Not Alexander

Alexander the Great, you will recall, wept because there were no new worlds to conquer. This is not so of the ..er.. less great Alexander 'Boris' Johnson. For Heaven's sake, John 'Vince' Cable, Gideon 'George' Osborne, why can't these people use their own names?

Anyway, Johnson wants to conquer No.10 Downing St, and he is, as the Americans say 'making his run'. He is looking for a safe seat for the 2015 election.

I don't like Johnson, and would never vote for him. Nor would I vote for any party which he led. He is a shallow self-publicist, albeit a good one. The speech in which he announced this was one where he declared that Britain would survive outside the European Union. Perhaps there should be joy in Heaven when any sinner repenteth but he has had ages to make this announcement (I have been saying it since 1991). I don't suppose he believes it - or indeed believes the contrary. He just saw which way the wind was blowing in the Tory Party.

He never seems to fail with his self-publicity, though. Even the occasion when he was stuck on a rope slide - something which would have been a disaster for, say, Harriet Harman, he managed to come out of it fairly well. The truth of the tale is that they ask you how much you weigh so they can adjust the pulley, and he refused to tell them and it went wrong. Like Winnie the Pooh, seeking the honey of publicity, he was stuck because he was too fat.

And I don't like his private life. For me anyone who could treat his marriage vows in such a shoddy way could equally forget a promise he made to the people who elected him. And here is an example, with this very speech. In 2012 he solemnly promised the electorate of London that he would not stand as an MP while he was mayor of London. Oooh! said the voters, that means he won't be standing in 2015. Wrong.

It is arrogance: promises don't apply to him, they only have to be kept by little people. We have seen this type of arrogance in some bank employees and in Andy Coulson, former editor of a newspaper. We really don't need it on the front line of politics.

Johnson is untrustworthy and a cheat. If the Tory Party take up with him he will let them down without a care in the world. For Alexander the Less they are the equivalent of Marx's useful idiots. It will be the biggest mistake they have ever made.