Londoners threw out their liberal two-term mayor Friday in favour of colourful Conservative politician Boris Johnson in an election that handed the nation’s governing Labor Party its worst local elections defeat since the 1960s.

The outcome puts a 43-year-old lawmaker best known for his irreverent jibes and disheveled mop of blond hair at the helm of one of Europe’s pre-eminent cities and host of the 2012 Olympic Games.

“I do not for one minute believe that this election shows that London has been transformed overnight into a Conservative city,” Johnson said. “But I do hope that it does show that the Conservatives have changed into a party that can again be trusted after 30 years with the greatest, most cosmopolitan . . . city on earth.”

The voting, a combination of voters’ first and second preferences, gave Johnson 1,168,738 votes, to incumbent Ken Livingstone’s 1,028,966.

Johnson was born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson in New York to English parents. Till recently, he was an American citizen.

Of Turkish descent, Johnson’s great-grandfather, Ali Kemal, a Turkish journalist, was briefly interior minister in the government of Ahmed Tevfik Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. His grandfather Osman Ali settled in the UK in the 1920s and changed his name to Wilfred Johnson.

He is married to barrister Marina Wheeler, daughter of legendary BBC journalist Charles Wheeler and his Sikh Indian wife.

Johnson, who was a reporter in The Times and other newspapers before becoming editor of the Spectator, became widely popular across Britain from his humorous appearances on a popular TV news quiz show; he is famous for riding around London on his bicycle while talking on his cellphone.

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