Dave and BoJo - Friends, But For How Long?

Iain Dale has, utterly unsurprisingly, some praise for one David Cameron:

Geordie Grieg's interview with David Cameron in today's Evening Standard us well worth a skaz. His tremendous likeability comes across well. You just can't imagine Gordon Brown giving an interview like this.

In particular, according to the interview Dale cites, Cameron can be praised for adopting a sensible attitude to Boris Johnson:

Is the Mayor too much trouble? “Would I rather have some faceless bureaucrat running London who could not pull a crowd at the Tory conference? Or would I rather have a swashbuckling, charismatic, irresistible character who will, yes, occasionally put his size 10 feet in it? In the end I would rather have the latter.

“He is doing a fabulous job running London. I think what's happened in terms of security on public transport, trees, cutting waste, and the optimism and sense of dynamism he brings to the job, he is doing a fantastic job.”

Now, on face value this all looks rather dandy and more than a little bit like Cameron is an open-minded leader who is happy to have talented people in his party, even if they occasionally create some problems for him. Of course, it is politically savvy of Cameron to praise Johnson. After all, Johnson is the only Tory since 1997 to wield real and substantial political power. He is, at this point, arguably a more powerful and more important Tory than Cameron. And people will be looking to BoJo to understand what a national Tory administration will actually be like. It would be utterly pointless for Cameron to criticise Boris at this point, and whilst Cameron has many, many flaws, failing to be politically astute is not one of them.

However, the more fundamental point is that it is easier for parties in opposition to cope with those who do not follow the party line - particularly when the government is in free-fall. Any divisions may be commented on by the media, but the focus is always on the government fuck-ups. That, of course, changes once a party gets into power.

So it will be interesting to see how Cameron copes when Boris goes off-piste after Call Me Dave has become Prime Minister. It will be interesting to see how Cameron copes with the headlines talking about a return to Tory civil war when BoJo and others follow a position that is expressly in line with the leadership. I hope Cameron will simply shrug his shoulders, and point out that this is what happens in a party with a broad membership in a democracy. However, I sense that he will be much less accommodating and open once he is in Number 10. This prediction has less to do with any observations about Cameron's personality and much more to do with the lessons of history - almost all politicians demand more power, more control and more loyalty when they get into power. And those renegades who could be tolerated whilst in opposition become far more of a perceived threat once political power has been attained.