions to their problems.
And a few laughs along the way.
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