Mayor of London & London Assembly Elections
Bear with me, this is a long, long post...
A few days ago I received my postal ballot for the upcoming elections for the Mayor of London, and the London Assembly. Included was a handy booklet about the candidates and "what they say" - mini manifestos in other words. I'll not bother with the London Assembly elections, but here is my take on the candidates, in the order in which they were presented in the booklet, which can be found here.
Richard Barnbrook, British National Party
I've made my feelings known about the odious cretins that make up this party. I am sickened and ashamed that they praise my grandfather's generation in the same breath that they adopt the very ideology that my grandfather's generation fought to save this country from. However, it is not fair to liken the BNP to the Nazis. The BNP have never advocated the use of gas chambers, and the Nazis are far more stylish. But I digress...
Mr Barnbrook asks us to "Remember London the way it used to be? Clean, friendly and safe." Bollocks. The London of 1950s and 1960s was grimy and dangerous. There are people still alive today (presumably those who remember this utopia) who will remember the fogs that used to kill people. The BNP are not the only ones to ask us to imagine a rose-tinted past that never existed (English Democrats are coming up), but unlike the English Democrats they have no problem celebrating "Christian" festivals like St Patrick's Day (see statement from Builder Ken Seager in the booklet). Last I checked the Irish weren't British, so how that squares with their putting Britain first policy I have no idea.
Speaking of the booklet, the "not racist, just common sense" BNP have only white faces in their manifesto. I am sure this is just a coincidence...
Mr Barnbrook promises to put real Londoners first, but declines to explain who they are. Do I count? I am a recent arrival of four years. London enough? What about black people born and raised in London - are they real Londoners? As with the refusal to define "British" in "putting British people first", I fear the BNP will pick and choose who are white British enough to count as Londoners.
Policies? No specifics mentioned, but out of eight target areas, two of them the London Mayor has no say in (stop immigration, build a better NHS) and for another three minimal influence (zero tolerance on crime and yobs, British jobs for British workers, better education for all our people).
High on rhetoric, low on value, with policies that cannot be enacted by the London Mayor - if you have to fall back on your national manifesto in order to pad out your London manifesto, then your ideas are as bankrupt as the Party's morals.
Lindsey German, The Left List
Our only Socialist candidate for the Mayor's office (Labour doesn't count), Lindsey has some good ideas, and I'm behind her on her stance that Londoners should not have to subsidise the Olympics. This is what we were promised in the bid, and yet as soon as the games were secured our Council Tax was increased to pay for the games.
She also makes the excellent point that, despite the credit crunch, this is still a wealthy city. There really is no excuse for much of the impoverishment, nor the profiteering that has prevented people from getting affordable housing, affordable public transport etc. Our tax money has been handed over in spades to private companies that have offered no tangible returns (or, as in the case of Metronet, gone bust) yet the boardroom men profit handsomely. As with a few other candidates she is against Heathrow expansion and for enforcing the London living wage (all good things). But as with the BNP, she has policies that cannot be enforced by the London Mayor. Whilst her consistent stance against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are testament to character, she simply cannot "bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan" nor "spend the money used for war on welfare".
Overall, nice ideas, but other, larger parties have similar, and greater prospects of election.
Boris Johnson, Conservative
Boris started off as the joke candidate. The buffoon who was funny. The joke isn't so funny now, Boris is a serious candidate and in some polls ahead.
Boris has his priorities right. Policing (including gun and knife crime), green issues and housing are his main areas of focus, and at the moment I'd say they are the three most important issues in London (but not in that order). Boris impresses by being unafraid to link casual, low-level disorder to more serious crime. A culture of lawlessness and impunity breeds contempt for the law, and a sense that you are untouchable. Sort it out before people become "criminals" and watch the crime rates tumble, but only if combined with a hard crackdown on serious crime from the other side. A law and order pincer movement. Boris has also stated that he would chair the Metropolitan Police Authority and make himself personally responsible for policing in the capital. Again, a good idea.
But I worry that although these sound like the right things to say, that's all they are. There isn't much meat on the bones here. After reading each campaign promise my reaction has been "how?" Admittedly, I can say that for many candidates, but Boris is an unknown quantity, best known for a comedic, bumbling image, with a habit of putting his foot in it and making regrettable statements. I question his ability to be quasi-statesman like, and that gives me serious cause for concern, despite otherwise excellent ideas.
