Maverick Boris

Andrew Gimson, like most people, can't quite believe Boris Johnson's insistence that he has no Prime Ministerial ambitions:

As a young man, Mr Johnson wrote a perceptive essay about how to get elected as president of the Oxford Union, a feat he achieved at the second attempt. He said that what you really need is “a disciplined and deluded collection of stooges” who will get the vote out for you in their respective colleges. The Mayor is now assembling a collection of stooges within the Conservative Party who will help him, when the time comes, to mount his bid for the leadership. One cannot yet say this collection of malcontents is disciplined. But it may compensate for this weakness by showing a generous willingness to be deluded.