ConservativeHome's London Mayor blog

What should the next Mayor of London do in his first 100 days in power?

ConservativeHome in conjunction with the London Policy Institute today launches a debate to attempt an answer to this question.  The Mayor of London is one of the most powerful executive positions in British politics with a control of a £12bn budget and substantial responsibilities for policing and transport and with a leading role to play in range of issues of vital importance to the future of London.

James Morris, Director of the London Policy Institute, offers 5 initial suggestions.

1. Take direct responsibility for the fight against violent crime.  Take over the chairmanship of the Metropolitian Police Authority and call high profile, public meeting with the Metropolitian Police Commissioner. Publish specific action plan for combating violent crime and start tackling the problem from day one.  Announce a series of monthly public meetings to track progress on the plan. Call for all Londoners to join in the fight. Make some high profile visits to trouble spots. Get momentum going.
2. Announce radical financial review of the GLA, its statutory bodies including a review of the Mayor's budget. The financial review should examine all aspects the Mayor's remit includng the Met and Transport for London and should deliver preliminary recommendations within the first 100 days. The review should consist of how many is spent, financial transparency and should look for tangible cost savings which can reduce the size of the GLA bureaucracy and free up resources.
3. Appoint new head of Transport for London. This is a crucial first appointment. Needs to be someone with a track record and the drive to take on the challenge of delivering tangible improvements to London's transport system, by investing more wisely, ensuring Cross-Rail happens and is delivered, and accelerating the upgrade of the underground. This will be a tough assigment but will need real focus.
4. Appoint a Mayoral cabinet.  The Mayor should create a cabinet with individuals responsible for particular portfolios. Cabinet members could be drawn both from the London Assembly and outside to bring in expertise and talent to deliver on the Mayoral objectives.  This will send the signal that the Mayor will govern more collegially and send the signal that improvements to London will come through a process of collaboration not Mayoral diktat.
5. Build bridges with the boroughs.  The Mayor cannot deliver without working with the boroughs. Bring in the borough leaders and agree shared priorities.

What would you prioritise?

What London's Labour MPs think of Livingstone...

Harry Phibbs takes a look at Ken Livingstone's relationship with Labour's London MPs.

Livingstone is the Labour candidate for Mayor of London. But what do London's Labour MPs think of him?
Greg Hands has written on CentreRight about the curious incident of the London Labour MPs who signed a letter to The Guardian in support of Livingstone. Despite Livingstone being an official Labour candidate only a quarter of London Labour MPs endorsed him. The rest were like the dogs that Sherlock Holmes recorded didn't bark in the night. Naturally, MPs are busy people. But why might some have been reluctant?

Kate Hoey, the Labour MP for Vauxhall, says of the misuse of London Development Agency Grants: "The Mayor has been consistently misleading the public over the status of this review. It was not independent and it did not clear Lee Jasper or the LDA. People need to wake up about what is happening."

Nick Raynsford, the Labour MP for Greenwich and Woolwich, has criticised the Government for giving Livingstone planning powers for building over 82 feet for giving developers a "perverse incentive" to propose eyesores given Livingstone enthusiasm for tall buildings. Raynsford has also been critical of Livingstone adopting his own foreign policy.

Frank Dobson, the Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras who once stood against Livingstone, says of him: "The better you know him the less you trust him."

Walaa Idris: Candidates like Lightfoot deserve more respect

Walaa Idris is the Chairman of Hans Town Ward in Kensington & Chelsea, and Chairman of her local Resident's Association.

Sometimes I don’t have a clue what’s going on these days. But as a Londoner and someone who follows politics with great interest I feel that the majority of sane and balanced Londoners share the general consensus that our Mayor “Mr. Ken Livingstone” is clearly not the man for London nor is he good for Londoners.

During his management of the capital, it seems that he achieved more bad than good, especially for small businesses and those on low incomes. To him democracy and the democratic process is nothing but a minor inconvenience that he could casually disregard. To him what Londoners want or think does not have a lot of importance or bearing on any matter. He does and shall continue to do as his dictatorship pleases. That alone should give any opponent a vast amount of material to fight him with.

So why are we giving him more than his weight?

Why does it seem as if our leadership is hurdling over themselves to promote him?

At this rate next May the man does not need to lift a figure campaigning, because it has all been done for him.

