Labour needs to take Boris Johnson seriously given the “possibility” he may replace David Cameron as Tory leader before the next election, a senior MP said today.
Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander issued the warning to his party ahead of its annual rally in Manchester next year.
“It’s time that we take Boris seriously,” he told the New Statesman magazine.
“It is not yet a probability but it is a possibility that he will lead the Conservative Party into the next general election.”
Mr Alexander’s views mark a significant shift in Labour’s approach to Mr Johnson and the likelihood of him taking the helm of the Conservative Party before 2015.
Labour’s 2010 election co-ordinator added on the Tories: “This is a restless party looking for leadership and not finding it from Cameron, so I think we as the Labour Party need to take Boris seriously.
“He’s associated with a spectacularly successful Olympic games. ... He’s also managed to put a smile on quite a lot of commentators’ and quite a lot of voters’ faces quite regularly and that’s because people feel he doesn’t play by the rules and doesn’t conform to type.”
Mr Alexander’s views may be seen by some Conservatives as mischief-making and seeking to deepen the rift between Mr Cameron and Mr Johnson over Heathrow and other issues.
A recent poll found that despite disquiet among some Tories over Mr Cameron’s leadership, voters see him on nearly all counts as a better leader, with the personal qualities needed to be Prime Minsiter, than Labour’s Ed Miliband.
Mr Alexander also criticised Ken Livingstone’s mayoral campaign against Mr Johnson.
“I think some of Ken Livingtsone’s comments trying to sort voters into blocks was not just unwise but wrong, and I think that if you set yourself up as a personality politician then there are always risks when you are up against a very attractive politician, which is what some London voters decided Boris was,” he said.
