But for all his Merrie England bonhomie his massive vote was brought by a shift in the electorate fuelled by anger.

Clearly, Middle Britain as a whole is heartily sick of the meddling, tax-grabbing puritans of Mr Brown’s dour regime.

Perhaps this says something about the nation’s phlegmatic spirit. When the ruling elite become arrogant and out of touch, the British don’t riot – they vote for a laugh instead. But after Londoners sent in the clown, the serious business starts this week.

Many observers will regard Mr Johnson’s administration as a microcosm of what a Tory government under the sunny Cameroon Conserv­atives might look like. The Tories have to find a way of turning voters’ anger at the existing establishment into a credible programme for administration.

Like the fictional chancer-turned-town mayor in Arnold Bennett’s novel The Card, Mr Johnson “is identified with the great cause of cheering us all up”. Overseeing a city administration – or, indeed, a government – requires rather more.

When it comes to running anything, Mr Johnson cannot even claim “whelk stall” on his CV. His brief Parliamentary career has been spent in ­shadow cabinet backwaters. And some of the new mayor’s ideas might be a little less amusing in practice, notably his deplorable call for an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

But for all that, Mr Johnson has one trump card in his joker’s pack: he can succeed by cutting the mayoral workload. Voters want rulers who will rule a little less. His challenge is to show that ­elected politicians can do less but do it better. That means less meddling, less nannying and, crucially, less wasted taxpayers’ cash.

Evidently, the Mayor needs serious heavyweight advisers pulling the strings behind his act. With that support the jester could spearhead a radical transformation. The opportunity exists for the revolution against a ­bloated and wasteful State apparatus that millions of voters are crying out for.

Mr Johnson has pledged to clear out Labour’s London empire of highly paid cronies, media advisers, press officers and marketing consultants. Sticking to that vow would provide a blueprint for trimming every overstaffed town hall and Whitehall department in the country.

He could also do the nation a favour by staunching the flow of blank cheques pouring into the endless drain of the 2012 Olympic Games. If this Labour vanity project cannot be ­halted at least the London Mayor could press for the Games to be a value-for-money event. That would be far more in keeping with the financial austerity the country is facing.

Cash-strapped households are in no mood for hurling more council tax into a lavish jamboree for Labour’s chums in the so-called “creative industries” of media and marketing.

But most of all, Mr Johnson’s Tory administration is in a position to prove that the rising tide of violent crime can be reversed in a major city. That requires going beyond the slogan of “zero tolerance.” It means flooding the streets with uniformed police and community service officers who are not bound by bureaucracy and politically correct directives.

Officers need powers to crack down on crime gangs and drug dealers and they need the unflinching support of those in authority. They should also be allowed to deal with the culture of yobbery and disrespect that breeds violent crime. Return­ing order to London’s streets would give hope to every town and city in Britain.

Tory MPs and activists heard the same demands from voters all over Britain in the run up to last week’s elec­tions. In London, they have the opportunity to respond. And with the political map so radically changing colour, the rest of the country looks set to follow.

The script for making the transformation from jester politics to addressing the genuine concerns of voters is simple: cut violent crime and cut waste of taxpayers’ money. That ­really would cheer us all up.