Boris to be stung?
From the bowels of the Torygraph blogs (Yes, I know, shudder…) comes this:
I think he’s riding for a fall. As is Boris Johnson. My colleague Simon Heffer wrote just before the Mayoral election that Boris has founded his various careers on “stooges”, an observation examined at some length in another colleague Andrew Gimson’s biography of the mop-haired Mayor. The stooges – at Oxford, in journalism and in politics – are the people who do all the work, while Boris concentrates on his more important task of self-aggrandisement.
Parker, in Boris’s mind, will be King Stooge. Boris doesn’t understand business. Far too boring for a man of vision such as himself. Also, it’s rather “trade” for a toff from Eton and the Bullingdon Club. So Parker will be his Managing Director, he thinks, and the one who can have all those tedious meetings about budgets while Boris gets photographed with Miss Bust-Conductor on a new Routemaster.
The trouble with this plan is that, talented as he undoubtedly is, Parker is not essentially a runner of businesses. He’s a turner-round of businesses and a deal-maker. He’s a slash-and-burn man, laying waste to unproductive factories and under-performing people. He once told me that it’s best to fire people as soon as you arrive somewhere, before you’ve got to know them. That may be just what London needs – some cost-saving at the centre, to better serve the interests of Londoners, who Parker calls “shareholders”.
But unless Parker is allowed to float London on the Stock Exchange, or organise a management buy-out of Chelsea, or break up Westminster and sell the profitable bits, he will quickly grow bored. Once he’s made something pay, he wants out. In that sense, he is very much like Boris (though without the narcissism). He even shares a propensity for a storm of unruly, big hair (I note that reports have suggested he’s known as the Prince of Darkness at companies he’s commanded – I can only say that I only heard him called Bogbrush on account of his mop).
Parker is not so much a stooge as a sibling and there will be grim rivalry. Boris thinks he’d bought a drone. He’ll get stung by a busy bee.
Note that the piece essentially confirms Parker as the terrifying Prince of Darkness the unions fear. When the Torygraph praises a man as a cost-cutter who lays off as many as possible, you know they mean an inveterate bastard who’ll ruin the lives of (ex-)employees to make a quick profit, before leaving them with nothing. When they refer to him as a, “slash and burn man,” well…
Also note that Boris may have hired more than he bargained for. Why doesn’t that surprise me, for some reason?
Leave a Reply