Boris Johnson is a criminal mastermind

Taken from the Telegraph 27/02/2008

In the past 12 months, London has seen approximately 150 murders, 2,000 rapes and 94,000 burglaries. But now the police have found a real villain.

Boris Johnson, Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, is accused of purloining invaluable "Iraqi cultural property" in 2003 - to whit, a cigar case owned by Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister.

Mr Johnson would have got away scot-free but, like all criminal masterminds, he made one vital mistake: he confessed his sin within days to hundreds of thousands of readers of this newspaper, admitting to taking the case for safe-keeping and pledging to return it on demand.

In a way, this ridiculous investigation is a compliment, for it shows that Mr Johnson's enemies are running scared. Yes, his tough-on-crime credentials may be mildly bruised, but it is their reputation - and Scotland Yard's - that will suffer more.