Fair funding for all

That said, it must be borne in mind that the Mayor of London's top priority is the future funding of the capital city, especially in the two years prior to the 2012 Olympics, and that this will, inevitably, have to take precedence over the English regions.

It highlights the funding conundrum that David Cameron will face if he is in a position to form a government. He will have to implement a sweeping programme of cuts – and he intimated in his interview with Jeremy Paxman that areas of the North have become too dependent on the public sector. It's also noticeable that the Conservatives have stepped up their attacks on wealth-generating quangoes like Yorkshire Forward.

What Mr Johnson, and others, have been less eloquent on is the need for a fairer system of funding in place that treats each region as an equal – the central tenet of this newspaper's Manifesto for Yorkshire. It's plainly wrong that transport funding is so skewed in London's favour, and at the expense of this region. Will that change under the Tories?

Mr Johnson, however, does deserve credit for admitting that the Olympics are unlikely to bring about lasting benefits to the provinces. His challenge now, as a self-styled "man of the people", is to address this and show that the whole country will be treated more equitably if his fellow Old Etonian enters Downing Street.