THE GUARDIAN: Boris Johnson's election as mayor now means that there are two men with remarkably similar histories at the top of the Tory party: both he and leader David Cameron are Old Etonians who went to Oxford and were members of the same notorious drinking club. But the Conservatives are just reflecting modern Britain, says John Harris - a nation that is now less meritocratic than in a generation
And so it came to pass that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was elected Mayor Of London. Last Friday, at the formal announcement of his victory at City Hall, the proceedings were watched by his children, Cassia Peaches, Milo Arthur, Lara Lettice and Theodore Apollo. News of his win was presumably also cheered by his five siblings, all of whom went to either Oxford or Cambridge, including his Paris-based financier brother Leo, Sunday Times columnist sister Rachel, and half-brother Max - who, according to the London Evening Standard, is currently "studying for an MBA in Beijing". Meanwhile, media observers have inevitably been drawing attention to the new mayor's alma mater, and the fact that the election of one old Etonian may well have laid the ground for the arrival of another in Downing Street - who, if David Cameron makes it, will be the first Eton-educated prime minister since Harold Macmillan in 1957.
On the Tuesday before polling last week, the Today programme's John Humphrys testily asked Cameron about his and Johnson's past history, their now-infamous membership of Oxford University's Bullingdon Club, and the photograph of the two of them in the club's signature £1,200 tailcoats that last year mysteriously disappeared from public circulation. In that week's Sunday Times, there was a typically scabrous cartoon by Gerald Scarfe: Cameron and Johnson in "Buller" attire, locked in a triumphal embrace, simply captioned "Toffs rule OK". The Guardian's Steve Bell, meanwhile, carried on portraying Johnson as a nightmarish amalgam of Joseph Goebbels, Attila the Hun and Bertie Wooster. Networked from Birth >>> | May 9, 2008
BBC:
Ex-BBC Man Is Boris Johnson's Spokesman: New London mayor Boris Johnson has hired ex-BBC political correspondent Guto Harri as his director of communications >>> | May 9, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)
