THEY say Boris Johnson is clever.

Not clever enough to understand the problem with IQ tests. Not clever enough to grasp that his kind of comedy doesn't travel. Not clever enough to know that his clown façade is transparent. The mayor of London is just clever enough to parse a bit of Latin and grab a headline. Of such gifts, supposedly, are prime ministers made.

Boris the Beastly is fortunate that the intelligence test has not been devised to capture how dim sections of the Conservative Party can be. Among them, he is popular. Among them, no-one will call you bonkers for believing that Johnson could sway voters beyond the Home Counties. He mentions Thatcher, praises greed and excuses inequality: in their little world, he might as well have taken an oath of allegiance.

Johnson's comments at the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) in London last Wednesday were remarkable for their sheer self-confidence. Clearly, the mayor of a city in which the incomes of the poorest 10% dropped by 24% in the first decade of the century - according to a study by the LSE - thinks the coast is clear. The times are right, once again, to hail "the spirit of envy", to extol greed as "a valuable spur to economic activity".

Parking his expensively acquired ignorance next to decades of contradictory research, Johnson sought the usual pseudo-scientific excuses for bigotry. He had fun with the alleged 16% "of our species" whose IQs stand below 85 and demanded more support for the 2% whose intelligence scores above 130.

Johnson seemed to think there exists a link between being nominally clever and getting rich. He allowed oxygen to the idea that nature or nurture better explain inequalities than corporate fraud or legalised theft.

Johnson wouldn't want it to get around that he has no heart, of course. Genuflecting to Thatcherism among the right-wing think-tankers, he expressed the hope "that this time the Gordon Gekkos of London are conspicuous not just for their greed, valid motivator though greed may be for economic progress, as for what they give and do for the rest of the population, many of whom have experienced real falls in their incomes over the last five years".

Johnson was not to be detained by the idea that the minority's greed, tax cuts, unearned bonuses and theft of public goods might have something to do with those "real falls". The Oxford classicist was not even alive to the fact the 1987 movie Wall Street, inspiration to his modern Gekkos, is a tragedy in which greed is psychopathic, utterly destructive of human values.

Still, that's old Boris, eh? The ubiquitous use of the first name in media and political London is one piece of evidence for cleverness on Johnson's part. When the BBC's Eddie Mair took him apart in March as "a nasty piece of work", the broadcaster said only what many thought of the mayor's private and personal dealings. Afterwards it was back to Boris this and Boris that, the Etonian with the common touch, the hilarious posh boy who could charm the mundane types.

But behind a classicist's affectations there lies an old-fashioned right-winger with antique prejudices, naked ambition, a grovelling regard for wealth and no particular interest in ordinary lives.

If nothing else, the existence of Johnson marks the gulf between elite London and the rest. Never mind Scotland, in any of the places routinely classified as The North, the metropolitan populist would have not a hope of popularity. He is a fiction of and for the English capital.

His homily last week was unashamed, even defiant. The world is made to be unequal; some people are too dim to prosper; and there is nothing wrong with that if the mayor's kind exert themselves to charity now and then. So arises the real question. London's mayor believes his vicious chatter has a general appeal. Is he right?

The human race does not often have a high opinion of itself. Tell people the world is run on greed, that some get the short straw and some do not, and they often believe it. Soften them up with years of austerity that is somehow their fault and they might even fall for the hoax that the obnoxious rich are born smarter then the rest. Last week, Johnson babbled in the language of an ancient ideology. But that, sadly, is London. Praising money for its own sake has a certain logic in a city that exists to manage the stuff. This is true not just of the mayor's Gekkos: at the end of 2012, despite the crash, 665,700 people were employed in the financial sector and associated "professional services" in London. Most were ordinary workers; many probably voted for Johnson. All were susceptible to the idea that their industry deserves praise, not blame.

For all that, the notion among certain Tories that their latest prophet of greed could repeat his successes in a UK General Election is a delusion born of ignorance. Beyond the M25, London is not popular. If anything, resentment is greater in Manchester and Newcastle than in Glasgow or Edinburgh. When Johnson pretty much tells hard-up Bradfordians they are poor because they are thick, patience for affable posh boys evaporates.

Still, look at things from his point of view. If Cameron and Osborne can get away with it, why not someone who really knows how to please a crowd? Last week, Nick Clegg accused Johnson of treating people like dogs. Coming from the Coalition's poodle, this was merely apt. The present UK Government has had little difficulty in causing folk to turn on one another, or on immigrants, in the struggle to survive. If "Boris" claims this is all for dashed scientific reasons, who challenges him now?

Only all the common people who can spot a charlatan. Only those who hear Johnson say that Thatcher would have "comfortably seen off Salmond" in Scotland and know better. Then they despise an elite hoodlum whose ignorance of society knows no bounds.