Boris Johnson's Blog, page 4

The Queen was wise to mock Hitler

You will recall that in 1936 Hitler broke international treaties and invaded the Rhineland; and for many people in this country it was becoming obvious that he was bent on revenge for the First World War, that he was virulently anti-Semitic, and that he could not be trusted. So here is your starter for 10. Who went to Germany after that invasion, and returned so bamboozled by Hitler that he called him, “a born leader of men, a magnetic dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will and a dauntless heart”? It was the man who led us to victory in the First World War; one of the founders of the welfare state; a man who is widely revered for his work for the poor and needy of Britain. It was former PM David Lloyd George, who went on in the same emetic article to call the German leader “the George Washington of Germany”.

May 1945: Princess Elizabeth with Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill, King George VI and Princess Margaret on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day 1945

And Lloyd George was not alone in his bad judgment. Which editor of a great and patriotic national newspaper was a supporter of appeasement – the policy of letting Hitler get away with it? Step forward Geoffrey Dawson, fellow of All Souls and editor of The Times. He published a leader after the remilitarisation of the Rhineland announcing that it was “A Chance to Rebuild”. He was so pro-German that in 1937 he said that he spent the evenings looking at the proofs of the paper, and “taking out anything which I think will hurt their susceptibilities and dropping in little things which are intended to soothe them”. Of course, Dawson was also innocent – in the sense that he couldn’t have imagined that Hitler’s concentration camps such as Dachau, which had first opened in 1933, would become a byword for horror; and indeed The Times changed its tune pretty smartly as soon as war broke out.

Who said in 1938: “One may dislike Hitler’s system, yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”

All I am trying to show is that delusions about Hitler persisted even among the most brilliant and well-educated adults, and even among those who were to become his most formidable opponents. So here is my final question. Shortly after Hitler entered the Sudetenland, a famous statesman made an extraordinary observation. “One may dislike Hitler’s system, yet admire his patriotic achievement,” said this British politician in November 1938. “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations”. Who said it? Well, you all know the answer – it was Winston Churchill, of course. Ah, you will say; but we have ripped Churchill’s words out of context; we have found one iffy remark that should in no way subtract from his clear and prescient warnings about the reality of the threat from Hitler and Nazism. And you are right. It is all about context, context, context.

The two little girls are plainly fooling around, and so is their mother, and so – probably – is their uncle Edward, even if he did go on to maintain a sinister sympathy for the Nazi regime. This was a time when people made fun of Nazis and their pompous and preposterous behaviour – think of P G Wodehouse’s character Spode, in the Code of the Woosters, expecting people to greet him with the words “Heil Spode”. People have made fun of Nazis ever since. Is there anyone growing up in post-war Britain who has not at one time or another done a mock-fascist Dr Strangelove salute? Is there anyone who cannot remember little kids at some stage flapping their arms in that way? And this is after the war, after the horror had been exposed. These days people pay a high price for jokes. Think of Sir Tim Hunt. But at least he was an adult who understood what he was saying. The young Queen-to-be had no idea of the contemporary – let alone the later – significance of her gesture, and today she fully deserves the national surge of affection and admiration.

Greece must rediscover the spirit of Marathon to burst its euro shackles

First, they must simply hand over “valuable Greek assets of €50 billion” to be privatised – flogged off to decrease the debt. Who will do the privatising? Schäuble proposes that these Greek state assets – airports, electricity companies, whatever – should be surrendered to a body called the “Institution for Growth in Luxembourg”. And who is in charge of this institution, eh? Jawohl, meine Freunde! It turns out to be a front for the German KfW, the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, the state development bank that was set up, ironically, as part of the postwar Marshall plan to rescue the bombed-out German economy.

These Greek state assets may be tarnished, they may be indebted, but they belong to the Greek people; and now the 72-year-old Schäuble is seriously proposing that this family silver should be taken and sold by the Germans. Why the Germans? Because it is obvious from Schäuble’s proposals that he has complete contempt for the Greeks’ ability to run their own affairs.

His next two conditions are that there should be “capacity-building and depoliticizing Greek administrative tasks under hospices (sic) of the COM for proper administration of the program; (c) automatic spending cuts in case of missing deficit targets”. The arrogance is amazing. What does he mean by “capacity-building”? He means sending in natty-jacketed Eurocrats to take over the country. What does he mean by “depoliticizing”? He means telling Greek voters and politicians to get stuffed, because it is the Germans who are now running the show.

It is fitting that the draftsperson was confused about “hospices” and “auspices”. The eurozone is indeed turning into a hospice, and the dying patient is democratic self-government. That is what Germany wants Greece to do, as the price of staying in the euro. The only alternative, says Schäuble, is a “time-out” from the eurozone for at least five years: in other words, expulsion.

As the hours have passed since this document was leaked over the weekend, I have waited for the repudiation from Berlin. I had assumed that Angela Merkel would somehow distance herself from the demands of her finance minister – perhaps even issue a formal démenti. On the contrary, it has become ever clearer that this ultimatum has her support, and the support of the German government.

