Boris Johnson’s water cannon just cost us £300,000 – and that’s not the only time he’s burnt through taxpayers’ money

Boris Johnson’s political career is characterised by a trail of destruction, false promises and squandered resources.

His cynical support for the Leave campaign certainly fitted a pattern. But the former foreign secretary’s legacy suggests that his political irresponsibility and economic carelessness was evident long before that controversial Brexit bus hit the road.

The latest mess that Johnson has left for somebody else to clean up takes the form of three unused water cannon. These vehicles were bought by Johnson in response to the 2011 riots; he had intended to use them as a method of crowd control. In 2015, then-home secretary Theresa May went on to ban them.

In light of their uselessness, the current mayor, Sadiq Khan, had pledged in his election manifesto to redeem as much money as possible by selling the unused vehicles. This calamitous saga has finally been concluded: the cannon have been sold for just £11,025 to a scrap metal yard in Nottinghamshire. That’s just 3.4 per cent of the £322,834.71 been spent on the vehicles since 2014. Nice one, Mr Johnson.

Sian Berry, the Green Party joint leader and London assembly member, has described these latest developments as “final proof that Boris’s water cannon stunt was just money down the drain”. She argued, convincingly: “It’s an affront to Londoners that any public money was spent on what is essentially a weapon against the people. It’s a shame more of the money couldn’t be recouped and spent on young Londoners, but I’m glad that no one will be using the water cannon against any people as it was rightly deemed inhumane.”

Perhaps a seemingly small development against a backdrop of Brexit mayhem, this example of Johnson’s draconian thinking and proclivity to waste resources epitomises his utter disregard for the general welfare of the electorate and the long-term financial stability of the country.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the legacy of Johnson’s tenure as mayor slowly being dismantled. Back in January, Sadiq Khan dumped “Boris Buses” – the controversial double-decker Routemasters that each cost £50,000 more than a standard bus.

In August 2017, plans for the “Garden Bridge”, which was intended to provide a walkway between Embankment and Temple, were scrapped. Johnson’s vision was abandoned, partly due to the staggeringly high cost of construction and upkeep (the project had initially been put at £60m, but this rose to £175m in 2015 and then £200m in April 2017). Even though construction never went ahead, the Garden Bridge Trust spent £37.4m in less than four years.

We’re still dealing with the financial fallout from Johnson’s tenure as mayor of London, and living with the consequences of his lack of foresight. And these errors were only on a regional scale. I shudder to think of the years, perhaps decades of struggle, which will have to take place because a handful of politicians who, like Boris Johnson, continued to put their personal ambitions ahead of the health of our country back in 2016.

Johnson and his career-minded cronies have all of the most sinister aspects of patriotism. They are jingoistic but entirely disloyal. They come from a class of people for whom politics is just a game; a debate; a stage on which to strut. They care about the cosmetics of their politics – how things appear, how they seem – and nobody has created a more successful or distracting persona than “BoJo”. His affable manner and comical look masked his ravenous ambition and enabled his political ascent (followed by his cowardly retreat).

Privilege isolates you from the vicissitudes of party politics. Politicians like Johnson are fiscally careless in their political careers because they have never felt the financial fallout of an ill thought through policy. Their personal reputations are all they have to lose. This is why, for a certain kind of politician, all else becomes eclipsed by their concept of self. Policies are vanity projects, agendas are cynical, and cabinet positions are seen as rewards rather than responsibilities.

It’s difficult not to extrapolate from the significance of these water cannon, sold for a fraction of their original price. These vehicles represent a moral and financial carelessness that characterises Johnson’s career. If we can learn one lesson from this emblematic incident, it’s that self-serving politicians don’t change their spots.