So, it’s been three months since Boris got the gold medal in one of the most contested and talked about elections in recent history; three months since Red Ken cleared his desk for the blonde mop to take his position as London’s new mayor.

What have been our bumbling protagonist’s highlights and lowlights so far?

His first few months were dominated largely by symbolic gestures. His highlights have been: banning alcohol on public transport; scrapping the pedestrian plaza plan for parliament square, scrapping the congestion charge rise; and cancelling the order for the new hydrogen powered buses.

What’s interesting about these changes is that Londoners are divided over the issues. Boris isn’t making himself popular with the green lobby, and the Chelsea tractor brigade have found their saviour in the shape of City hall’s newcomer. The greens also mourn the loss of the planned hydrogen buses which some say would have, in time, cleaned up London’s dirty air. ‘Vote blue, go green’? That’s debateable these days.

Banning alcohol was also controversial; it’s undisputable that a significant amount of crime is alcohol related, but how much was related to drinking on the tube? He consistently gave Livingston flak for his nanny-state tendencies, and his first act was to penalise every student who fancies a can of Stella on the way to a night out in Leicester Square. Maybe tackling the crime on the streets had more to do with deprived communities and disillusioned youths than with the occasional drinkers having fun on a night out.

You may notice a theme emerging: his last good bits have been questionable, and we haven’t even reached the downers yet - high profile disasters.

His deputy mayor for young people was found to have lied on his CV, which hasn’t helped the city hall re-launch Boris had planned. The deputy mayor was his connection to the black community in London, and this served the vital purpose of branding Boris as a multi cultural mayor. His passionate promise to rid city hall of advisors and consultants has been followed by the creation of numerous deputy mayors with individual portfolios (advisors in all but name!). Soon there’ll probably be a deputy mayor for paper clips in city hall if the current rate for job handouts continues, it’s not how we were promised a tax saving city hall would be is it?

Boris has also struggled with finance figures; he embarrassingly announced an uncosted and unplanned new route-master during the election in May. The project is yet to be financially announced and still poses a worry to financial planners in city hall. We are yet to see the fallout of this poor policy panning and it will be a shame if a good idea is wrecked because of incompetent management.

Students also aren’t having the best of times under Boris; he had promised to match Ken’s extension of the student discount to individual tube trips additional to the weekly and monthly cards. The biggest mistake any politician can make is not honour the pledges they make live on TV, it comes back to haunt them soon enough. It’s a running theme from the Boris election campaign that he’ll promise anything off the cuff, and then doesn’t follow up after being elected.

As you can see, it hasn’t been smooth running for Boris so far. The next few years could make him a hero or a villain and whispers from city hall that his attention span is that of gold fish don’t give Londoners much confidence in the future. All we can establish from his first three months in office is that he can’t wave a flag; he has a good knowledge of ping pong history; and he promises lots to everyone whether or not he’s thought it through already. Will he triumph over his own inability to concentrate? I suppose we’ll only really know in about three and a half years!

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