Petition to scrap third Heathrow runway

Angie Bray, along with other affected Tory Assembly members Tony Arbour, Richard Barnes, Elizabeth Howlett and Andrew Pelling (MP) have started an online petition urging the Mayor to use his influence and powers to persuade the Government to scrap the 3rd runway proposal for Heathrow. The petition will be presented to the Mayor at City Hall when complete. The prayer is:

"We, the undersigned call upon the Mayor of the London to use the influence of his office to persuade the Government to abandon plans to build a third runway, and sixth terminal at Heathrow airport, due to the detrimental effects such an increase in capacity will have on residents of west London who live under the flight paths. An additional runway would result in noise pollution, overloading on local roads and increased air pollution.

Residents already suffer a reduced quality of life, due to the high frequency of aircraft using Heathrow airport. The noise pollution is unrelenting, and air quality is deteriorating rapidly. A third runway will exacerbate these problems.

We also call on the Government to reject the immediate threat of a ‘mixed mode’ option for the existing runways, which would bring the detrimental effects of increased capacity much sooner and have serious safety implications for our over-crowded skies.

There is no better place to start matching the rhetoric on climate change than abolishing the third runway proposal."

Deputy Editor

Aristeides: The Mary Poppins candidate

This is the fifth and final instalment of Aristeides' vision for a London Mayor.

"It's the street tax paid to drunk and drug-ridden panhandlers. It's the squeegee men shaking down the motorist waiting at a light. It's the trash storms, the swirling mass of garbage left by peddlers and panhandlers, and open-air drug bazaars on unclean streets."

These were the words and sentiments used by Rudolph Giuliani when he won the New York Mayoral election in 1993 – the first Republican to do so in decades. Giuliani understood three very important things: that people latch onto quality of life issues; that fixing them is perfectly possible even in the face of hostility, bureaucracy and ridicule; and that doing so brings dynamic and, eventually, revolutionary results. Even though Giuliani lost in his first attempt to become Mayor, once elected on the back of these policies, he won re-election by a landslide. Conservatives forget this lesson at our peril.

The question that remains though is do we have a Giuliani?

Aristeides: A Beautiful City

This is the fourth article in a five-part series this week.

One of those terms that used to be intimately associated with conservatives – whether with a big or a small “C” – was civic pride. In an age where new expressions like “social responsibility” or “environmental awareness” are the favoured concepts, there remains an opportunity for Conservatives to frame their interpretation by ensuring that London’s streets and public places are attractive enough to inspire a greater – even enviable - sense of general wellbeing.

For example, if Dick Whittington were to arrive in London for the first time today, just as an unprecedented number of newcomers will in 2012, he would be surprised to find out that instead of the streets being paved with gold, they are in fact paved with chewing gum. There are very few clearer instances of failure in corporate social responsibility than the case of chewing gum, where manufacturers are so dissociated from the negative social and environmental consequences of their product. Fast food corporations – far from paragons in this field – at least demonstrate an effort by actively sponsoring litter reduction schemes of various kinds. The Mayor would politely request that chewing gum companies contribute to a London-wide scheme for gum disposal and removal. If an appropriate response is not forthcoming, the Mayor will fund and lead a campaign for the introduction of excise duty on gum to enforce the funding of these activities and to discourage gum littering.

Aristeides: London Transport

This is the third article in a five-part series this week.

On Monday, I referred to the sheer dysfunctionality of London’s systems and infrastructure. Surely, nothing could exemplify this better than the London Underground.

To start with, the tube is unutterably filthy. Some parts of it do not look like they have ever been cleaned in all one hundred years of their history. Tube drivers use face masks when they are sealed in cabins, whereas passengers are made to wait for minutes at a time looking over the black dust – half an inch thick – on the tracks and walls. The fact that vermin are ever present on the tracks is treated as a curiosity rather than a cause for preventative action. The trains, benches and escalators are apparently a receptacle for the tens of thousands of free newspapers, distributed daily with barely any thought for their disposal whatsoever.

People might say that there are ‘more important’ things that the Underground need to get right, such as running the trains on time, than cleaning up some dirt, but that is to deny the intimate association between cleanliness and operational functionality: who ever heard of a successful – but filthy – enterprise?

Aristeides: A Safe City

This is the second article in a five-part series this week.

