ConservativeHome's London Mayor blog

Steve Norris: "If I run, I'll win"

Iain Dale interviewed Steve Norris on 18DoughtyStreet.com last night.  Iain has written about Mr Norris' sympathy for leaving the EU on his own blog.  Even more newsworthy from ConservativeHome's perspective is all of his body language and mood music on entering the race to become the Tory candidate for London Mayor.  Iain's take:

"Watch the [sixty minute] programme and you won't be left in any doubt that Steve will run for the Tory nomination and a good thing too. He told me he would scrap the congestion charge zone altogether, scrap bendy buses, reinstate Routemaster buses, tax company car parking spaces, ban goods vehicles from the streets at peak times and much more besides. It really is worth listening to. His enthusiasm is infectious. He finishes by saying: "If I run, I'll win"."

Perhaps, finally, the mayoral race is hotting up with Nicholas Boles - only yesterday - announcing his decision to quit Policy Exchange and campaign full time on his mayoral bid.  Also on 18DoughtyStreet.com last night there is an excellent interview with another Tory mayoral hopeful - Victoria Borwick.  Blair Gibbs of The TaxPayers' Alliance interviews Victoria about the cost of Ken Livingstone.  Watch the half-hour programme here.

See below for 18DoughtyStreet's video on Steve Norris' views on the EU.

Nicholas Boles to leave Policy Exchange to focus on mayoral campaign

As Iain Dale has already noted, Nick Boles has decided to step down from Policy Exchange after five very successful years.  He'll be focusing on his bid to become the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London.

Nick will be succeeded by Anthony Browne who will soon be leaving his post as Chief Political Correspondent to The Times.  Mr Browne adds to a heavyweight team that already includes Dean Godson, Stephen King, James O'Shaughnessy and Chairman Charles Moore.

Policy Exchange - which can credibly claim to be the most influential of the centre right think tanks on Project Cameron - focuses on three main themes: localism, the defence of liberal values; and a concern for low income families to have access to better housing and education.

Lee Rotherham complains about Ken Livingstone's latest 'propaganda on the rates'

Tory Mayoral hopeful Lee Rotherham has written to the Advertising Standards Authority this morning about Ken Livingstone's latest propaganda newspaper:

"Last night, I received a copy of The Londoner magazine unsolicited through my letter box. It is dated March 2007, and can also be found in electronic format on the Mayor’s website.

This purports to provide “news”. On its launch, in a press release the Mayor of London said that, “The Londoner newspaper contains lots of useful information for people who live and work the capital.”

This morning I discussed the content of the publication with someone who has attended a NATO course in psychological operations, who indicated that it appears to “primarily be a method of providing biased, politically-orientated material for the purpose of supporting the incumbent of the mayoralty.” In his words, it is “a publicly-funded propaganda sheet rather than a newspaper in the traditional Western sense of the term”. He added, “There is editorial slant, and there is outright political marketing. This is the latter.”

I have forwarded a copy of the paper to an associate, who was a dissident in the former Soviet Union and spent a number of years imprisoned there, for follow-on comments.

In particular, I draw your attention to the following aspects, drawn from a rapid analysis:

• Name frequency. At a quick count, “Mayor” appears 21 times and variants of “Ken Livingstone” appear 10 times. This is a simple trick of repetition for brand recognition.
• The Mayor is given five opportunities to provide short in-piece quotes.
• There are eleven cases where the Mayor is given opportunities to provide lengthy quotes, or where articles directly support stated policy positions.
• The lead article on page one would successfully operate as a press release from the Mayor’s office in support of his budget and policies, and acts as a lead to his editorial.
• Key word analysis highlights the following examples of editorial bias in article construction: “vowed”, “despite”, “enjoy”, “all” (as an emphatic), “advantage”, and “benefit”.
• There are some eleven instances of quotes from third parties being used in a supportive manner; and just one instance of quotes to oppose policy.
• Two full pages are bought by a Mayoral Agency as overt advertising
• Quangos. Transport for London gets four name checks (one as “Your Transport for London”); three quangocrats supply articles.

Our contention, therefore, is that this publication performs neither the public service role nor the public information role which it pretends.

If there was any doubt about bias, 29 Across in the Crossword rather spells out the hidden agenda. It reads, “Fidel Castro’s Island Republic”.

It may be that this falls beyond your remit. I wonder, then, in such an instance if you could tell me from previous experience whether such might fall within the Electoral Commission’s bag? Putting out such strongly biased material during a policy consultation period may be in breach of the law in its own right.

Yours faithfully,

Lee Rotherham."

Related links: TfL spends £78,000,000 pa on "communications" and Roger Evans AM complains to ASA about Livingstone's ad campaign

Angie Bray responds to extension of congestion charge

CCHQ are not commenting on today's extension of the congestion charge but Angie Bray issued the following statement:

"The congestion charge is a crude scheme that took two years to make any money, and has wasted the opportunities that other, fairer and more advanced road pricing schemes could offer to solve London's chronic congestion."

If you don't read ConservativeHome at weekends you might have missed an excellent article on Saturday by Phil Taylor.  Click here to read 'The Congestion Charge has all been wasted.'