Siân Berry, Green Party
I used to think the Green Party were single issue. Strong on the environment, but no ideas elsewhere. I'm pleased to have watched the Green Party move from a single issue cause to a mature, socially aware party more akin to the Green parties on the continent. I will state publicly that I have voted Green in the past, both in London and in Scotland, for local and national elections (my party list vote in the Scottish Parliamentary elections for example).
Ms Berry's manifesto is one of the most concrete. She gives clearly stated goals, and none of them are of the general "make London X" (how?) type. Socially, there are pledges to help make London more affordable (specific reductions in transport fares, increases in minimum wages, and a target of 60% of all new build homes to be affordable housing), plus, as you would expect, several environmental targets. I'm particularly impressed with the pledge of 100,000 roofs to have solar panels by 2015.
I haven't made my mind up yet, but Ms Berry is definitely one of the front runner's for my vote. Mitigating against her is the fact that the Greens are still viewed as being a fringe party, and recent press stories stating that she wants to turn London into Amsterdam with legalised cannabis and prostitution have probably horrified enough people to turn them off the party.
Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat
I'm generally a Lib Dem supporter, but have fallen away from them in recent years as the party started to lose focus. However, Brian Paddick has always struck me as the strongest mayoral candidate, as not only a lifelong Londoner, but a police officer who went from working the beat on London's streets to being one of the top officers at the Met. He knows and understands how to police the capital, how crime operates here, and what the police need, and crucially do not need. Crime is his top priority, and he is the only candidate to offer to resign if he fails to push the crime rates down.
He points out that we pay high transport costs for a poor service, and wants to improve this, particularly increasing bus services to those areas that are poorly served by the Tube service. Housing and the environment are also high on his agenda.
On those two issues though, he is slightly nebulous beyond promising to "improve" things. I am hoping that it is just that the major focus of his manifesto is on crime, and so it is crowding out other details, rather than that he has no firm ideas in mind.
Gerard Batten, UK Independence Party
Back to single issue parties, and less objectionable than the BNP, we have the UKIP candidate. I've previously been critical of UKIP on this blog, and I'm going to be critical again. But first, the good points.
Law and order is the first priority for Mr Batten, and he probably has the best soundbite on this issue - "The police should only have one target - to reduce crime." So they should. With policemen spending almost half their day on filling out forms rather than policing, any move to rebalance this is very welcome.
His transport policy seems a little odd. Mr Batten promises to "get London moving" but seems to think that scrapping the Congestion charge and reducing parking restrictions will do this. He seems to have no experience of driving in London before the Congestion Charge (gridlocked from West London to City Centre) and after (I can get to work faster than on the Tube). Fewer parking restrictions? More please, there are some days it is difficult to get the car down our road due to the parking.
Sadly, as with the BNP and the Left List, the concept of "London election" has eluded Mr Batten, who appears to think that a vote for him is a "NO to mass immigration" (the London Mayor has no powers over immigration), "NO to the Lisbon Treaty" (the London Mayor has no say in the foreign policy of the United Kingdom, so has no influence on this issue) and a "NO to the European Union" (see previous point).
Ultimately, I'm going to say NO to Mr Batten.
Alan Craig, The Christian Choice
What can I say about Mr Craig? He seems really nice. His heart is in the right place. It is a refreshing change to find someone willing to help refugees, rather than wanting to lynch them.
However, I can't support a religious candidate. I don't mean a candidate who is religious. I can't support a candidate who is standing on a religious platform. I do not wish to live under a Christian religious regime any more than I want to live under a Jewish, Islamic, Hindu or Buddhist regime. The job of government is secular. If it is avowedly pro a religious viewpoint, it cannot help but be against another religion, or those without religion.
As an example, campaign pledge number two for Mr Craig is to oppose the building of the so-called "mega-mosque" in West Ham. Firstly, is that something that really merits being your number two concern? Secondly, I don't think the objection is the size of the mosque, or has anything to do with the environment. If it were a "mega-cathedral", would Mr Craig oppose it?
I wish Mr Craig the best of luck, from his manifesto it appears he does sterling work for the people of Newham, but I have to say no.
Matt O'Connor, English Democrats
Sigh... Once upon a time I supported the English Democrats. That was until I dared to have an opinion and publicly state that I supported them. At that point, the members of the forum "Cross of St George" decided that I was "another uppity, ill-mannered, uneducated Scot" who should "fuck off back to Scotland". Thanks. You lost me as a supporter that day.
