His column today is very Telegraph Boris. Its harrumphing, chortling tone is sharply at odds with the Mayor Johnson variant of Brand Boris - that caring, sharing, immigrant-welcoming, Living Wage-supporting fellow who occupies City Hall. Note in particular his crowd-pleasing mocking of Harriet Harman, which, come to think of it, is consistent with his recent gentleman's club-style condescension towards female Assembly Members who've put him under pressure: "my dear Joanne", "dear Nicky," and so. As his London administration comes under sharper scrutiny, Telegraph Boris and Mayor Boris are becoming harder to tell apart.
I'm particularly struck, though, by the column's opening paragraphs, which effectively dismiss You Gov's latest opinion poll finding for the Sunday Times. This showed David Cameron's Conservatives to be just two percentage points ahead of Labour n nationally, the narrowest gap in more than two years. Boris argues that a more accurate picture of voters' intentions can be found elsewhere:
I have an answer for all those befuddled by the recent mutability of the polls. May I direct you to Betfair, a political betting website that in my experience is almost uncanny in its accuracy. Here you are looking at the predictions that people are willing to defend with their own money, and the money is still overwhelmingly on the Tories. The single most likely outcome - and you can actually watch as the bets go down and the stakes mount up - is that the Tories will have a comfortable overall majority, easily enough to govern for five years.
This seems rather dubious. People who place bets on the outcomes of elections are not representative of electors at large. Also, the more clinical of them will make investments in line with pollsters' findings. It will be interesting to see how bookies' prices react to the lengthening list of polls showing the Conservative lead shrinking.
But the most curious thing about Boris's argument is that it pours cold water on the very polling company that most accurately predicted the outcome of the 2008 Mayoral election that propelled him to power. You Gov's final survey before the vote itself predicted the outcome precisely. Short memory, Mr Mayor?
