Boris Johnson goes looking for Conservative friends in the north

Voters want to drink with him, but can Boris turn that into Tory votes?

Boris Johnson says the Government should be 'throwing money’ at people living along the proposed HS2 route (Parsons Media)

Boris Johnson is on the march. He goes north today, visiting marginal seats in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and is trying to sell the Conservatives in places where they haven’t done so well.

The Conservatives’ lack of friends in the north is well-documented and represents a major electoral problem for the party. There are 124 parliamentary seats in the cities and towns of the Midlands, north west and north east. Conservatives won just 20 of them in 2010. Merely doubling that number would have given the party a majority in 2010. A better performance is surely necessary for a Tory win next year.

Is the Mr Johnson the answer? It may seem unlikely: an Old Etonian squillionaire up from London to spout Latin at working folk? Not the most obvious Tory move.

But Mr Johnson’s friends like to say he is a Heineken Tory, one that reaches voters his colleagues cannot – even northern ones. That's largely based on his wins in London – not traditionally seen as Tory turf – and some polls showing many voters quite like him.

Let’s start with the party’s polling. According the most recent YouGov tracker poll, the Tories are on 31 per cent nationwide. But in the south east of England, their support is 36 per cent, and in the north it’s 28 per cent.

Polls showing the popularity of individual politicians are rarer, but in October, Boris topped YouGov’s poll for the politician voters would most like to have a drink with: he was named by 40 per cent, streets ahead of Nigel Farage on 22 per cent and David Cameron on 16 per cent.

Dig into that 40 per cent and you find a familiar tale of regional variation: 47 per cent of southerners would drink with Boris, but only 35 per cent of northerners.

I say “only” there but it should be noted that a 35 per cent rating among northerners still makes Boris the most popular politician in the north; my fellow northerners generally have a lower opinion of politicians as breed than their southern cousins. (42 per cent of northerners said they wouldn’t drink with any politician; only 27 per cent of southerners said the same.)

So, unlikely as it may seem, the classically-educated Tory Mayor of London really might be an asset for his party in the north. But turning his personal fun-guy-to-drink-with appeal into cold hard votes for his party will surely take a lot more than a day trip north of the Watford Gap.

PS. The blond one's northern venture is also fascinating in the context of his barely-hidden duel to the death with George Osborne.

The Chancellor has been leading recent Tory outreach efforts in the north, delivering on promises of more power to big northern cities. His allies also like to play up his alleged northern credentials, noting he is the only Tory in the Cabinet with a northern seat (albeit in Cheshire's Golden Triangle: not many whippets or flat caps there.)

Are we seeing the start of a struggle over who will be Conservative King in the North? And if so, what does it say about the party that the fight is between two southern public schoolboys?