The Progressive

An evening with Boris

Yesterday evening I attended Boris Johnson’s People’s Question Time in the pugilistic splendour of Bethnal Green’s York Hall. The evening was chaired by Labour’s John Biggs who sported an air of good-humoured antagonism towards the Mayor throughout. The audience followed suit, booing Boris as he stood up to speak but being otherwise fairly genial.

Boris began by listing the achievements of his tenure to date; the Freedom Pass, the Oysterisation of the transport network, a bicycle hire scheme, Crossrail and Tube modernisation. Weren’t all these schemes instituted by Ken Livingstone, I asked politely? A typical Boris dodge followed. “Umm, I didn’t quite see you, but I’m sure the question was meant benevolently, so we’ll move on”, he mumbled.

The real answer was given by John Biggs, who said Boris “took all the credit for the improvements and blamed the government for the problems”. Boris failed to give a convincing explanation for the traffic chaos during the snow last month, and his claims to be a champion of cyclists rang hollow when the audience complained about the scheme to allow motorcyclists into bus lanes and the lack of investment in the cycle network.

A popular topic during the meeting was knife crime. The BNP’s Richard Barnbrook, suggested custodial sentences for all those caught in possession of knives. He was quickly shouted down by members of the prison service in the audience who explained from their own experience “prison doesn’t work”.

On housing, Johnson was asked a direct question about whether he would stick to his election pledge of building 50,000 affordable homes in the capital. “I am optimistic . . . but the figure will be hard to reach due to the state of the market”, he said. A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.

However, the question which really seemed to flummox Boris was whether all the feral cats on the Olympics’ site had been caught. You can rest easy; apparently they have.

It was obvious that Boris didn’t have Ken’s detailed knowledge about London, and he often asked questioners to send him more information so he could help at a later date. But such response often successfully deflected and satisfied questioners, a particular skill of his it seems. This, coupled with an apparent drift to the centre and the continuation of a number of Ken’s policies in the capital, means that Labour will need a mayoral candidate who engages directly with voters and their concerns to be elected in 2012. A fact worryingly evidenced by the 60% approval rating Boris received in a somewhat unscientific electronic poll conducted at the end of the evening.

Boris bares his tory teeth

As Channel 4 announced its nominees for the Political Impact Award 2009, there were no surprises over some of the nominees. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Lord Mandelson both make the final six, alongside Vince Cable, Andrew Walker, Eliza Manningham-Buller and you guessed it, Boris Johnson.

Preferences for who should win aside, and I’m sure readers of this blog will have varied opinions on this (comments welcome!), I wanted to take a look at the impact of one of this year’s most high profile politicians. Boris may have made an impact on the political world in 2008, but floppy hair and jokes aside, this new mayor of London is having a dangerous impact on the rights of London’s underrepresented groups.

Whilst I never really believed Boris’ sharing, caring rhetoric and commitment to the equalities agenda during his mayoral campaign, I can’t help but be shocked at the attitude of his administration to vital women’s services since taking office.

As part of Boris’ successful mayoral campaign last year he made a firm manifesto commitment to deliver three new rape crisis centres alongside continued funding for the one existing centre in London, to the tune of £744,000 a year. Boris has since been forced to admit that his manifesto promise to fund these services will remain unrealised. Backtracking on his manifesto pledge he will instead provide £233,000 a year in funding, slashing his manifesto pledge by over £500,000. That’s two thirds of his initial promise.

Likewise, the Greater London Domestic Violence project did not have their contract with the mayor renewed this year and The Board of Safer Travel at Night has been suspended. On top of this London’s annual women’s conference has been cancelled.

And it goes on. Alongside this, most of us will remember the last minute cuts to funding for last year’s Soho Pride and Luke’s blog highlights how Boris’ cuts to London’s transport system are affecting people with disabilities.

Compassionate and caring conservatives? The actions of the most powerful Tory in Britain suggest otherwise. Political impact? Yes. Positive impact? Hardly.

Time for Boris to be held to account

The last few months have shown that politics matters. Since Boris Johnson won control of City Hall we have seen fare-rises for Londoners announced, dropping of Labour’s commitment to 50% affordable housing in new developments and Ken Livingstone’s plan to pedestrianise Parliament Square abandoned. The latter is particularly ridiculous because Londoners and tourists will have to take their lives in their hands dodging traffic to get close to the new statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square. For now, there will be no £25 congestion charge on ‘gas-guzzlers’ as Ken Livingstone had proposed (with reductions for less polluting vehicles) and Boris Johnson is consulting on cutting back the Congestion Charge Western Extension.

