What to make of yesterday’s story that Boris Johnson is re-organising his team of appointed advisors to ensure the wider public know they’re not actually running anything?
The decision certainly brings some of that transparency Boris keeps promising to introduce to the GLA, but it’s 14 months too late and only clears up some of confusion he helped cause in the first place.
Johnson says the decision to call his advisors exactly that rather than directors “will eliminate the potential for confusion among external audiences who would generally expect a director to have line management responsibilities”.
Not much to argue with there but it’s a shame Boris seems unwilling to extended that logic to the two remaining so-called ‘deputy mayors’.
Sir Simon Milton is to become Chief of Staff, Kit Malthouse is the Deputy Chair of the MPA, both job titles convey the undoubted importance of the post holder, their seniority and the Mayor’s regard for their skills so why persist with the now discredited deputy titles?
Is Boris really just too afraid to own up to an idea that didn’t work out? No politician likes to admit they got something wrong, but a Mayor who came to office promising openness and transparency shouldn’t fear admitting when things don’t work out the way they hoped.
To persist in doing otherwise in the face of obvious evidence would be to exhibit the sort of propaganda one might find in Pyongyang.