The message from Berlin is clear: either we take over the economic government of Greece, or we kick Greece out of the eurozone – and what is even more astonishing is that no one, in any other European country, is rallying to the side of the Greeks.

After five years of crisis, the European Union has reached such depths of intellectual and spiritual exhaustion that ministers are willing to contemplate two appalling options: the immolation of Greek democracy or a Grexit that would almost certainly prove contagious to other eurozone members – including, ultimately, the French themselves.

What will the Greeks do? My heart says they should tell Schäuble to get stuffed. Five years ago, I said they should go for freedom, and I think the same today. What have they gained, by staving off the inevitable? More unemployment, more misery, more poverty. What have they got to lose? Nothing but their chains – the servitude that goes with a cruel monetary version of the Ottoman empire.

Now is the time to rediscover the spirit of Marathon, to fight for the things that made Greece great, to burst the shackles of the Great King of Brussels. Now is the time for what they used to call arete – the full expression of their independent moral virtue.

Will they? Alas, I doubt it. The tragedy of modern Greece is that they don’t really trust themselves – any more than Schäuble does – to run their own affairs. There are still large public majorities for staying with the euro, for sticking with nurse – in spite of the toxic medicine she dispenses. I expect that the agony will go on, with endless deadlines and fudges and semi-disguised bailouts.

But the lessons from the Schäuble paper are clear. They apply to Britain as much as to Greece. The first lesson is that this is what happens when a nation gives up economic sovereignty, in the hope – accurate or deluded – of somehow becoming richer. The Greeks thought they were being smart to sacrifice their monetary independence; they thought they could free-ride. They didn’t appreciate that this autonomy might be something valuable in itself – something they would one day yearn for again.

The second lesson is that whatever they say in Brussels, there is nothing inevitable about any of this process of “integration”. It is all up for grabs. This is no time to moderate UK proposals for reform; quite the reverse, and David Cameron is dead right to open a new front on employment law.

No one can read that German paper, and conclude that the EU is still meant to be an association of sovereign nation-states. These Schäuble proposals are tyrannical. They should be bitterly resisted.

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Let’s cut taxes for people at the top and the bottom

I looked at the tax arrangements of the last 16 in the world’s greatest knock-out tennis competition – athletes from about a dozen countries – and what I discovered was sobering for British tennis.

Thanks to Gordon Brown’s decision to hike the top rate of income tax to 50 per cent, Andy was the man with the least to gain from victory. Everyone else would have taken a bigger share of the swag, because virtually every other nation, with the arguable exception of Belgium, was then imposing a lower top rate of tax. Was it possible, I asked – semi-frivolously – that we could sharpen Andy’s appetite for success?

Perhaps if we made a small fiscal adjustment, we could persuade him to lunge that extra half a yard and fling that racket with that extra ration of sublime frenzy. Perhaps, I suggested, we could cut the top rate to 45p and turn him from also-ran to champion.

Well, folks, that article obviously went down big in the Treasury. It was only the next year that George Osborne courageously reduced the top rate – and pow!

What happened the year after that? In 2013, Andy Murray became the first British man since Fred Perry to win the game’s premier tournament. It was a moment of incredulous national ecstasy.

Now I am not going to push this point too far. No one would seriously suggest that top tennis players are entirely motivated by the size of the prize money. But plenty of serious people accept at least the thrust of the argument – that tax cuts can, in fact, lead to extra effort and higher performance. And there are plenty of people who do believe – as I do – in the Laffer curve: the idea that a cut in the taxation rate may stimulate enterprise, leading to higher yields overall.

Thanks to the Tories, Andy’s position has markedly improved in the tennis tax table. He is about halfway down. If he wins the £1.88 million jackpot, he would pay less than the Belgian and the Canadian but far more than the Serbs or the Croats or the bouncing Czech.

The question now for Britain is whether we want to go further, whether we want an even more competitive tax rate – not for our tennis stars so much as for the millions who might be encouraged and incentivised to work harder, produce more and therefore fill higher the tithe barn of the Exchequer.

Again, there are plenty who think this would be a good idea. Nigel Lawson has recently argued that the top rate should go back down to 40p, and many Conservatives agree. I am among them.

But there is a very serious problem, and we would need to sort it out before any such top rate tax cut could go ahead. That problem is fairness, and how such a cut would be seen by the wider population.

Most people do not think in terms of Laffer curves. They may intellectually accept that a cut in the top rate of income tax could generate more tax for the Government to spend on schools and roads and hospitals. But that is not how they picture the impact of any Budget.

We think of ourselves according to our relationship with others – and it is simply not fair that a Budget should put more disposable income in the pockets of the rich and less disposable income in the pockets of the poor. And that, alas, would be the result if we were to cut top-rate tax and simultaneously to cut in-work benefits without any compensating improvements in pay.

It is outrageous that multi-billion-pound companies are mainlining money from the welfare system and using it to subsidise low pay.

We are snarled ever more densely in the coils of a trap – an elaborate benefits trap prepared by Gordon Brown and from which most thoughtful Labour MPs would like to escape.