One of the most worrying proposals is Boris Johnson’s plan for an estimated £195 million real terms cut in funding for the Metropolitan Police. The recent deaths of young people as a result of stabbings have appalled and worried us all. All Londoners want to see something done about it. Boris Johson talked a lot about knife crime during the Mayoral elections and Londoners rightly expect to see some action on this issue. I don’t think that what most Londoners want from the Mayor is a cut in funding to the Metropolitan Police. Not only should the Mayor be doing more to support the police as they fight crime, but he should also do more to tackle the causes of crime. One of the reasons we need more affordable housing is because it will mean fewer teenagers living in overcrowded accommodation without the space they need to live, study and play – and less of anti-social behaviour than would otherwise occur.

London now hangs in the balance between a progressive, inclusive and green future or one where we get more of the Tory policies we have had over the six months. We know that Londoners won’t like Boris’s policies when they feel and hear about their effects. It might feel that Boris Johnson and the Tories are enjoying a rather lengthy honeymoon – but it is not healthy for any politicians to enjoy perpetual political honeymoons without scrutiny. It’s our job in the Labour Party to make sure Boris is held to account and that Londoners know about the damage he is doing. Let's make sure he doesn't get away with it!

Omar Salem is chair of London Young Labour and a member of the Young Labour executive

Which way will LibDems jump?

The Supplementary Vote system used to elect the Mayor of London will give Liberal Democrats in the capital a straight choice: Should they put the politics of anti-incumbency - the desire to kick out randomly at Labour in power, even if this means giving a helping hand to a barely reconstructed reactionary clown like Boris Alexandre de Pfeffel Johnson - ahead of the progressive governance of our city?  Many Liberal Democrats nationwide would surely baulk at taking such a stand.  And yet with Liberals and Conservatives already working together in boroughs like Brent and Camden to forge an anti-Labour bloc, it is far from clear that the majority of Londoners will resist the temptation to take a further swipe at their local opponents.  A recent Guardian/ICM poll put Ken and his Tory challenger almost neck-and-neck, but suggested that a lead that has opened up by Johnson for the second preferences of Lib Dems, could give the latter the key to City Hall. 

This possibility raises an awful lot of questions.  What would this say about the direction Nick Clegg is taking his party?   

And what would it all mean for the possible introduction of preferential voting for elections to the House of Commons?  Would it help Labour to convince the electorate that it was not introducing reform of the voting system for its own party-political advantage?  Or is the party leadership looking for signs that AV would help to cement a broader "progressive coalition" with the Lib Dems to keep the Conservatives out of power?

How representative are the views of London's Lib Dems, anyway?  In areas with Tory incumbents, might there be more of a move to swing behind Labour instead?  There will be a lot to factor into our post-election considerations.

Bring on the eccentrics

If you thought Ken and Boris were a bit weird, some of the other, more minor candidates are worth investigating. If only as a study in the pathology of what it takes to be a mayoral candidate. As Tony Travers argued when discussing the possibility of a Boris mayorality, in a piece for the New Statesman entitled 'The joke':

'There is always a possibility that the capital's voters will favour political independence, eccentricity and "having a bit of a laugh" over seriousness.'

But, even then, the line has to be drawn somewhere. Some of the candidates make Boris look like William Gladstone. Take Winston McKenzie, an independent candidate who Johnson beat to the Tory nomination. The former boxer-turned-hairdresser from Croydon has also been a member of Labour, UKIP and Robert Kilroy-Silk's Veritas. You'll see from YouTube that he has a taste for Al Capone-style headgear and rapping (watch to end for his Ken impersonation ... ).

The One London candidate, Damian Hockney, was Kilroy's most loyal footsoldier in his UKIP and Veritas days. If that's not damning enough, Hockney is a former Tory with an apparent obsession with plastic surgery and unsuccessfully tried to become the British entrant in the Eurovision song contest.

Far be it from me to deride 'colourful' candidates in the era of the grey, technocratic automaton-politician. But it's difficult to get over the sheer lack of self-awareness of these people. You might say it was 'ever thus' - at least Lord Sutch was joking.