What Boris said

Not so long ago I welcomed the former French Prime Minister, M Alain Juppe, in my office in City Hall; and he cruised in with his retinue and their legion d’honneur florettes, and he told me that he was now the Mayor of Bordeaux, and that with 239,517 people in Bordeaux he had the honour of representing the ninth biggest city in France.

And then I got the ball back over the net, and I pointed out that there were 250,000 French people in London and that I was therefore the Mayor of the sixth biggest French city on earth.

I can’t remember what he said then – tiens, or bien je jamais, or something; but it is one of the joys of this job that I am the mayor of a pretty sizeable Russian city and Australian city and Italian city and Chinese city – and that is a good thing, my friends.

That foreign money brings jobs, and it fills restaurants and puts bums on the seats of our theatres and it helps finance our universities and it enables London developers to embark on projects that would otherwise be stalled and it brings buzz and excitement.

And yet we must also recognise that this sheer global charisma of London is putting pressure on Londoners, with average house prices now 6 times average earnings, and the cheapest 25 per cent of homes now 9 times the income of those in the bottom quartile.

And the pressure is intensified by an entirely home-grown phenomenon to which I alluded at the end of the Olympics.

I prophesied that the athletes had moved the people of this country to such paroxysms of excitement on the sofas of Britain that they had not only inspired a generation, but probably helped to create one as well.

Like all my predictions and promises, I have delivered, in that GLA demographics say live births in London will be 136,942, which is more than in any year since 1966 when England won the world cup.

And I can see you all looking a bit wan at the thought of all these children, and you are thinking, what jobs are they going to do, and where are they going to live, and will they be stepping on my toe in the tube?

And so I want first to reassure you by saying that London has been this big before – it was 9 m both in 1911 and 1939; and the second point is that we have a plan – and that is to create the conditions in London where every one of those kids has a chance and where we do everything we can to make sure no one is shut out or left behind.

Here it is – it is called the 2020 vision, and step number one is to build more homes: I mean tens of thousands a year, 400,000 over the next ten years.

How many people here are owner-occupiers? Yes, no disgrace in that; but there are millions of people in London for whom that is simply out of the question. We will build 100,000 affordable homes over two terms; we have made available £3.6 bn of public land

But we need to do so much more; we should consider allowing companies to make tax free loans for rental deposits, as they can for childcare; and George, I hope I am not exceeding my brief if I urge you to look at the baleful effects of stamp duty in London, which is stamping on the fingers of those who are trying to climb the property ladder.

When did Conservatives win huge majorities in this country? It was when they embarked on programmes to build enough homes for people to live, as we did in the 1930s and in the 1950s.

And to make those homes viable, you have to put in the transport links; and what has been happening over the last five years is truly astonishing.

We have not only cut tube delays by 40 per cent and expanded the capacity of the Jubilee Line, the Victoria Line and put aircon on 40 per cent of the network.

We are proceeding with the biggest engineering project in Europe; and a scheme that five years ago was just a line on a map is now a gigantic fact, with vast subterranean caverns in the station boxes and as we speak beneath the streets of London there are six colossal boring machines called Ada and Phyllis and Mary and Elizabeth and Victoria – they all have female names for some reason – and they are munching towards each other with gigantic glomps, and they will converge in the region of Whitechapel, I think; and they are on time, on budget, a fantastic example of what Britain can do.

And we need to be planning now to use those skills on the next set of projects – Crossrail two, high-speed, aviation, power stations – so that we have a logical infrastructure plan for the country, and don’t waste tens of billions on stopping and starting

We can build the homes; we can put in the transport – but it is no use creating a city of opportunity unless young Londoners are actually able and willing to take those opportunities.

Now I have made it a rule at these Tory party conferences never to disagree with Jamie Oliver. The last time I did so I was put in a pen and pelted with pies by the media. But the other day he said something that made me gulp.

He was complaining about the work ethic of young people these days, and he didn’t pull his punches. “It’s the British kids particularly,” he said.

“I have never seen anything so wet behind the ears. I have mummies ringing up for 23 year olds saying my son is too tired for a 48 hour week. Are you having a laugh?” the celebrity chef told Good Housekeeping.

And he went on! “I think our European migrant friends are much stronger, much tougher. If we didn’t have any, all of our restaurants would close tomorrow. There wouldn’t be any Brits to replace them.”

Now I can see some fits of patriotic apoplexy here, and I know and you know that British kids are potentially as dynamic and go-getting as any millionaire masterchef.

But what if Jamie has a point? What if he has half a point or a quarter of a point? We need to think about the possible origins of that difference in motivation that he claims to detect.

We need to consider what we politicians are doing about it.

And if it is to do with welfare – as some people claim – then don’t we need Iain Duncan Smith to get on with reforming the system, and ensuring that you are always better off in work?

And if it is to do with education – as some people claim – then don’t we need Michael Gove to get on with his heroic work of restoring rigour and realism to the classroom, and getting away from the old all-must-have prizes approach where all pupils must be above average in maths?

And if the problem is also to do with the confidence and self-esteem of young people – without which ambition is impossible – then isn’t it our job to do everything we can to provide boundaries and solidity to their lives?

That is why I have spent so much of my time on projects like the Mayor’s Fund for London and Team London, to encourage reading to kids, and mentoring programmes and expanding the uniformed groups and bringing sporting facilities and training to schools that are lacking it, and helping talented musicians to keep playing their instrument as they make the transition from primary to secondary school; and we have been helping schools improve standards with a new excellence fund.

Slowly across the landscape I believe these projects – together with hundreds of others – are making a difference.

We have got 118,000 kids into apprenticeships over the last couple of years, and we mean to get to 250,000.

