With Boris Johnson now hailed by the right as a Tory king across the water, today’s Telegraph mischievously runs a column from David Cameron in the limited space below Boris’s regular slot.
Yes, Boris, “I get the message”, Cameron appears to be telling the Mayor.
Boris’s column, incidentally, is on the benefits of an open immigration system: “Against illegals, yes. Against talent, no. In football as in the economy at large, you don’t make people more competitive by excluding the competition. “
Not only is this a reminder of the Mayor’s opposition to the coalition’s immigration cap, it’s also further evidence of why, as Adam Bienkov argued on The Staggers, Boris isn’t the “real Conservative” that some Tories imagine.
If anything, it was his relative wetness (support for gay marriage, a living wage and an amnesty for illegal immigrants) that endeared him to non-Tory voters.