Phil Taylor: The Congestion Charge has all been wasted

Today is the fourth anniversary of the start of the London Mayor's Congestion Charging scheme. It seems like a good opportunity to review the performance of this scheme, especially from a financial point of view, after four full years of actual operation. Yesterday also saw Peter Roberts’ petition against a national road pricing scheme on the No 10 e-petitions site go past the 1.5 million mark so it might also be timely to ask what lessons for national road pricing you could draw from the London scheme.

Benefits of the scheme

First of all let us be clear about the benefits of the scheme. As Transport for London's Fourth Annual Monitoring Report states:

"The principal objective of congestion charging is to reduce traffic congestion in and around the charging zone, mainly by reducing the amount of traffic moving to, from and through the charging zone."

So what is the impact of the scheme on congestion? The two graphs below are reproduced from this document. Figure 3.1 shows that congestion, measured in terms of excess delay, fell 30% over pre-charging levels in 2003 but had crept back up to a 22% fall by 2005. This week the Mayor has admitted that the fall in traffic entering the zone is only 20%. This 30% fall in congestion within the zone only, which has since been significantly eroded by TfL's mania for slowing Londoners down with traffic lights and road narrowing schemes, is the only benefit of the scheme the Mayor can realistically claim. He has recently been trying to link the scheme with carbon mitigation in the light of the manifest financial failure of the scheme but this argument is unsustainable.

Keeping Ken on his toes

"One of the bizarre things about London politics is, although there is a Mayor and some kind of city wide authority, there are never regular opinion polls like there are nationally, so voters can never track the ratings of parties. This is one reason why the Mayor is never under much pressure, because he doesn't have an opinion poll lead to defend."

- London Salmon introducing an extensive posting on the results of the Annual London survey.

Is there a way of remedying this accountability problem? Many Londoners think there is more democracy on London government than there actually is, making increased accountability all the more important.

There's nothing too notable in the survey - the Mayor's approval rating is barely changing - but it is worth combing through if you are involved in London politics. One interesting finding though is that the Congestion Charge is the top reason for why people say Livingstone has done a good job, as well as the top reason why people said he had done a bad job!

If you haven't seen it already, 18 Doughty Street have today launched their video attacking Ken Livingstone for his associations with al-Qaradawi and Bob Crow, and his profligarate spending of Londoners' money on PR and irrelevant . His office angrily hit back in the Standard saying 18DS represented the nasty side of politics... must have hit a nerve!

Deputy Editor

Applications open for London Assembly candidates

A number of London constituencies are taking applications from Party members interested in standing in the Greater London Assembly Elections in 2008 and/or being considered for the London list. The selection processes run by the Area Management Executive will take place in March and early April.

The constituencies are Bexley and Bromley, City & East, Croydon and Sutton, Enfield and Haringey, Greenwich and Lewisham, Lambeth and Southwark, Merton and Wandsworth, North East, and West Central.

To apply, fill in this CV template and email it to [email protected] with "GLA Application" in the subject line. You also have to send it in paper form to CCHQ for some reason, addressed to Ian Sanderson, London Regional Director. Applications have to be received by 10.00am on Tuesday 20 February 2007.

Map taken from the excellent Mayor Watch website.

Deputy Editor

Last chance to vote on the attack ad

Click here to watch the video of 18 Doughty Street's judges making the case for three different campaign videos attacking Ken Livingstone's record as Mayor.

• Roger Evans AM wants one focused on all the tax bills Londoners are now faced with.
• Michael Ehioze-Ediae wants to highlight Livingstone's hypocrisy regarding gay rights, democracy and inclusion.
• Joe Loconte wants to show a dinner party of Livingstone's dubious friends - damned by association.

Voting closes this evening and the video will be ready to go online next Tuesday.

Deputy Editor

Borwick targets Livingstone's council tax rises

The red haired Conservative candidate for London Mayor Victoria Borwick has attacked red Ken Livingstone’s plans to increase his share of council tax. If implemented, it would increase the average council tax bill by £304 which would amount to a 147% tax rise in his share of the council tax since he took over the City hall. She reminds us that last year Livingstone said that council tax was ‘as high, in real terms, as people can probably bear’. The plight of low income earners was her main concern as according to her, such taxes fall disproportionately on the poor and thus they will be most affected by the Mayor’s plans.

Borwick identified areas where Livingstone has wasted taxpayers’ money such as hiring consultants at a cost of five million pounds a year whilst also having an economics unit with sixteen members of staff. His trip to Venezuela also came under fire. Before the trip, he was boasting about getting a bargain oil deal with Venezuela but later returned empty-handed after spending £41,000 of tax payers’ money. She further pointed out that he had spent over one hundred million pounds on publicity and public information.

She said that she also agreed with Livingstone that these taxes are unbearable but while she intends to do something about it, the Mayor has done nothing. She has highlighted the Conservatives’ alternative budget that offers to freeze council tax for a year while still providing an extra six hundred British Transport Police.

A full account of her criticisms can be found in her dossier which she published today titled: The Cost Of The London Mayor.