Great to see not much has changed with the English Democrats. An anti-Scottish ticket is an odd one to run on, particularly for a party that claims to stand for "integration, not segregation" but there you go. As with other fringe parties, the English Democrats believe that the powers of the London mayor extend to over-ruling the will of Parliament, and deciding exactly how the tax money of the United Kingdom is spent.
So, we have the usual falsehoods of "£13.5billion of YOUR money bankrolls Scotland every single year." Yes, and? How much bankrolls Wales? Or England? Scotland is not independent. Grant Scotland independence and no money flows there. Oh, and about that massive oil wealth you've enjoyed for 50 years. You're very welcome.
See, the problem with a UNITED Kingdom, is that the tax money belongs to everyone. If today the English Democrats complain about UK wide tax money being spent on Scotland, what next? Will they complain about it going to Yorkshire? Will Middlesex begin to be unhappy with THEIR money going to Essex? What should we do if the City of London complain about their taxes going to help the City of Westminster? It is a common pool. This is how it works.
Like the BNP, the English Democrats call for a rose-tinted nostalgia of an England that only existed in the minds of poets. But what would I know? I'm just an uppity, ill-mannered Scot who should fuck off back to Scotland.
Ken Livingstone, Labour
Our incumbent mayor. "In the last eight years London has become one of the world's most successful cities with more jobs, thousands more police officers, big improvements in buses, good community relations, winning the Olympics and adopting successful environmental policies."
Except it doesn't seem that way Ken. There is a reason every other candidate has gone on about crime. This city doesn't feel safe, these thousands of extra police officers seem invisible. The Olympics? I never wanted them, and lo and behold I'm being asked to pay for them, when I was promised I wouldn't. The cost has spiralled, thanks to the failure to include VAT in the bid (a deliberate attempt to make it sound less costly). Worse, money is being stolen from arts and sports to fund this, impoverishing us culturally, and seriously hampering our ability to do well at the very Olympics we are bankrupting ourselves over.
Mr Livingstone has done many good things. I support the Congestion Charge and bringing rail services under London's control. But things aren't all rosy, and I don't think he has the answers. He has been Mayor for eight years. A two termer. Like in the US election, it is time for a change.
So who am I voting for? I have two votes, a first choice and a second choice. You can no doubt tell from my appraisal of the candidates that my two favoured candidates are Siân Berry of the Green Party, and Brian Paddick of the Liberal Democrats. I'm just not sure what order. Yet.
A few days ago I received my postal ballot for the upcoming elections for the Mayor of London, and the London Assembly. Included was a handy booklet about the candidates and "what they say" - mini manifestos in other words. I'll not bother with the London Assembly elections, but here is my take on the candidates, in the order in which they were presented in the booklet, which can be found here.
Richard Barnbrook, British National Party
I've made my feelings known about the odious cretins that make up this party. I am sickened and ashamed that they praise my grandfather's generation in the same breath that they adopt the very ideology that my grandfather's generation fought to save this country from. However, it is not fair to liken the BNP to the Nazis. The BNP have never advocated the use of gas chambers, and the Nazis are far more stylish. But I digress...
Mr Barnbrook asks us to "Remember London the way it used to be? Clean, friendly and safe." Bollocks. The London of 1950s and 1960s was grimy and dangerous. There are people still alive today (presumably those who remember this utopia) who will remember the fogs that used to kill people. The BNP are not the only ones to ask us to imagine a rose-tinted past that never existed (English Democrats are coming up), but unlike the English Democrats they have no problem celebrating "Christian" festivals like St Patrick's Day (see statement from Builder Ken Seager in the booklet). Last I checked the Irish weren't British, so how that squares with their putting Britain first policy I have no idea.
Speaking of the booklet, the "not racist, just common sense" BNP have only white faces in their manifesto. I am sure this is just a coincidence...
Mr Barnbrook promises to put real Londoners first, but declines to explain who they are. Do I count? I am a recent arrival of four years. London enough? What about black people born and raised in London - are they real Londoners? As with the refusal to define "British" in "putting British people first", I fear the BNP will pick and choose who are white British enough to count as Londoners.
Policies? No specifics mentioned, but out of eight target areas, two of them the London Mayor has no say in (stop immigration, build a better NHS) and for another three minimal influence (zero tolerance on crime and yobs, British jobs for British workers, better education for all our people).
High on rhetoric, low on value, with policies that cannot be enacted by the London Mayor - if you have to fall back on your national manifesto in order to pad out your London manifesto, then your ideas are as bankrupt as the Party's morals.
