We who have spent eight largely thankless years pointing out that Boris Johnson was an overrated London mayor have taken only modest comfort from Michael Gove’s garrotting of the Tory grassroots hero’s party leadership bid. Why was Johnson allowed to Brexecute the national economy before a senior Tory finally got round to doing the same thing to the long-indulged ambitions of “Good old Boris” himself?
Now, a new opinion poll provides equally small consolations, coming as they do two months after Johnson completed his long, insouciant uncoupling from his responsibilities at City Hall. That said, they are fairly spectacular.
YouGov asked Londoners, 60% of whom voted to remain in the EU last month, how they felt about Johnson campaigning to leave. A meagre 9% said they felt more favourable towards him as a result compared with a giant 29% who felt the opposite. Of those whose feelings had not changed, 36% had already taken a dim view of Johnson while just 15% still thought well of him.
So, 65% of Londoners either weren’t impressed by the confection known as “Boris” before his Euro-manoeuvrings or think less of him then they did because of them. That’s quite a contrast with the final approval rating of Johnson as mayor as measured by YouGov just before the election to replace him on 5 May. That stood at a resilient +23%, with 52% of Londoners saying he had done a good job and only 29% saying he hadn’t. It was a far higher score than that of any national politician at the time.
It would be interesting to see how Londoners’ view of Johnson’s stint as mayor measures up over time against the progress of his successor Sadiq Khan. The new YouGov poll finds that 45% of Londoners think Khan has done very or fairly well in the job so far with only 15% considering him to have done fairly or very badly. That early +30% rating becomes more striking when placed next to the pre-election expectation of only 31% of Londoners that Khan would be a better mayor than Johnson.
A good start, then, for Mayor Khan in the eyes of London electors. If it lasts it might belatedly nourish a sterner assessment of Mayor Johnson’s eight years than they have tended to enjoy.
