When Boris Johnson was seeking re-election as London mayor in 2012, the mood was bleak. Three months before the vote, the Tories were 17 points behind in the polls and his team were concerned that they were heading to defeat. As the Conservatives tend to do in times of trouble, they called in Lynton Crosby .
The campaign, as Tom Bower documents in The Gambler, his biography of Johnson, was quickly changed. Out was the strategy to focus on plans for “Boris Island” – the doomed Thames estuary airport – and new funds for street parties. In was a new sense of discipline by which Johnson would focus on five key issues: police, crime, housing, transport and the economy.
