My good friend (and Ken supporter) Mark K was the first to gleefully break it to me this evening by text – Ray Lewis, the originally lauded Deputy Mayor and the man due to spearhead Boris’s campaign against youth crime, has resigned amid allegations of financial irregularities.
If this had happened to Ken then Boriswatch would, frankly, be all over it with bells on. The allegations are serious, no doubt. Ray Lewis, to his credit, has flatly denied the whole thing in the strongest terms.
However, there’s something strange about this whole affair.
Firstly, it seems that mere allegations can warrant you fully guilty before you’ve even managed to form a defence. What if he is found entirely innocent? Will the media move on, Boris’s opposers rubbing their hands in glee while a reputation is ruined?
Secondly, there’s something very fishy about the coordination of these attacks. The BBC report that 3 allegations of financial impropriety have been handed in to them. This first started Boriswatch’s hairs twitching. Who handed them in? How come all these people have collectively remembered these things now, even though the allegations stretch back to the mid-90s?
There’s no doubt that this is some serious bother for our favourite London Mayor. Let’s hope the regrouping is swift, and the team can get back to helping London improve – something those political dark forces don’t currently seem too concerned with…
I’m thinking there may be a fix in, but not that one.
Tell me, O Englanders, are the two who got targeted people who’ve worked with Boris in the past? Or are they part of the Tory machine that was parachuted in to get Boris elected? My understanding is that the first idjut was indeed part of the machine, but Lewis I don’t know about.
Would be a nasty, yet very effective way of consolidating control of the mayor’s office, I’m thinking, leaking info on your rivals that you’d be in a very good position to know…because you screened the applications.
I don’t know too much about Lewis, but he did impress me as a man with a brain in his head and a heart that was at least as big. The Guardian is taking credit for this, but now they’re muted in their gloating, reporting that the one instance of financial impropriety they could find dated back to 1997 and was made right by Lewis years ago, with apologies.
I would imagine that the HR member of staff, who carried out the employment checks on Ray Lewis, was the same member of the HR team engaged by Ken Livingstone.
A good early lesson for Boris – some things are too important to delegate.
Always apply the “Mirror Test”; If this goes wrong what’s it going to look like on the front page of the Daily Mirror?
Who voted Boris:
There seems to be some real vitriol there. To answer – Lee Jasper was not mentioned here, as even Boriswatch thought his treatment was a little harsh.
And we’d quite like an example of how Boris won through “bad politics”…