ConservativeHome's London Mayor blog

Boris Johnson set to win Tory nomination by landslide

Later this morning the London Evening Standard will report a ConservativeHome survey of 351 London Tory members and supporters which shows overwhelming support for Boris Johnson.

We asked respondents to our monthly survey: "Who would you like to see as Conservative candidate for London Mayor?"

• 69.6% (238 respondents) said Boris Johnson.
• 9.9% (34) said Andrew Boff.
• 2.3% (8) said Warwick Lightfoot.
• 1.5% (5) said Victoria Borwick.

Another 12% (41) said 'none of the above' and 4.7% (16) didn't know.

Although the survey sample is small the percentages point to a landslide primary victory for Mr Johnson.

Mr Johnson also performs just as well when the views of all Conservatives across the country are counted - a sample four times as large.  That survey put Boris Johnson on 71.3%, Andrew Boff 3.5%, Victoria Borwick 1.3% and Warwick Lightfoot 1.0%.

I issued the following statement to the Standard:

"Some will say that Boris' lead is so overwhelming that the primary process should be scrapped but there is still value in the other candidates testing and challenging him on policy issues.  In America primary elections force frontrunning candidates to develop the range of skills they need for the main election.

I am concerned, however, at recent suggestions by Party Chairman Caroline Spelman that the whole primary process is not intended to pay for itself.  A key aim of the process should be to recruit new financial and campaigning supporters for the party."

The rest of the August ConservativeHome survey results will be published from Thursday.

Who will pay for the primary process?

As well as reserving billboard space for a possible autumn election, Party Chairman Caroline Spelman has written to today's FT to say that the Tories won't profit from the voting mechanism for the mayoral primary:

"Sir, I was disappointed by your report ("The £1.50 vote", August 21) about the Conservative London mayoral selection process, in particular the claim of "suggestions" that the process has been turned into a profit-generating exercise.

The £1.50 ballot line registration charge does not even cover our basic administration costs. Our open primary is an effort to counter growing political apathy. It is a pity you have chosen to portray it in such a cynical light.

Caroline Spelman,
Chairman, Conservative Party"

This letter worries me slightly as I had hoped that a portion of the £1.50 would indeed go to Tory funds.  We already know that certain Labour people want to influence the result by running a campaign to elect the weakest of the four candidates (whoever that might be).  I had hoped that this would be discouraged by the thought that such a campaign would be contributing to Tory coffers.  I certainly don't think it's unreasonable to say to a person who is genuinely interested in nominating an alternative to Ken Livingstone that part of the cost of their txt vote would go to helping elect that person.  I'm waiting to hear further explanation from CCHQ and will post again when I hear more...

ConservativeHome reporters wanted for mayoral hustings

Confirming our post of last Friday the Conservative Party has issued information about the mayoral hustings:

"The Conservative Party has confirmed the dates for their London Mayoral hustings. The Conservative Party has selected four excellent candidates to contest the London-wide open primary. Any voter in London can register to take part in the open primary which will decide the Conservative candidate for the May 2008 Mayoral election.
 
The hustings are being held around London and all Londoners are invited to attend. To book a place at a husting voters are asked to email [email protected] or telephone Emma on 0207 984 8152. The hustings provide an opportunity for Londoners to question the candidates after hearing what each would do as London’s Mayor.
 
The hustings will be:

• Monday 10 September 18.30 - Thames Room, Park Plaza Riverbank, 18 Albert Embankment SE1 7JT
• Tuesday 11 September 19.30 - Lambourne Room, Town Hall, High Road, Ilford IG1 1DD
• Wednesday 12 September 19.30 - Winston Churchill Hall, Manor Farm Site, Pinn Way, Ruislip, Middx HA4 7QL
• Friday 14 September 19.30 - Open Door Community Centre, Keevil Drive, Beaumont Road, London SW19 6TF"

If you would like to report on one of these hustings meetings - in the same way ConservativeHome readers covered the 2005 leadership hustings - please email me.

New attack on Johnson paints him as Tebbit in a clown's costume

The left-wing Compass group today gives a taste of the attack that Boris Johnson can expect should he become the Tory nominee for Mayor of London.  Compass attempt to paint Mr Johnson as Norman Tebbit in a clown's costume.  The Guardian highlights the attempt to substantiate Mr Johnson as holding sexist and out-of-date views and likely, therefore, to damage the 'progressive consensus' of London:

"The dossier's charges range from his "enthusiastic" support for the Iraq war (where he once claimed there had been only 150 casualties) and George Bush, to his opposition to the Kyoto treaty on climate change, the minimum wage and the public smoking ban. Mr Johnson also supports fox and stag hunting, grammar schools and section 28 - Tory legislation outlawing the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools.