Of the staggering £76 billion now being paid in in-work benefits, £11  billion is going to those who work in retail. Think of that. These are companies whose chief executives now earn vast multiples of the wages of the majority of their staff.

That multiple – the ratio between the boardroom and the checkout till – has grown enormously over the past 20 years. If you ask these titans why they deserve so much more, they will always invoke “market forces” – the need to pay executives very large sums to stop them being poached.

Well, many observers would say that boardroom pay had less to do with market forces than with a racket by which a relatively small cadre of business people sit on each other’s “remcoms” – remuneration committees – and engage in an orgy of mutual back-scratching.

Boris Johnson visits a supermarket during the 2015 election (Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images)

And as for low pay, it isn’t a function of market forces. It’s being propped up by the taxpayer. That needs to end. And that means business has got to start paying its people a wage they can live on.

Yes, we should be cutting taxes all round – cutting the top rate as well as lifting the thresholds and taking the poor out of tax. We should have the most competitive tax regime in Europe. But we need to make clear to the business leaders of this country that we can only cut tax for them at the top if they do the right thing: treat their workers properly and pay them a living wage.

Miliband could savage our cities faster than any bomb

Everyone is familiar with the struggle of Generation Rent. Even readers who are owner-occupiers will have friends or relatives who have seen their rents rise to eye-watering levels. No one could fail to have sympathy with their plight. But if we are to have any chance of solving the problem, we must understand what has really caused it.

In London – where more and more people are being driven to rent at ever higher prices – two factors have come together to produce a crisis. The first is the sheer popularity and success of the city. London is the most dynamic urban economy in Europe, with a growing population and an enormous demand for housing. And that demand has been exacerbated, secondly, by the total failure of the previous Labour government – in which Ed Miliband served – to build enough homes. Don’t just take it from me. As Miliband admitted himself in 2010, after he had been (rightly) kicked out of office: “We refused to prioritise the building of new social housing”. Or as Ed Balls put it: “Labour was wrong…We were late in recognising the importance of building more homes, and more affordable homes.”

How many houses are we building?

Date
Private companies
Housing associations
Councils
All sources
1969-70
185,920
7,410
185,000
378,320
1970-71
174,340
8,510
179,370
362,230
1971-72
196,310
10,700
157,460
364,480
1972-73
200,760
7,780
122,400
330,940
1973-74
191,080
8,980
104,580
304,640
1974-75
145,180
9,970
124,440
279,580
1975-76
154,530
14,750
152,660
321,940
1976-77
155,230

153,770
324,770
1977-78
143,910

145,060
314,090
1978-79
152,170
22,780
113,660
288,600
1979-80
144,060
18,070
89,700
251,820
1980-81
131,970
21,420
88,590
241,990
1981-82
118,580
19,420
68,570
206,570
1982-83
129,000
13,510
40,310
182,820
1983-84
153,020
16,660
39,220
208,900
1984-85
165,420
17,260
37,590
220,270
1985-86
163,360
13,750
30,450
207,570
1986-87
177,160
12,940
25,420
215,510
1987-88
191,250
13,150
21,830
226,230
1988-89
207,420
13,490
21,450
242,360
1989-90
187,540
14,600
19,380
221,520
1990-91
161,630
19,190
16,380
197,210
1991-92
160,250
21,090
9,900
191,250
1992-93
143,980
30,010
4,420
178,420
1993-94
146,750
36,580
3,530
186,850
1994-95
155,290
37,240
3,060
195,580
1995-96
156,540
38,170
3,010
197,710
1996-97
153,450
30,950
1,540
185,940
1997-98
160,680
28,550
1,520
190,760
1998-99
154,560
22,870
870
178,290
1999-00
160,520
23,170
320
184,010
2000-01
152,740
22,250
380
175,370
2001-02
153,580
20,400
230
174,200
2002-03
164,300
18,610
300
183,210
2003-04
172,360
18,020
210
190,590
2004-05
184,500
21,990
130
206,620
2005-06
189,700
23,990
320
214,000
2006-07
192,170
26,650
260
219,070
2007-08
189,660
28,630
250
218,530
2008-09
144,920
33,040
830
178,790
2009-10
117,980
34,190
780
152,940
2010-11
104,770
30,920
1,760
137,450
2011-12
109,620
34,190
3,080
146,850
2012-13
106,030
27,160
2,330
135,510
2013-14
111,750
27,120
2,060
140,930

ONS

One of the Labour members of the London Assembly, Tom Copley, has even called for the party to apologise for its failure to build more homes. As you might expect from Labour politicians, they are in fact understating the scale of the disaster, or their role in it. In the 13 years of the Labour government, housebuilding plunged to its lowest level since the Twenties. They saw the number of available affordable homes fall by 200,000; and indeed – this is the statistic that should really make them hang their heads with shame – they built fewer council homes in 13 years than Mrs Thatcher did in one year of her premiership.