Lindsey German, The Left List
Our only Socialist candidate for the Mayor's office (Labour doesn't count), Lindsey has some good ideas, and I'm behind her on her stance that Londoners should not have to subsidise the Olympics. This is what we were promised in the bid, and yet as soon as the games were secured our Council Tax was increased to pay for the games.
She also makes the excellent point that, despite the credit crunch, this is still a wealthy city. There really is no excuse for much of the impoverishment, nor the profiteering that has prevented people from getting affordable housing, affordable public transport etc. Our tax money has been handed over in spades to private companies that have offered no tangible returns (or, as in the case of Metronet, gone bust) yet the boardroom men profit handsomely. As with a few other candidates she is against Heathrow expansion and for enforcing the London living wage (all good things). But as with the BNP, she has policies that cannot be enforced by the London Mayor. Whilst her consistent stance against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are testament to character, she simply cannot "bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan" nor "spend the money used for war on welfare".
Overall, nice ideas, but other, larger parties have similar, and greater prospects of election.
Boris Johnson, Conservative
Boris started off as the joke candidate. The buffoon who was funny. The joke isn't so funny now, Boris is a serious candidate and in some polls ahead.
Boris has his priorities right. Policing (including gun and knife crime), green issues and housing are his main areas of focus, and at the moment I'd say they are the three most important issues in London (but not in that order). Boris impresses by being unafraid to link casual, low-level disorder to more serious crime. A culture of lawlessness and impunity breeds contempt for the law, and a sense that you are untouchable. Sort it out before people become "criminals" and watch the crime rates tumble, but only if combined with a hard crackdown on serious crime from the other side. A law and order pincer movement. Boris has also stated that he would chair the Metropolitan Police Authority and make himself personally responsible for policing in the capital. Again, a good idea.
But I worry that although these sound like the right things to say, that's all they are. There isn't much meat on the bones here. After reading each campaign promise my reaction has been "how?" Admittedly, I can say that for many candidates, but Boris is an unknown quantity, best known for a comedic, bumbling image, with a habit of putting his foot in it and making regrettable statements. I question his ability to be quasi-statesman like, and that gives me serious cause for concern, despite otherwise excellent ideas.
Siân Berry, Green Party
I used to think the Green Party were single issue. Strong on the environment, but no ideas elsewhere. I'm pleased to have watched the Green Party move from a single issue cause to a mature, socially aware party more akin to the Green parties on the continent. I will state publicly that I have voted Green in the past, both in London and in Scotland, for local and national elections (my party list vote in the Scottish Parliamentary elections for example).
Ms Berry's manifesto is one of the most concrete. She gives clearly stated goals, and none of them are of the general "make London X" (how?) type. Socially, there are pledges to help make London more affordable (specific reductions in transport fares, increases in minimum wages, and a target of 60% of all new build homes to be affordable housing), plus, as you would expect, several environmental targets. I'm particularly impressed with the pledge of 100,000 roofs to have solar panels by 2015.
I haven't made my mind up yet, but Ms Berry is definitely one of the front runner's for my vote. Mitigating against her is the fact that the Greens are still viewed as being a fringe party, and recent press stories stating that she wants to turn London into Amsterdam with legalised cannabis and prostitution have probably horrified enough people to turn them off the party.
Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat
I'm generally a Lib Dem supporter, but have fallen away from them in recent years as the party started to lose focus. However, Brian Paddick has always struck me as the strongest mayoral candidate, as not only a lifelong Londoner, but a police officer who went from working the beat on London's streets to being one of the top officers at the Met. He knows and understands how to police the capital, how crime operates here, and what the police need, and crucially do not need. Crime is his top priority, and he is the only candidate to offer to resign if he fails to push the crime rates down.
He points out that we pay high transport costs for a poor service, and wants to improve this, particularly increasing bus services to those areas that are poorly served by the Tube service. Housing and the environment are also high on his agenda.
On those two issues though, he is slightly nebulous beyond promising to "improve" things. I am hoping that it is just that the major focus of his manifesto is on crime, and so it is crowding out other details, rather than that he has no firm ideas in mind.
Gerard Batten, UK Independence Party
Back to single issue parties, and less objectionable than the BNP, we have the UKIP candidate. I've previously been critical of UKIP on this blog, and I'm going to be critical again. But first, the good points.
Law and order is the first priority for Mr Batten, and he probably has the best soundbite on this issue - "The police should only have one target - to reduce crime." So they should. With policemen spending almost half their day on filling out forms rather than policing, any move to rebalance this is very welcome.
