Johnson strikes me as someone who has learned to 'hack' the skirmishes (e.g. by playing the fool when giving speeches as discussed) in order to win in the short term, but who seems oblivious to (or to be willfully disregarding) the long term detrimental effect his skirmishing has on the UK.
He's not oblivious to it, he just doesn't care. Why should he? His ego is the only thing that matters, other people are a means to an end. He has the same low cunning as trump, I think he's quite good at reading people, and manipulating them, but others are just tools to him. He is remarkably similar to Trump in fact, and as Sarah Kendzior said about Trump:
"If Trump senses he may have to make a personal sacrifice, he will sacrifice the world instead."
https://www.fastcompany.com/40558314/donald-trump-will-do-an...
The same holds true for Johnson. He will happily sacrifice the UK for the sake of his political career, so that he can be prime minister.
Other than that, the views on London mayors tends to mostly follow party lines, so it's not a particularly worthwhile discussion.
And even if you had been right, the office of the mayor only has oversight powers and limited powers to set priorities and shift some resources. Most of the Met budget and control of their day to day operations is outside the mayors purview.
EDIT: Here's a wikipedia page with info on the media frenzy around the violence in London last year, and the comparisons to New York in particular, which basically jumped to lots of conclusions from a single month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London
And here is stats for April, that shows a higher rate of violent crime in Sussex (233 incidents per 100,000 people) than in London (227 per 100,000 people): https://ukcrimestats.com/Police_Forces/ - however this too means pretty much nothing; the numbers fluctuate too much to start drawing many conclusions based on the headline numbers.
But I guess by your argument there's a "bloobath" going on in Sussex then.
Just a laughable assertion.
Johnson's time as mayor was marked by trying to claim the successes of others (buses and bikes introduced by Livingstone), and failed initiatives like the expensive garden bridge which was never built or buying illegal water canons which could not be used, and addressing non-problems like drinking on the tube.
Khan's London has been professionally run and is tackling real problems like air quality and too many cars.
Both suffered from problems with crime caused by a decade of police cuts imposed by central government. London is still dramatically safer than any large US city though, including New York.
Nonetheless he holds a certain appeal for the upper classes in the UK. I don't think his appeal translates down to people who work for a living though.
'Johnson excelled in English and Classics, winning prizes in both, and became secretary of the school debating society, and editor of the school newspaper, The Eton College Chronicle'
Also I think the whole upper class/working class dichotomy you present is kind of old hat these days (and somewhat patronising to the people you cite that 'work for a living' - whose viewpoints and aspirations are generally somewhat beyond merely hoping for an indoor toilet), often pushed by the left as an electoral tactic against the right (even in spite of the fact that all UK political parties are stuffed full of ex-Oxbridge types).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Johnson#Eton_and_Oxford:...
Unfortunately his appeal does translate down. Even to those for whom his proposed tax cut will be detrimental.
The Mail readers, the people who have been convinced that EU migration has stolen their jobs, the people who want to be in the £50k bracket... And those who are fed up with political spin and disillusioned with politics, the Brexit voters.
They have been led to believe Boris is the answer, whereas he's arguably just the cliff we'll be jumping off of.
As for BoJo, he is smart as a fox. Trump is the same. They make 1-2 stupid things, so people call them stupid. On the back side they scheme and plan. Haters see the stupid actions and hate. They play a game of chess, sacrificing a pawn (some 'credibility' by saying something stupid), and while people are getting tired of their artificial stupidity, they march on doing their thing left alone.
Someone who managed to be the mayor of London, then get in the Parliament, then managing to be in the top 2 candidates for Prime Minister, have a net worth of a couple of million (of the £€$ we know), he CANNOT be THAT stupid. He plays the game and he's winning. I don't like the man. But I don't like him because I don't like his policies, his ideas, and I don't like Brexit.
But as a politician/player, he's rocking this game.
People who think Boris is stupid, are completely missing it. He is like Varoufakis. He sees an opportunity and grabs it. Maybe the 'bet' will pay off, maybe it will not. But: Mayor of London --> Minister of "Foreign Affairs" --> Prime Minister.. I call that an intelligent human being.