His risque jokes as a magazine and newspaper columnist are also in Compass's sights. It cites instances when he referred to black people as "piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles"; accused New Guinea of "orgies of cannibalism" and insulted both Portsmouth and Liverpool - the latter offence prompting Michael Howard to force an apology, even though, as editor of the Spectator, Mr Johnson had not personally penned the offending editorial.

As motoring columnist for GQ magazine Mr Johnson has also committed to print his full share of sexist remarks, referring to a sports car he test-drove as "the swishest, fastest, most chick-pulling Lotus ever devised", while in a Ferrari he felt that "the whole county of Hampshire was lying back and opening her well-bred legs to be ravished by the Italian stallion"."

Who can doubt that Ken Livingstone himself is behind these coordinated attacks that began with attempts to portray Mr Johnson as a racist?

Yesterday's Evening Standard noted that Mr Johnson had been in the USA to research ideas for his campaign.  He visited Los Angeles and studied the city's tough approach to drugs.  LA residents found guilty of drug offences face jail if they don't agree to rehab.  Writing on Platform 10 yesterday Victoria Borwick promised New York-style policing for London.

5pm Wednesday update: Boris Johnson has issued a statement to PinkNews: "This is a measure of the desperation of Ken and his cronies. They have gone through 20 years of articles in the hope of finding any phrase they can distort to the point of giving a completely false impression of what I believe. Londoners deserve a positive campaign and positive candidate. This shows exactly why we need a new approach to governing London."

Hustings meetings - dates and venues

These are the times and venues for the mayoral hustings meetings (to be fully confirmed on Monday morning). I don't yet have information on how you apply for tickets to attend them - or whether they are ticketed events at all...

1. Monday 10 September 6.30 pm, Thames Room, Park Plaza Riverbank, 18 Albert Embankment SE1 7JT
2. Tuesday 11 September, 7.30 pm Lambourne Room, Town Hall, High Road, Ilford IG1 1DD
3. Wednesday 12 September, 7.30 pm Winston Churchill Hall, Mannor Farm Site, Pinn Way, Ruislip, Middx HA4 7QL
4. Friday 14 September, 7.30 pm Open Door Community Centre, Keevil Drive, Beaumont Road, London SW19 6TF

Phil Taylor: Why is London's public transport so broken?

Phil Taylor is an Ealing councillor and runs one of ConservativeHome's favourite blogs.

At the end of July Transport for London's (TfL’s) Annual Report and Accounts was published without fanfare on the their website.  TfL was formed, along with the GLA and the London Mayor, by the 1999 GLA Act and is in charge of all public transport in London except for mainline rail services.  In July 2003 London Underground, the Tube, became a part of TfL.  TfL's 2003 figures were restated to include the Tube so we now have 5 years worth of comparable figures to pore over, an audit trail that makes it increasingly hard for the Mayor to hide the bodies.  In this article I try to unearth them. 

Subsidy

The complaints about London's public transport are many and loud.  It is way too expensive, the Tube is overcrowded and dilapidated, buses are vandalised with drivers who often don't drive well and are unable to control the behaviour of hordes of young people travelling for free and adults who refuse to pay.  At the same time the system is massively subsidised.  The scale of this subsidy is quite shocking.  In the last five years London's public transport system has swallowed £12 billion of external support.   

The amount of subsidy that TfL has spent over the last five years is simply awesome.  The main source of this funding is the Treasury, which provide both revenue and capital grants.  There are some other minor sources of grants plus a small contribution from the GLA precept although the Mayor has been giving TfL less and less cash each year.  It is only £12 million per annum now.  The idea that chancellor Alistair Darling is going to keep sending this wave of money to London in the face of a tight Comprehensive Spending Review in 2008 is a little unlikely so a crunch will come unless Darling decides that London's votes are worth the price. 

The Mayor does not talk much about this subsidy but then he almost never talks about the cost of anything unless he is forced to.  He talks about his historic 5 year funding deal with the Government and the extra buses he has bought and Tube renovation projects.  But the idea that this subsidy is funding capital spending is largely a myth.  Pretty much £8 billion of the £12 billion of subsidies have gone in supporting the running costs of TfL leaving only a third of the cash available for capital projects. 

New Nation is latest to join attack on "racist" Boris Johnson

The concerted attack on Boris Johnson by key figures within London's African and Caribbean communities continues with strong words from the New Nation newspaper.  It lists the quotations below and then, in a double page spread on pages two and three of its latest edition, uses strong words to attack the Tory mayoral hopeful.

