Things don't half move fast in the media, you know. Around lunchtime today I filed a Comment piece to the newspaper about the lessons Boris's mayoralty contains for his party leader, former fellow Bullingdon Club beast and probable future leader of these great lands.
It wasn't scheduled to run tomorrow, but mid-afternoon came word that this week's New Statesman was going to carry something on the same subject. Accordingly, my effort was jumped up the queue. You can already read it here. You can also read our Politics blog's preview of the Statesman piece, the Statesman piece itself and the Daily Mail's steal from it.
It's a shocking heresy, but I can't get worked up about Cameron-Johnson rivalry stories. Even if their relationship is wary, as most observers of the matter seem to think, the general trajectory of Mayor Johnson's administration is pretty firmly on Cameronian lines: as I've argued before, Cameron has plenty to thank Boris for in this respect.
And now, you lucky things, I can exclusively report that Boris himself has dismissed the "breaking point" story as "piffle". Well, he didn't use that actual word, but it neatly summaries what he did say to me when we found each other sharing the same platform at East Croydon station while waiting for the same train - as opposed to taxi - to London Bridge earlier this evening, following his latest public consultation meeting.
His entourage included Anthony Browne, who produced the Mail's headline on his BlackBerry. There was a general sighing and rolling of eyes, then Boris said: "I can promise you Dave, on the record, that relationships with the leadership are really very good." His tone implied that this was putting it quite mildly. So there we have it. Scoop!