Nor were things any better for those looking to buy on the open market: under Labour, the number of first-time buyers collapsed to the lowest levels since the Seventies; and perhaps no wonder, when you consider that Labour has always been suspicious of home-ownership – and the feelings of pride, autonomy and independence that go with it. In short: Labour failed dismally to build enough homes during the long years of the boom – and it is that failure we Tories have been trying our utmost, and with increasing success, to rectify.

In London, we are well on target now to deliver a record 100,000 new affordable homes over the life of this mayoralty; and there are more homes being built – just look at the cranes – than at any time since the early Eighties. These homes are for social rent, for part-buy-part-rent, for market sale and for market rent. For years now, we have been working to get the big pension funds and insurers to use their billions for the good of this country – by funding the building of tens of thousands of good new homes, for private rent, on brownfield sites. We are finally getting there. We have about 13,000 new rental homes in the pipeline – and the fear is that if their rents are unfairly controlled, these investors will just walk away; construction will halt; and we will be back to the inertia of the Labour years.

Now I suppose you might not care much about killing off new supply; you might think it would be a fine thing just to clobber existing landlords, force them to hold down rents. The result, alas, would be the exact opposite. All experience, in Britain and around the world, has shown that rent-controlled landlords let their buildings decay; and far from holding down rents, the three-year freeze would simply encourage landlords to whack them up sharply at the beginning and the end of the tenancy. This policy means higher rents, fewer homes, and general dilapidation. Like so much of Miliband’s agenda, it means going back to the Seventies.

It is not the way forward for Britain. The way forward is to build hundreds of thousands of higher-quality homes, including for market rent; to insist that landlords conform to the London Rental Standard in maintaining their properties; and to help people – as we are – with their rental deposit, interest-free. With the pressures now on the housing market, it is mad to pursue policies that would actively throttle new building and throttle the rental market, and if Miliband won’t listen to me, he should pay attention to his ideological kinsmen in formerly commie Vietnam. This isn’t a new policy. Lefties have been there, done it, and they know it is a disaster.

Tories to anoint Boris Johnson as leader in waiting if David Cameron fails at election

There is no suggestion of a coup against Mr Cameron, with those involved describing the talks as “sensible contingency planning” in case the party needs a new leader quickly. Mr Cameron himself has suggested that he would have failed as leader if he is unable to form majority government after the election.

The Telegraph has spoken to senior Conservatives from different parts of the party - ministers, backbenchers and party officials. Several suggested that Mr Cameron could step down even if the Tories win more seats than Labour at the election.

One option being examined is for Mr Cameron to remain Prime Minister for a short period while the Conservative Party arranges a “coronation” for Boris Johnson as leader, who would then take the premiership and try to assemble a Tory-led minority government.

Another scenario would see the Conservatives decline the chance to try to form a government if the numbers were not in their favour, instead allowing Labour the chance to do a deal with the Scottish National Party in the hope that the new government would quickly collapse.

Polling analysis suggests that the Conservatives could well be the largest party in parliament, beating Labour but still falling short of a Commons majority of 323 seats.

Boris Johnson at a children's play centre in Surbiton

However, the party’s ability to form a government could be limited by its potential partners.

Of the smaller parties, only the Liberal Democrats and the Democratic Unionists have suggested they could be willing to work with the Tories to support a minority government. Those two parties are expected to have fewer than 40 seats between them on current polling.

Some senior Tories are sceptical of whether the Lib Dems would actually back a Tory government, given the political harm the party suffered from its last coalition deal with the Conservatives.

Labour, by contrast, could work with the Lib Dems and the SNP, who between them could have 80 MPs, likely to be enough to give a minority Labour government a working majority in the Commons.

Mr Cameron took the Tories into power in 2010 despite failing to win a majority.

As the incumbent Prime Minister, Mr Cameron would have the first attempt to form a government in a hung parliament after this election.

But one senior Tory figure suggested that, if the Tories had most seats but not enough allies for a clear majority, the party might decide to remove him rather than let him make the attempt.

Instead of a formal vote of no confidence, a delegation of senior MPs would tell Mr Cameron to resign, under this plan.

MPs believe the PM would not resist. They noted that in a BBC interview last week, he appeared to accept that if he did not win a majority he would have failed as a leader.

“If the numbers aren’t there, there would a very strong argument for saying ‘You’ve now failed to win two elections in a row – time’s up”.” said the senior Tory.

Some Tories believe that a Labour government backed by the SNP would very unstable and potentially collapse within months.

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Under current laws, that would not automatically mean a new election, but might give the Tories another chance to try to form a government.

Some Tories want to make sure the party is ready with a new leader - Mr Johnson - as soon as possible after the election.

The last Conservative leadership election took two months as MPs held several ballots to select a shortlist of two that was then put to party members in a postal vote.

One minister said that Mr Johnson now has a “very well organised team in place” to make him leader quickly after the election.

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The team is said to include at least one Cabinet minister and several well-placed MPs, as well as leading Conservative thinkers and pollsters.

“They’re ready for all the options," said the minister. “There is talk of Boris being appointed by acclamation.”

One option would see Mr Cameron resign as leader quickly after the election but stay on until Mr Johnson was "acclaimed" Tory leader without a formal election among the full party membership.

