Boris: the bookies’ leadership favourite

Has Boris Johnson got what it takes to fill Britain's top job? Emily Hohler reports.

"Nobody could have been surprised by Boris Johnson's announcement that he intends to stand for parliament next year," says Peter Kellner in The Daily Telegraph. "We all knew he would, just as we all know he wants to lead the Conservative Party and become prime minister." But is he really a vote-winner?

In the obvious sense he is he has twice been elected as Conservative mayor of a Labour city but according to YouGov polls he lags behind David Cameron on the two "hard" qualities of being up to the job of governing Britain and being good in a crisis.

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.