I believe that George Bush may have had a persona to some degree (https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/) because it pays off to speak like a man of the people. But everyone who's worked with Donald Trump and spoken out afterwards tell the same story about how utterly stupid he is.
In Denmark, we once elected a comedian into parliament. He won on promises like "more sunshine" and "bigger christmas presents". People loved it because it was fun and a bit of a finger to the boring, smooth politicians that they usually saw. I guess you could argue that he is smart in that he was able to win the crowd, but what I take away from that is more that the crowd is fickle and will go with (and push) a trend or a fad if it looks fun or supports their anger.
As one example of this that we can quantify, a major issue in the US is "responsible gun control" to combat an epidemic of homicide and violence driven largely by high powered "assault rifles." In quotes there since an assault rifle entails selective fire, generally between full and semi automatic - those weapons are already illegal. Anyhow, let's test this against the data. In the US in 2016 there were 11,004 firearm homicides. [1] How many of these were caused by rifles? The answer is 374, about 3%. Nearly all of our gun crime is driven by cheap little pistols. But "assault rifles" make much better media and sound scary, so it results in a grossly misinformed public who think there's some massive epidemic of "assault rifle" driven homicide.
[1] - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
Compared to the narrative that a person who could run several multi-billion dollar businesses, negotiate deals all around the world, get back from bankruptcy (even if it was with cunning and winning banking favors) and play the media to become President is stupid?
Lots of dullards with dad's cash just spent it on women and booze or lose everything, Trump kept it (if he didn't increase it, considering the bankruptcies and re-emergences) and made his name a kind of brand.
He is not gracious or polished (he's an American businessman after all, that's par for the course), but he does have the P.T Barnum kind of spirit (which is not exactly that of the dullard).
And even if we forget the business thing (say he had zero accomplishments there). The elections thing, he did mostly by himself. He obliterated opponents and won voters (including from his own party) starting from zero, when media and pundits gave him zero chances.
Could you or me?
As for Trump, there's a theory fashionable in some circles that his speaking style is purely performative to simplify or reframe his genuinely sharp grasp of the issues for his audience. But it's undermined by his tendency to embark upon similar rambles about how his pilot said the airports should give airlines better equipment (?!?) and pilots are very clever and if the FAA isn't run by a pilot it should be in front of the sort of apolitical business audience where there's nothing to gain from not just doing the presidential thing and appearing to listen. Sure, nobody's saying his drive isn't exceptional or that the basic strategy of seizing media attention and promoting the sort of populist policies his opponents were squeamish about didn't work, but that's not the same thing as him actually being the smartest person in the room playing 4D chess to disguise it. His persona's at least as WYSIWYG as any other politician.
I think Johnson might be more deliberate in his unpolished approach, but I also haven't seen any reason to believe the whimsicality and studied flustered look isn't there mainly because he genuinely does prefer anecdotes to details and struggles to give a straight answer. The counterpoint to this Johnson story of charmingly chaotic speeches is a recent video where he's asked what he does in his spare time, and he appears to be making up a hobby as he goes along in a manner which just looks incredibly awkward. And yet references to this hobby (making models from boxes) in an old column suggest he was actually honestly trying to explain it! Would have come across a lot better if he'd told a joke about not having any spare time and thrown in a half-remembered story about how Winston Churchill spent his time...
The only other unexpected, unseasoned political opponent to defeat the Clinton machine was another political genius named Barack Obama.
Simply by winning the presidency both of these guys have demonstrated a political genius rarely seen in US politics.
If it wasn't an economic matter and instead he just hired better people - that would still be quite an amazing skill. To be able to have hired better people for his campaign than professional politicians who have been studying and living politics for decades?
You don't get to be King's Scholar at Eton being a buffoon.
OK, so he's a clever buffoon.
No, you get it by hereditary wealth, connections and nepotism.
He has correctly calculated that he doesn't have to actually do good work to become prime minister.
It all starts to make sense when you realise he has no morals and very little interest in the outcome for the country or other people, only for himself.
Not sure how that puts the longer term prospects of the party.
I think you're underestimating the role of luck in success.