The policing of London is currently in a parlous state. The cringing incompetence of the leadership has sapped the ethos from the force, resulting in an unbelievable sloppiness and nonchalance in respect to crime. Those in charge do not appear to care that police constables can be seen stopping at cash points and carrying Starbucks or bags of McDonalds while in uniform. The once-proud Peelers have been reduced to a day-glo cohort of souped-up lollipop ladies, encouraged to dawdle along in pairs when not form-filling and issuing pro-forma letters of regret that you have been a victim of crime. Surely no police recruit signs up for this? Meanwhile, packs of pubescent wolves prey on the vulnerable at dank, deserted zone 3 stations; youths congregate menacingly on the buses; and a mean, noxious atmosphere prevails in great swathes of the city.

The Conservative mayoral candidate will state that their victory in the election will be a vote of no confidence in the current disgraceful leadership of the Metropolitan police. Sir Ian Blair will be sacked. The new Chief Constable and his team must live in London and must not accept honours until their job is done. Their priorities must include the following: the pursuit of terrorists without fear or favour; installing an ethos of diligence, agility and pride within the force; and a commitment to the techniques and tactics that reduced crime in American cities so successfully in the past decade and a half.

Aristeides: A voice in the wilderness

Over the coming week, Aristeides will provide the policies that he hopes will back up the vision to make London the best city in the world and a fitting host for the Olympic Games when they take place at the end of the next mayoral term. At the end of the week, to add a little magic, he will propose a "Mary Poppins candidate" for Mayor, in other words the candidate who can fly in over the heads of the current worthy but unexceptional candidates and who is practically perfect in every way.

Who could read Darren Caplan’s cry of despondency at the end of last year without wishing to join in and weep with him? Here we are at the beginning of a New Year, yes, still with no ‘striker’ yet in place, no policy program to speak of, and that sinking feeling that Ken will sleepwalk to victory come 2008.  The silence – Darren says – is deafening.

Well, let me be the first to whimper in 2007, and say, Darren, it doesn’t have to be this way. Actually, we still have plenty of time to get things in place – the election is in mid-2008, for goodness’ sake. We can establish a vision for London, and it does not have to be a ‘limited mayoralty’ which, frankly, is not going to entice people to the polls. No, we can put together an ambitious program to wrest the mayoralty from Ken Livingstone’s grasp, with one aim at its core: to make London the best city in the world.

Now, this may provoke some sniggers initially, but the idea is not so far fetched when you think about it. We - speaking for Tory Londoners, here - in a time of far greater mobility than ever before, when we can live in any number of cities, towns and villages, choose to live in this city, and many more choose to work in it. The International Olympic Committee, thanks in large part to Lord Coe and his team’s powers of persuasion, chose to visit us with the largest and most prestigious sporting event in the world. If so many are prepared to vote with their feet, London can’t actually be that far off being the best place to be.

Report Card: Livingstone and the London Assembly members

London Salmon reviews the year that was in London politics from a conservative perspective. See original posts here and here.

Ken Livingstone 

Where to start? Chavez, oil for Oyster, Cuba, Castro, walnut whips, suspension, getting away with suspension, fare increases, council tax increases, Olympic overspend, Metronet getting worse, congestion charge increase, ignored consultations on West London Tram…… Every situation that springs in to mind is associated not with a new policy that will benefit millions of Londoners, but with Ken either making a disgrace of himself and his office, or being very economical with the truth.

The only good thing I can think of on the policy front is the progress on the Low Emissions Zone, which looks like it could be a relatively fair and effective environmental policy.

The other flagship policies have all had holes found in them, average traffic speeds in the congestion charge zone are now at an historical low of just 10mph, whilst air quality has got worse and the tube upgrade is plodding along too slowly.

Overall crime has probably gone down (with stats these days, who can be sure either way?) but violent crime has almost certainly gone up. We’ve also had 9-5 Safer Neighbourhood Teams, ‘rent a shiny jackets’ with no power to enforce the law, and who spend more time filling out forms and drinking tea than preventing anti-social behaviour.

But the real assessment of Ken’s performance comes on the personal front. He managed to get himself suspended for making a Nazi jibe to a Jewish reporter, only to get un-suspended on appeal. He hosted Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez at City Hall, and then tried to visit him in November, only to be stood up by El Presidente. Cuba had to suffice.

He got into a row with the government about the Olympic overspend, and admitted that he is rephasing most of the traffic lights around western extension of the congestion charge, in order to soften up motorists for the February 2007 launch.

In any other city, in any other country, Ken would be very unpopular. Yet he’s still there, and has a habit of defying his critics. Next year will be a crucial moment in his Mayoralty, with the western extension of the congestion charge coming online, and the selection of his Tory opponent for 2008. The points for his disgraces must be balanced with points for his ability to ride out the storms.  6/10

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