Here is a selection of the New Nation's attack lines:

• "A history of racist outbursts."
• "Boris Johnson's history of making lurid remarks..."
• "A man who holds such abhorrent views on race."
• "Derogatory remarks that could easily have come straight out of colonial Britain."

The Nation's comment piece concludes in this way:

"Johnson is an intelligent man and far too clever for things he does not mean to slip out accidentally.  Talk of cannibals, 'water melon smiles' and 'piccanninies' from a man who edited The Spectator for seven years is no accident and says a lot about him.  We may not agree with everything Ken Livingstone has done throughout his term as Mayor, but one area where he has consistently shown good form is that of race... If the Tories are serious about courting the black and minority ethnic vote they will need to find a candidate with Livingstone's credentials, otherwise who we back during the election becomes far too much of a no-contest.  Putting up a candidate with the record of Johnson, however, is nothing less than an insult and it is worrying that they can't see that."

Boris Johnson has said that he "loathes racism in all its forms" and a number of Tory bloggers have come to his defence:

• Phil Taylor has claimed that some of Mr Johnson's critics are in the pay of the Mayor.
• Iain Dale noted how people were leaving comments on his blog that  appeared "in exactly the same order and language as a list Ken Livingstone's spin doctors distributed to the ethnic media".
• James Cleverly described Doreen Lawrence's remarks as "unfair and unjustified".

Is Ken right on Boris?

Yesterday morning Ken Livingstone told the Today programme that Boris Johnson "is the most formidable opponent I will face in my political career." He described Boris Johnson as a "charming and engaging rogue" who makes Norman Tebbit "look like a cuddly liberal." For someone who has traded on his image rather than his policies Livingstone seemed surprisingly keen to move on to policies saying "I want to get onto the policy...I mean this is not a sort of Celebrity Big Mayor, it's a serious issue about how you run the city."

In the Times this morning Peter Riddell acknowledges the threat posed by Boris Johnson but says Ken Livingstone's biggest challenge will come from himself:

Mr Livingstone is vulnerable because he is so familiar. It is now 26 years since he became leader of the GLC. The old “People’s Ken” act is wearing a little thin. He is a bit old to be trying to be Hugo Chávez, and can, at times, be grand in dealing with his critics – though his impatience with some on the Greater London Authority is understandable. He has been a bold mayor, notably over the congestion charge, where the Government has followed his lead. And he has, for all his faults, provided a distinctive voice for a diverse London.

Riddell says there is still much to criticise in Livingstone's record. But they need an opponent with "a proven executive record and mastery of the details, who can challenge Mr Livingstone on the nitty-gritty of policy". Something he does not believe Johnson can do, saying that he is "the latest in a long line of Tory cads, among them Bob Boothby and Alan Clark, noted for their unreliability and self-indulgence".

This is unfair on Johnson. He may be a colourful character but there is no doubt that he is also a highly intelligent man. What remains to be seen is the extent to which he will engage his intelligence to immerse himself in the detail of policy and to master the arguments

Boris Johnson enjoys early poll lead

I overlooked a finding within last Friday's YouGov survey that will give some hope to Boris Johnson's mayoral bid.  Amongst the London residents who took part the Henley MP led Ken Livingstone by 46% to 40% in a straight one-to-one.  With only 170 respondents in the unweighted sample the numbers need to be treated very cautiously but given that the overall poll gave Labour a 9% advantage it is promising.

In a recent post for the Social Affairs Unit blog, Harry Phibbs set out some policies that could help Boris to defeat Ken Livingstone:

• A big reduction in the Mayor's £300 council tax precept.  Phibbs recommends cutting City Hall staffing levels back to where they were in 2000.
• An end to the Uxbridge Road tram.
• An end to the tower blocks that are (apparently) ruining London's skyline. 
• A return to the Routemaster?
• The promotion of competitive sport.
• An imaginative idea for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

Phibbs concludes his list of recommendations with an encouragement to recruit high quality executive figures to transform London:

"Johnson will need to recruit the right people to help him. In February last year Bill Bratton, the former head of the New York Police Department came to visit London. Boris should persuade him to come and stay and set up the sort of zero tolerance policing which achieved a fall in crime of two thirds in New York over a decade.  On transport Professor John Hibbs might help sort out the buses, Ken Irvine the tube. When it comes to the green agenda Boris has a head start - he can ask his environmentalist father Stanley for the odd tip. Stanley might even give advice for free."

2nd August update: UK Polling Report has this post on the YouGov poll.