That might mean a quick vote among MPs, or even a return to the Conservative tradition of a "magic circle" of grandees picking a leader, a practice that continued until 1963.

Boris Johnson and the Tory leadership question

April 22 2015

This week Boris said it would be "wonderful" to be prime minister one day. He said: "It is at least five years away which is an aeon in British politics, by which time whatever my personal ambitions may be there will be thrusting young men and women who will be overtaking me and who knows, it will all be different. In the dim, distant future, obviously it would be a wonderful thing to be thought to be in a position to be considered for such an honour but I think it highly unlikely."

September 15 2014

On announcing his campaign to retain the seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip for the Conservatives, Boris sought to play down suggestions it marked the latest stage of a mission to succeed David Cameron as Tory leader. He said: "No, this is the first stage in the campaign to retain the seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip for the Conservatives. This is Act One, Scene One of a very long process. There's a lot of digging in to be done."

August 6 2014

As speculation began to build when Boris announced he planned to run for parliament, he was forced to refute claims he was building up to a bid for the Conservative leadership. He said "I think it's highly unlikely that that will happen because there's no vacancy. I think David Cameron has been a brilliant prime minister. When David Cameron finally steps down, in 2030, or whenever, it may be that there's a vacancy, but it will probably be filled by a person who's a teenager now."

October 1 2013

Boris encouraged speculation about his plans for the Tory leadership when - hours after David Cameron said he would support him in returning to the House of Commons as an MP - Boris referred to Alain Juppé, the former French prime minister and said: “He told me that he was now the mayor of Bordeaux – I think he may have been mayor of Bordeaux when he was Prime Minister. It’s the kind of thing they do in France.”

March 25 2013

Asked in an interview for a BBC documentary if he would like to be prime minister one day, Boris said: "Well I would like to be the lead singer of an international rock group. That was my aim. Or a guitarist. I would love to have been a world famous painter or a composer. There are many many things I have done or would like to have been able to do. Obviously, if the ball came loose from the back of a scrum - which it won't - it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at. But it's not going to happen."

March 22 2013

Speaking to schoolchildren at south London’s Norwood School, Boris said: "If, like the Roman leader Cincinnatus, I were to be called from my plough to serve in that office, I wouldn't, of course, say no." He went on to repeat his familiar denial, saying that the chances of his actually becoming prime minister were "about as good as my being reincarnated as an olive". However, he added: "If people genuinely wanted me, of course I would want to do it."

June 2 2012

While being quizzed by crowds at the Hay Festival back in 2012, Boris said: “As I never tire of saying, my chances of becoming prime minister are only slightly better than being decapitated by a frisbee, blinded by a champagne cork, locked in a fridge or being reincarnated as an olive.”

November 25 2009

"Were I to be pulled like Cincinnatus from my plough, then obviously it would be an absolute privilege to serve."

October 5 2005

Speaking about the Conservative leadership contest in a conference diary he wrote for The Independent back in 2005, he said: "I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest."

June 17 2004

When asked by a reader in The Independent to admit that he wanted to become prime minister, Boris said: "My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."

1960s

Boris is quoted by his sister Rachel Johnson as having had ambitions to be "World King" as a child. She said: “As Boris was growing up whenever anyone asked him what he wanted to be, he would answer: ‘World King’.”

If Ed Miliband’s in the driving seat, Nicola Sturgeon will be steering him to the Left

If Miliband is to occupy Downing Street, he will have to do it either by means of a formal coalition with Salmond/Sturgeon, or with an arrangement called confidence and supply, by which the Scots Nats agree to help knock his legislation through the Commons.

It is therefore obvious to every serious political analyst that he would be in many ways the plaything of the SNP. Unless he has the support of that 40-plus bloc of Scottish secessionists, he will be stymied. If Miliband somehow manages to form a minority government, he will be peeping from Alec Salmond’s sporran like a baffled baby kangaroo. He would be the vacillating Macbeth, pushed hither and yon by Lady Macbeth, in the form of Nicola Sturgeon.

Did you see her the other night, telling him to man up, to screw his courage to the sticking place – to do what she told him to do because “you are not strong enough on your own”? The awful truth is that she is right. Without her help and her say-so, and without the support of Salmond and his troops in the Commons, there is not a single bill that Labour could get through. It is a recipe for chaos; and worse than chaos – because the SNP has changed over the years.

The reason they have lampreyed the life out of Labour in Scotland is that they have become ever more Left wing. Miliband is already the most Left-wing Labour leader since Michael Foot, promoting an agenda that seems to be avowedly hostile to wealth creation and “predatory” capitalism. The SNP are Lefties on steroids. They want to abandon any attempt to get the deficit under control, and indeed the Treasury has calculated that they would borrow another £148 billion.

They think taxes are far too low in Britain, and would seek new “progressive” taxes on top of what Labour is already proposing. They would scrap Trident, denuding Britain of its nuclear deterrent and sending future prime ministers naked into the conference chamber. The SNP would junk all attempts to reform the welfare system – even though they have the support of most voters in this country, and indeed most Labour voters.

