A perhaps interesting diversion from all that American election stuff going on, anybody following the London elections?
For the Mayor, it’s clearly going to be a close-run race between Boris Johnson (Conservative incumbent) and Ken Livingstone (Labour and Mayor before Boris).
For the London Assembly, all the constuencies are up for grabs - the Tories have a plurality but I imagine that’ll be hacked down to size this time round.
Any predictions?
I think Boris Johnson will win it - Livingstone may have been running high but I think he’s made a few too many gaffs lately that have put people off.
Personally I think it should go back to Livingston. Not that I am a supporter just I think it’s good to swap the position rather than keep the incumbent. That should keep them sharp.
Having worked in London for the last 15 years I have actually not noticed any difference between the reign of Ken or Boris. Of course they say different things but from a feet on the ground perspective I have been unable to tell the difference.
Of course I could say the same thing about the majority of leadership/party changes with regard to the UK.
The two differences I noticed have been that Boris instituted bicycles around the city, increased Oyster card fees and he said that the minimum wage should be increased for city workers. He also cancelled the Rise anti-racism festival.
Ken introduced the congestion charge and bendy buses. He’s also a socialist, so I’ll probably vote for him. Not sure whether to go Trade Unionist or Green though.
Edit: Oh, Trade Unionist group is anti-EU. I’ll go for Greens.
Double edit: So are the Greens… Not as markedly though. I may just vote Labour.
Yeah I actually I have to give the bikes to Boris. They are a noticeable change. Not that I have used them and I am unsure of just how successful the scheme has been.
As Amanset points out with respect to the bikes, some of Boris’ “successes” are actually continuations (or implementations of) Livingstone policies. It will be interesting to see what Boris does when he has to come up with his own stuff.
It’s likely to come down to which of the two keystone policies go over best. Ken wants to cut transport fees. Boris wants to cut your council tax. It’s interesting that these policies play to their respective geographical constituencies - according to the electoral map last time, Boris won the outer areas of London handily (where quite a few people will use cars to get around, not public transport) whereas Ken did better in the inner areas of London. A lot will depend on getting the vote out in these respective areas as a result.
It could be quite a tight thing in the end, this mayoral campaign, which is a shame as a massive mullering for Boris will likely kill once and for all his ability to become PM (which has long been the rumour - that Boris is trying to build a profile through London that will support him getting straight into cabinet should he return to Westminster, with an eye to deposing Cameron). That said, I note that Boris has been pulling away in recent opinion polls, so it will likely be the case that he gets back in.
I’ll be voting for Ken - in the hopes that the mullering comes to pass and the people of London can save the rest of the UK from a Boris run at PM. I’m given to understand from the press that his public buffoon like persona belies a sharp political operator but the UK is already fading as a world power and we can do without our own Berlusconi type to take us further into laughing stock status.
My impression of Boris is that he is sharper than he appears but not as sharp as his supporters would like us to think. Whenever he’s made a gaffe I picture him like a cat nonchalently licking its paws after falling off something “I meant to do that.”
I look forward to a Labour win. If only to see the eventual inevitable Tory abolishing of the London government. Although I no longer live there, during my time in London, the GLA was the bane of my existence. Just hand over the entire area to the London Cooperation.
It’s the municipal local government for the City of London (the tiny Square Mile which is the original medieval city), a local body that had been in existence since the 1100s.
Its proper name is the ‘City of London Corporation’
What is specifically objectionable about it? Please try to explain so a foreigner can understand. I know that metro government for London, in whatever form tried, has always been controversial for some reason, like when the GLC was abolished. But I’m not clear on why.
I was going to leave this to others, as I’ve been out of the loop of London politics since I left the city 10 years ago. But since there are no answers, I’ll give it a shot.
I don’t know about the present GLA, specifically, but there are various answers you’d get about London metro government.
The “sensible” arguments in favour seem to boil down to the fact that it is a large but cohesive city, and a structure of dividing it into 30-odd boroughs means there are limited democratic means to influence what happens to the city as a whole. Without something like the GLA I, as a voter in Lambeth borough, have no way to change the way London works, because other voters in Kensington & Chelsea control that part of the city and so on. And yet I don’t live in Lambeth, I live in London.
An argument against would be that overall metro government amounts to a completely unnecessary and expensive layer of bureaucracy. After all, most of the issues that officials need to deal with involve collecting trash and ensuring streetlamps light up. Each borough has its own set of demographics, and surely the people there are best placed to decide how that area should be run?
In the end, the GLC controversy was political, though - GLC leader Ken Livingstone (currently mayoral candidate) was popular with some sections of the London population and was, back in the 80s, something of a left-wing firebrand. The Thatcher government did not like left-wing firebrands very much, so pushed for the abolition of the GLC, and succeeded.
Of course, that’s not the reason they gave, and I’m not trying to editorialise here. But the suggestion is that Thatcher did not like the idea of an elected left-wing organisation which could claim to represent close to 20% of the population of the entire UK.
As I understand it, Boris has been a strong supporter of Rupert Murdoch, and this has gotten some amount of media attention. This could affect the election, especially if he becomes more firmly tied to the effort to make the police stop investigating the newspapers.
Londoners, I have a question re the mayoral elections: who the fuck is Siobhan Benita? I see from news of early results (London mayor: Boris Johnson wins second term by tight margin - BBC News) that she is in fourth place in first choice votes, ahead of proper candidate Brian Paddick of the Lib Dems. To be honest, she first came to my attention on Betfair, where she seemed to have remarkably low odds for a minor candidate (by which I mean 100-1 rather than the usual 1000-1). Seemed strange to me, but here she is beating an established party candidate in first choice votes.
She’s an independent candidate - her background is a Whitehall civil servant.
She’s personable, comes across as intelligent and has enough of a background in policy formation that her manifesto isn’t obviously stupid in the way that independent candidates’ tend to be. She impressed a number of political commentators and thus got more publicity than most independents ever do. Had she been accorded a party political broadcast (as the Lib Dems were) it’s possible she would have done better.