City Hall Spy: Mayor’s dressing down for Clegg after fashion jibe

 
Pippa Crerar1 July 2013

The spat between Boris Johnson and Nick Clegg continues. The pair first locked horns after the deputy PM labelled the Mayor “Slacker Johnson”.

Boris hit back by suggesting the Lib-Dem leader was an “idle bum” whose main role was to carry David Cameron’s coat. Then yesterday Clegg used his LBC radio show to mock the Mayor for doing nothing all week other than “prancing around” at a fashion show.

“Talk about fulfilling my predictions,” he jibed. A source close to the Mayor says: “Poor briefing Cleggers — it was all about jobs and growth. I suppose if you think lending support to men’s fashion week is prancing around then Boris is all for it”.

Munira Mirza, deputy mayor for education and culture, gave birth to a healthy baby boy on Tuesday. She and her ex-Cameron speech-writer husband Dougie Smith have named their son Robert. The Mayor has already been on the blower to congratulate Mirza, right, for doing her bit to boost London’s population. His favourite joke of the moment is that the capital’s population explosion is not all down to him.

Much speculation among Labour activists over who will throw their hat in the ring for the mayoral candidacy. Rumour has it that Labour MPs David Lammy, Diane Abbott and Sadiq Khan are all interested but hedging their bets on the selection taking place after the general election. That way if Labour wins they could opt for ministerial careers instead. But Len Duvall, chair of the London Labour party, tells Spy they’re wrong to assume timing is on their side. “Having our candidate in place in the run-up to the election would give them useful projection,” he says.

With the London Fire Brigade under the cosh over an alleged expenses scandal, it is perhaps not surprising that fire commissioner Ron Dobson is picky about which invites he accepts. In recent weeks he has turned down tickets to the new Star Trek movie, starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, right, and to motor racing at Brands Hatch. But there was one offer that he couldn’t refuse — two tickets to the royal box at Wimbledon.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in