They seem to dislike anything to do with America or free trade, and so would ditch the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, even though the deal would be good for the UK economy. On many of these issues they would of course be opposed, initially, by many Labour MPs. But what could they do? Unless Miliband plays ball, he will be powerless to legislate. He would lose the confidence of parliament, and he would be chucked out.

Yes, he will be sitting in the driving seat, pretending to be steering the car – but all the time he will have clever Nicola next to him, whispering in his ear, and perpetually yanking the steering wheel to the Left. Eventually there will be another terrible crash, just as there was in 2008/9.

But why should the SNP care a hoot about that? There is a grim sense in which the worst outcome for the UK is also – for a party that wants to break up the UK – the best.

Miliband’s proposed deal with the Scots Nats is like the fable of the frog that agrees to carry the scorpion across the river. In the end he will get stung – because that is the nature of the beast.

The risk is that by the end of this calamitous partnership there will be so many people in England who are cheesed off by the SNP’s behaviour that they will be only too happy to bid Scotland goodbye; and anybody thinking of voting Ukip should realise that by putting in a Labour/SNP alliance they are going to turn the UK into the Former UK, and their party will have to be called FUKIP.

Keep the Tories and you keep the Beefeaters guarding the Tower; you let farmers protect their chickens with their own shotguns; you keep out Attila and other roaming Eastern European criminals with tougher immigration controls; you keep Britain’s booming breweries and distilleries exporting overseas with ever-greater confidence; you repair the church tower with the VAT refund introduced by George Osborne – and as for the crèche that was in danger of being run by Herod, you fund ever better child care with the 30-day free care announced in the manifesto.

Vote Tory to stop a Labour/SNP coalition from wrecking the country – a choice, as I may have mentioned before, between competence and chaos.

Inheritance tax should not be inflicted on ordinary families

That house is no swankier than an identical house in a cheaper part of the country, and indeed it is still the same house that you bought all those years ago. It still has a worrying damp spot in the bathroom and it still has a couple of tiles missing from the roof – but irrespective of any defects it may or may not possess its value has maintained a continuous and fairly vertiginous upward trajectory.

You don’t think an ordinary home in London could be hit by this tax? You think I must be talking about rich people? Well, let us look at the story of London house prices since 1983, when the Halifax building society started recording them. In that year the average purchase price for a property – across all buyers and house types – was a derisory £38,000.

Then of course the economy started to roar away. We had the Big Bang, the rise of popular capitalism; we had growth in the London population and the return of confidence in the city. By 1989 that same average home was worth an astonishing £102,000. It had more than doubled in just six years – and then there was the bust of the early Nineties. Property prices tumbled in a recession that was exacerbated by the ERM and high interest rates. Everyone who wishes that house prices could fall again should remember that time, and be careful what they wish for. It was a pretty grim period, of very high unemployment, massive repossessions, and much economic grief.

By 1995 that average London property was worth only £77,000. It was the following year, however, that things really started to pick up. The economy was being well managed by Ken Clarke. Interest rates were back down, and an amazing 12-year boom began, as the incoming Blair government enjoyed the fruits of Tory reforms and a propitious global economy.

Interactive: Map where Britain's wealth lives

Here is how that average London house price performed, year by year, during that complacent epoch from 1997 to 2007: £96,000, £104,000, £121,000, £144,000, £158,000, £185,000, £219,000, £241,000, £258,000 £270,000, £314,000. And then of course there was the crash of 2008, as Gordon Brown, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband collectively drove the economy off the cliff.

By 2008 they had succeeded in bringing the average price down to £251,000 – and were rightly booted out of office. Since then there has been a recovery, and last year for the first time the average house price in London was above pre-crash levels at £356,000. It is vital to stress that these extraordinary house prices are very far from unalloyed economic good news.

These values are now many multiples of average incomes. It is grotesquely unfair to millions of young people, who feel they have no hope of getting on the ladder as their parents did. We need to tackle the problem, as we are, by making more homes available, of all types. We are building record numbers of homes – more this year in London than since 1980; we have built record numbers of affordable homes, and we can do it on brownfield sites: there is scope for about 400,000 new high-quality homes just on London’s brownfield land.

We must insist on steep taxes on foreign buyers who invest in flats but leave them empty – and all London boroughs should be making use of their existing powers to levy a punitive council tax. We cannot have homes being marketed overseas before they are advertised to Londoners – an outrageous and long-standing practice that developers agreed to drop last year.

And we must stop the injustice by which London families are being forced by inheritance tax to sell off the family home simply because it was their fate to grow up in London, the most successful urban economy in Europe. It wasn’t their fault, or their parents’ fault, that the asset should have appreciated so fast – with the digits almost visibly spooling round in the estate agents’ windows.

With the average London purchase price last year at £356,000, it is now literally true that a tax intended for the very rich is now hitting ordinary families in average homes. It is entirely right that this tax cut should be funded by changes to the pension arrangements of the tiny minority earning over £150,000. The Conservatives are helping huge numbers of people to pass on a little bit more to their children. They are supporting a natural human instinct. Inheritance tax has been falling on the wrong people. If the Tories win, an injustice will be righted.