Thanks to the police, we are seeing very significant falls in crime, in youth violence and in the victims from knives – and it makes my blood boil to read a casual quote from some Labour politician comparing London with Rio.

We have not only halved youth murders in the last five years; we have got the London murder rate down to levels not seen since the 1960s, and you are not only 20 times more likely to be murdered in Rio, you are twice as likely to be murdered in Brussels – presumably with lobster picks. In fact London is now the safest global city in the world; and it’s not just murder. We’ve got fare evasion down to an all-time low, mainly thanks to getting rid of the bendy bus.

You have to tackle that entire complex of problems – crime, welfarism, educational underachievement

To make sure that kids growing up in London are able to take the opportunities that the city offers;

And at the same time we must make sure that they don’t dismiss some jobs as “menial” – a word I sometimes hear – but that they see them in the same way that as Jamie Oliver’s east Europeans, or indeed as Americans see them: as stepping-stones, as the beginning to a life in work that can take them anywhere.

And if I speak frankly today about work ethic, it is because I know there is vast and latent genius in these young people; and that if we could harness their talents they would not only have fulfilling lives, but we could drive ever faster the flywheel of the London economy - an economy that is now the most diverse in Europe.

We not only lead the world as financial centre, artistic and cultural centre: we now have the largest tech sector in Europe; we have a growing Med City of academic health science institutions along the Euston Road; and in the next ten years it is forecast that London’s media industry will produce more content than in TV and film than either New York or LA.

It is the prodigious and pulsating demand of that economy that helps to drive the rest of the country.

The EU commission has just done a study saying that Surrey and West and East Sussex is the 5

the most competitive region in Europe. Anybody here from Surrey?

They tell is that Berkshire Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire is the 3rd most competitive region in Europe.

And why are these regions so fizzing with competitiveness – because London is the most competitive city in the whole of Europe and it drives jobs across the UK, not just in the SE.

We have a beautiful new hop-on, hop-off Routemaster-style bus, and it comes from Ballymena – and the flooring comes from Liskeard and the destination blinds come from Manchester. Manchester tells London where to go.

Crossrail takes thousands of tonnes of steel from Darlington Bolton and Oldham

Cranes from Derbyshire and Newcastle

Bridges from Shropshire

Survey equipment from Devon and lubricant from Bournemouth

And what are they doing when they aren’t making lube? JP Morgan

When I look at what is happening in London and the Uk economy, I share George Osborne’s optimism; but I also share his realism, and his determination to remove the barriers to competitiveness – and what is the greatest barrier I see?

A Labour government. We don’t want to go back to the high-tax, high-spend approach of Ed Miliband, the creature of the unions. We want to go forward with a low-tax enterprise economy.

We don’t want a mansion tax that would inhibit our homes programme – we want to build more homes.

We want to go back to the age of Diocletian, with some crazed attempt at governmental price fixing; we want to go forward with

New generation of nuclear power stations and, indeed, fracking.

We must not go back to the failed Labour idea for a 3

rd runway at Heathrow, aggravating noise pollution in what is already the city worst afflicted by aircraft noise anywhere in the world – by miles. It was Ed Balls’ idea then, and Ed Balls’ idea now. Balls then, balls now, it isn’t good enough for this country and it isn’t the right answer for the most beautiful and liveable city on earth.

If we are to compete in the global race, then we need to look at what every one of our competitors is doing, in building hub airports of 4 runways or more and capable of operating round the clock.

If we persist with the Heathrow option we will wreck the quality of life for millions of Londoners; we will constrain the ability of London to grow; and we will allow the Dutch to eat our lunch by turning Schiphol into the hub for London.

And we need to go forward with a new deal from the EU – indeed the whole of Europe needs a ne

deal from the EU, and if there is one statesman capable of delivering that reform, and a referendum, it is David Cameron.

If we get these things right, and we demolish these barriers to competitiveness, then there is no limit to what we can do.

I saw some geezer from the Kremlin said something the other day that was even less polite than Jamie Oliver. He said that Britain was a small island that no one paid any attention to except for oligarchs who bought Chelsea.

Well if someone wants to put money into a London football club that strikes me as pure public-spiritedness.

And I don’t want to risk polonium in my sushi by bandying statistics with the Kremlin about per capita GDP or life expectancy, except to say that the UK vastly exceeds Russia in both; and the serious point is that that this spokesman underestimates this country and where it is going. If you look at the demographics, and the knowledge-based and manufacturing industries in which this country excels, then there is every chance in our lifetimes – and I mean to live a very long time – that the UK could be the biggest country in the EU, both in population and output.

And the reason so many Russians come here is that they recognise that London is not simply the capital of Britain but of the EU and in many ways of the world: -

a city with more American banks than New York, for heaven’s sake; a 24 hour city in which 100,000 people work in supplying us all with coffee, so that there are more baristas than barristers – though there are quite a few of them – and yet with so much green space that we produce 2m cucumbers a year. Eat your heart out, Putin.

And it is partly thanks to our cucumber yields, comrades, that London now contributes almost 25 per cent of Uk GDP – the highest proportion since Roman times.

In the next couple of years we must take all sorts of crucial decisions about how to ensure the harmonious development of that city, and I want those decisions to be taken by Conservatives.

The choice at the next election is very simple. It is between the Fool’s gold of Labour gimmicks, and a government that is willing to take tough and sensible decisions to cut unnecessary spending but to make the key investments to take the country forward. I know what I want, as Mayor of the greatest city on earth.

I know what you want. I know that we can do it. So let’s go for it over the next two years, cut the yellow Lib Dem albatross from around our necks by working flat out for David Cameron as prime minister and an outright Conservative victory in 2015.