You wouldn’t expect a leftie to mount an out-and-out defence of the track record of Britain’s top copper, and I’m certainly not going to do that.
The de Menezes killing happened on Sir Ian Blair’s watch, yet the worst consequence for the Metropolitan Police was a conviction for breach of health and safety regulations, as if the offence was of no more import than leaving packing cases blocking a fire escape. Continue reading
Boris is enjoying a honeymoon as London Mayor, as Andrew Grice of The Independent writes on his politics blog.
Will it last? I fear that Boris Johnson’s critics are already repeating the mistake they made during the campaign, as I argue in a New Statesman column on the Mayoral race fallout.
Gleefully anticipating a gaffe-filled mayoralty that will wreck David Cameron’s project helps Johnson to set expectations very low. Johnson benefits as much as Ronald Reagan or George W Bush ever did from being seriously “misunderestimated”. Which other candidate would have got away with floundering and being roughly £100m out on their sums for buses in the televised mayoral debates?
But if he merely remembers to put his trousers on every morning and get to work, Johnson’s mayoralty will be acclaimed as a triumph. But the real test must be the same any other mayor would face: delivery. That – with Johnson presented as a hands-off “chairman of the board” – is truly a test of the Cameron project”.
Rather than expecting a total fiasco, we should be scrutinising what the Tory modernisers want to do with power.
Perhaps the (conservative) answer will be not very much at all.
This piece of news is too delicious not to write about. Bruce Anderson says Boris is a libertarian. And yet the Sun says London’s new mayor is planning to ban consuming alcohol on the tube.
London, my London, looked little different this morning, when I tried to shake off the mares of the night before (Bojo and the BNP at City Hall) in the Regent’s Park summer series 10k race. I did about as well as the Labour Party on Dismayday, leaden legs limping lumpenly to the finish line.
The sun was shining, the plane trees were fruiting, the bus lanes were still functioning, there was still the same myriad mix of people, united in our variety. This is the city I never dreamt I would stay in when I first arrived here from the provinces. And this is the city I have grown to love and call home.
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So, it’s the weekend after the week before, and an alliance of gameshow fans, 4×4 drivers, suburban curtain-twitchers, BNP second-preferences, Labourphobes and the thoroughly fed-up, mostly from places that don’t even count as London, have foisted a Thatcherite mayor on our generally left-leaning city. Continue reading
I try and be an optimist, so here goes…
1) Closeness of the race says to me that right-wing newspapers have little impact. Despite the combined endorsement of The Sun, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Times and Evening Boris, there was only 6% between them. I wish we had better exit polling in this country because I bet most voted for Boris on the basis of change, not al-Qaradawi or Lee Jasper of Hugo Chavez.
2) He started off from the traditional right Spectator crowd and gradually changed his mind on nearly everything. The Congestion Charge will remain; he’s also opposed to the Third runway; he backed off on repealing the smoking ban; embraced London’s multiculturalism; said he was proud of his Muslim heritage (compared to what he used to say); said he supported amnesty for long-term illegal migrants; is unlikely to try his new fangled and super-expensive bus programme.
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01:52am Boris said:
On a more serious note, Johnson said: “I do not for one moment believe that this election shows that London has been transformed overnight into a Conservative city.”
But he said he thought the result did show that the Conservatives could be “trusted with the greatest, most cosmopolitan and generous-hearted city” in the world.
He got the first bit right. He still needs to prove the second part.
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LIBERAL CONSPIRACY CALLS FOR KEN LIVINGSTONE
… on the basis a wide range of conversations we’ve had throughout the day with people in the field and with senior insiders… and my mates from the pub.
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2am I’m signing off from the live-blogging for now. It’s become boring and the only graphics the BBC can muster up is the tired Gordon Brown ‘From Stalin to Mr Bean’ one… besides, I have an article to file. I might continue in the comments though.
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Dave Hill finds that Libdem’r Simon Hughes, “urged voters to cast their second preference for someone who had served London already”. He’s advocating Paddick as first choice of course, but does that mean Ken should be no. 2?
There are many very good reasons not to vote for Boris Johnson, but most likely we will wake up on Friday to that result.
The election now comes down to a question of turnout and of appealing to second preferences, particularly of Liberal Democrat voters. The key unknown may be what impact last minute doubts about Johnson have. (Two-thirds of the Politics Home ‘insider panel’ think this will make a difference, but will it be enough?)
As I wrote in a Comment is Free piece on how we have come this close to the prospect of Mayor Boris, the Conservative Party has successfully Boris-proofed Lynton Crosby’s campaign from the candidate, and is now worrying about how to Boris-proof David Cameron’s ambitions to be Prime Minister from the possible fallout of Johnson’s Mayoralty.
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