Does Michael Bloomberg know how dangerous a Labour government would be?

In our lifetimes, alas, we have seen how it temporarily lost that crown. For much of the post-war period, few would have been so foolish as to rate London above New York. We lagged behind in dynamism, in entrepreneurial spirit, in sheer energy – not to mention GDP.

Today, however – well: it is clear that in many key respects it is London that now has the lead.

It is not just that the British capital still has the largest financial sector on earth, with probably about 320,000 people involved in one way or another. I read somewhere that there are more American banks established in London than there are in New York itself, and London does far more currency dealing. Britain’s capital now has a bigger tech sector, with about 528,000 people employed in all manner of start-up industries, and a creative sector expanding so fast that in the next 10 years we will probably make more TV and feature films than either New York or indeed Hollywood.

We have more museums and galleries than New York; we have more live music venues. We have more world-class universities in London than there are in New York – four of the world’s top 10. We have more World Heritage sites, twice as many bookshops, far more bars and pubs, and a much lower crime rate (the murder rate in London was last year the lowest since the Sixties, and less than a third of the rate in New York), not to speak of wonderful taxi drivers who are obliged by law – unlike those in New York – to know where they are going; and a Tube network that is running ever faster and more efficiently; and if you add all these factors together you can see why people are so keen to come to our city.

David Cameron with Bloomberg in 2010

Last year London hosted 18.6 million visitors from overseas, beating the record achieved in 2013. It is now the world’s number one destination for international tourists – and all the cash they bring – knocking Paris and New York off the pedestal. That is to the best of my knowledge the first time in recent history that London has come first in this fundamental criterion of global popularity.

So let me say to Mike: you have done the apprenticeship, and done it with great distinction. Now is the time to step up to the plate, and take on the fastest-growing and most dynamic urban economy in Europe.

You will, of course, find many friends here – and, indeed, with your work at the Serpentine Gallery and on other projects you already contribute hugely to London life, and you know how much we have in common. Both New York and London are cities that boast their diversity, with about 300 languages spoken in each. We constantly imitate and learn from one another, in a spirit of friendly rivalry. We have both put in bike-hire schemes (ours, I think, a couple of years ahead of yours); we both pursue strategies of urban greening; we are both battling to improve air quality. We are both struggling to cope with the problems of success – above all, to satisfy the demands of all who want to live and work here by building enough affordable housing.

Another American politician admires one of London's bikes for hire

Each city has an amazing future – according to all reputable analyses – as a powerhouse of wealth creation and innovation. But before you start your campaign, dear Mike, there is one cloud on the horizon, one way that London could go backwards to the Seventies, and that is if the people of this country are so mad as to elect Ed Miliband next month. Labour’s policies would damage our universities, by depriving them of vital revenue for investment in teaching. Labour would hit financial services and jeopardise the jobs of thousands who are by no means affluent; and above all a Labour government would pursue policies of taxation and regulation that are diametrically opposed to the spirit of enterprise that enable you to build your own empire.

It would be a great thing to enter the glass spheroid in Southwark and become Mayor of London, Mike. But first we need to ensure a sensible Conservative government on May 7.

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Regressive, sarcastic and pious – welcome to Britain under Ed Miliband and the SNP

In the meantime, though, I want to show you some of the horrors in that crevasse. There is one set of polling data that is now beyond doubt. There is one part of Britain where a seismic change has already taken place, and that is Scotland. In yesterday’s The Times, Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor, wrote an excellent piece in which he analysed the Labour disaster north of the border.

Labour has basically given up the fight, he announced. They have moved through the cycle of grief, from denial to anger to depression to acceptance. They know that the gaps are so big that they are going to lose at least 20 seats to the Pisces of the political firmament – Salmond and Sturgeon.

It has taken some time for Westminster to grasp what this means for Britain. If Labour were to win an outright majority, they would need another 69 seats from all other parties; and no one thinks that is going to happen. If they lose 10 seats in Scotland, that pushes the required number of seats up to 79. If they lose 20, they need 89 – and so on. In other words, it is now becoming ever clearer that the only way Labour can govern this country is with the support of the Scottish National Party – and that is a prospect that is chilling the blood of sensible people across the UK.

I watched Nicola Sturgeon on television at the weekend, and the SNP leader was making no bones about it. She made a clear and unambiguous commitment to support and to work with a minority Labour government; as well she might, since she wants to reassure those huge numbers of Labour-SNP switchers in Glasgow and elsewhere that they can have their cake and eat it: a more Left-leaning government in the whole of the UK, and more independence for Scotland. And her promise, alas, is in one sense entirely plausible. Salmond at Westminster would run rings round Miliband, and in any kind of Labour-SNP coalition it is all too easy to see how the Scottish tail would wag the English dog.

