Is Boris after Dave's job? I hesitate to ask the question because it's all a bit, you know, Westminster Village, and because few ambitious politicians would say no to the chance to replace their party boss, if not immediately then as soon as it can be decently arranged. That said, speculation about The Blond's ambitions was hardly stilled by his responses to it while in Birmingham.
Consider, for example, Mayor Johnson's use of the legendary Heseltine formula when I yanked his chain about unseating Dave at the Guardian's reception on Sunday evening. "I cannot foresee the circumstances," he dryly volunteered (go right to the end of this video). Had I pressured him further, perhaps with the aid of thumbscrews, I imagine he'd have insisted he was just being fun and ironic. But fun and irony are often the masks behind which Johnson conceals his demon eyes.
Andrew Neil tried to reveal those on the Daily Politics yesterday. As a diligent Boris Watcher points out, he succeeded in extracting a non-answer about running for a second term as mayor and another about wanting to be prime minister. Such untidy non-denials do nothing to undermine the candid assertions of his biographer Andrew Gimson that Johnson is determined to get the keys to Number 10: "He has done ever since he was 18, ever since he decided not to go for the Presidency of the United States." (from Sunday's Politics Show).
Will Boris one day lead the Tories? Will he one day lead this entire land? One respectable reason for pondering these questions is that Cameron has surely been doing so. They may not be the most pressing on his mind, but he's transparently alive to the implications of the rise of his old school and Bullingdon Club chum. If he doesn't fear Boris, he certainly knows there is now a potential problem in being seen to be out of step with him, be that over the "broken society", appointing the head of the Met or anything else. He surely knows too that if he falters on the road to Downing Street or after taking up residence, the fellow at City Hall - the one no longer dismissed as a joke - won't be averse to taking his place.