His transport policy seems a little odd. Mr Batten promises to "get London moving" but seems to think that scrapping the Congestion charge and reducing parking restrictions will do this. He seems to have no experience of driving in London before the Congestion Charge (gridlocked from West London to City Centre) and after (I can get to work faster than on the Tube). Fewer parking restrictions? More please, there are some days it is difficult to get the car down our road due to the parking.
Sadly, as with the BNP and the Left List, the concept of "London election" has eluded Mr Batten, who appears to think that a vote for him is a "NO to mass immigration" (the London Mayor has no powers over immigration), "NO to the Lisbon Treaty" (the London Mayor has no say in the foreign policy of the United Kingdom, so has no influence on this issue) and a "NO to the European Union" (see previous point).
Ultimately, I'm going to say NO to Mr Batten.
Alan Craig, The Christian Choice
What can I say about Mr Craig? He seems really nice. His heart is in the right place. It is a refreshing change to find someone willing to help refugees, rather than wanting to lynch them.
However, I can't support a religious candidate. I don't mean a candidate who is religious. I can't support a candidate who is standing on a religious platform. I do not wish to live under a Christian religious regime any more than I want to live under a Jewish, Islamic, Hindu or Buddhist regime. The job of government is secular. If it is avowedly pro a religious viewpoint, it cannot help but be against another religion, or those without religion.
As an example, campaign pledge number two for Mr Craig is to oppose the building of the so-called "mega-mosque" in West Ham. Firstly, is that something that really merits being your number two concern? Secondly, I don't think the objection is the size of the mosque, or has anything to do with the environment. If it were a "mega-cathedral", would Mr Craig oppose it?
I wish Mr Craig the best of luck, from his manifesto it appears he does sterling work for the people of Newham, but I have to say no.
Matt O'Connor, English Democrats
Sigh... Once upon a time I supported the English Democrats. That was until I dared to have an opinion and publicly state that I supported them. At that point, the members of the forum "Cross of St George" decided that I was "another uppity, ill-mannered, uneducated Scot" who should "fuck off back to Scotland". Thanks. You lost me as a supporter that day.
Great to see not much has changed with the English Democrats. An anti-Scottish ticket is an odd one to run on, particularly for a party that claims to stand for "integration, not segregation" but there you go. As with other fringe parties, the English Democrats believe that the powers of the London mayor extend to over-ruling the will of Parliament, and deciding exactly how the tax money of the United Kingdom is spent.
So, we have the usual falsehoods of "£13.5billion of YOUR money bankrolls Scotland every single year." Yes, and? How much bankrolls Wales? Or England? Scotland is not independent. Grant Scotland independence and no money flows there. Oh, and about that massive oil wealth you've enjoyed for 50 years. You're very welcome.
See, the problem with a UNITED Kingdom, is that the tax money belongs to everyone. If today the English Democrats complain about UK wide tax money being spent on Scotland, what next? Will they complain about it going to Yorkshire? Will Middlesex begin to be unhappy with THEIR money going to Essex? What should we do if the City of London complain about their taxes going to help the City of Westminster? It is a common pool. This is how it works.
Like the BNP, the English Democrats call for a rose-tinted nostalgia of an England that only existed in the minds of poets. But what would I know? I'm just an uppity, ill-mannered Scot who should fuck off back to Scotland.
Ken Livingstone, Labour
Our incumbent mayor. "In the last eight years London has become one of the world's most successful cities with more jobs, thousands more police officers, big improvements in buses, good community relations, winning the Olympics and adopting successful environmental policies."
Except it doesn't seem that way Ken. There is a reason every other candidate has gone on about crime. This city doesn't feel safe, these thousands of extra police officers seem invisible. The Olympics? I never wanted them, and lo and behold I'm being asked to pay for them, when I was promised I wouldn't. The cost has spiralled, thanks to the failure to include VAT in the bid (a deliberate attempt to make it sound less costly). Worse, money is being stolen from arts and sports to fund this, impoverishing us culturally, and seriously hampering our ability to do well at the very Olympics we are bankrupting ourselves over.
Mr Livingstone has done many good things. I support the Congestion Charge and bringing rail services under London's control. But things aren't all rosy, and I don't think he has the answers. He has been Mayor for eight years. A two termer. Like in the US election, it is time for a change.
So who am I voting for? I have two votes, a first choice and a second choice. You can no doubt tell from my appraisal of the candidates that my two favoured candidates are Siân Berry of the Green Party, and Brian Paddick of the Liberal Democrats. I'm just not sure what order. Yet.
posted by Paul at
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