The Scots Nats want to end and reverse all benefit reforms, even though these are supported by the New Labour faction in Miliband’s party and by the overwhelming majority of the British public. The SNP positively drool about the swingeing new taxes they could impose on the English, especially in London and the South East. They also want to scrap Trident – in defiance of most experienced and serious Labour MPs.

They would pursue policies, in other words, that would weaken Britain at home and abroad and, if he wanted to be prime minister, Miliband would have no choice but to bob along and agree. We would be consigning this country to five years of the most negative and regressive Left-wingery, larded with a ghastly finger-wagging political correctness.

In the end, though, the SNP agenda is subtler and more insidious. What do they really want? It’s there in the title. They want a new nation; they want independence. And to that end they will surely spend their time in government in a constant effort to tease, bait, goad and generally wind up the English until the patience snaps.

They will want five years of socialism in the UK, followed by another chance at breaking away. The risk is that by then the people of England will be so fed up with the moon-faced Salmond, with his sanctimony and sarcasm and beautifully judged air of injured innocence, that they will throw up their hands and consent – and we would incur the disaster that we thought we had averted last year.

The awful thing is that Labour in Scotland is already being forced to play along with this strategy: see Jim Murphy’s pathetic attempts to steal SNP clothes, bragging about tax raids on London and the South East in a way that has infuriated Labour in London.

It is no way to run a country, let alone to strengthen the union. The tragedy of Ed Miliband is that he can only govern this country by relying on a party that wants to destroy this country. There would be five years of socialism, and then a rupture that would appal the world. “Doubtful it stood,” says the sergeant describing the state of the battle at the beginning of Macbeth, “as two spent swimmers that do cling together / And choke their art.”

That is a perfect description of the state of Labour and the SNP in Scotland – and, if it were to come to it, in the country as a whole. They are locked in a deadly embrace, and the risk is that they will take the rest of us down with them.

The Left says life was better in the Seventies – what utter tosh

Yes, we need to tackle those symptoms of inequality. But we also need to be able to take pride in our achievements, and the progress that society is making; and sometimes I find the general pessimism of the Lefties to be ludicrous and not a little nauseating.

Let me quote from a work by the late Tony Judt, a British historian based in New York, which I mistakenly bought at an airport bookstall. It is called Ill Fares The Land, and is drenched, front and back, with praise. It turns out poor Professor Judt was terminally ill when he wrote his book, and I am afraid he has allowed his suffering to affect his analysis. In his verdict on the current state of America and Britain, he speaks utter drivel.

Here is a typical paragraph: “Poverty – whether measured by infant mortality, access to medicine or regular employment or simple ability to purchase basic necessities – has increased steadily since the 1970s in the US, the UK and every country that has modelled its economy on their example. The pathologies of inequality and poverty – crime, alcoholism, violence and mental illness – have all multiplied commensurately. The symptoms of social dysfunction would have been immediately recognisable to our Edwardian forebears…”

Never mind that Judt has got it 100 per cent wrong in virtually every assertion; the whole sentiment is wrong. I remember this country in the Seventies, and I remember London in particular. It was poorer, greyer, drabber; it was the scene of really nasty and violent racism; the economy was in thrall to the unions; the food was terrible; and to say that it was somehow a safer place to live is, I am afraid, a complete and utter lie.

Crime is certainly an index of inequality, because crime hits the poor hardest. But by any measure, crime has fallen since the Seventies – in spite of a massive increase in the size and diversity of the population. Last year London suffered only 94 murders. That is not only an astonishingly low number for a city of 8.6 million (and less than a third of the murder rate in, say, New York). It is the lowest number of murders since the Sixties – and in a city with about two million more inhabitants than there were 40 years ago.

But it is in his remarks about life expectancy and the “pathologies of inequality” that Judt talks the most total tosh.

As it happens, life expectancy has increased massively since the Seventies, and indeed life expectancy in London has continued to increase in the last seven years – to pick a period entirely at random. In fact, the last figures I saw suggested that life expectancy has increased for both men and women by about 16 months, just since I have been mayor. There are parts of London where life expectancy is now more than 97 years.

But of course the capital also has pockets of poverty – four of the six poorest boroughs in the UK; and it is here that the statistics are most counter-intuitive. Who would you expect to be gaining the most in years? You might assume that it was the rich – gorging themselves on monkey glands and royal jelly, jetting off to America for blood transfusions. You would be wrong. Eight years ago the gap in life expectancy between Kensington and Chelsea on the one hand, and Barking and Dagenham on the other, was about six years; now it is about four years. Everybody is gaining in years – but it is the poor, proportionately, who are gaining the most.

No one knows the exact reasons, though we may speculate: better diet, better health education and health care, better air quality, and so on.

No one would want to be complacent. There is still a yawning gulf; there is still far more to do. But according to this fundamental criterion – of how long you are blessed with the ability to enjoy this life, how many glorious English springs you get to see – our society is actually getting not just absolutely richer in years, but fairer, more just, more equal – and therefore, in my view, better. That is a tremendous achievement, to be ranked up there with record employment and record growth.

We should shout it from the rooftops – because I don’t think we will hear much about it from the miserablists on the Left.