Boris Johnson’s election as Mayor of London on 1 May marked a turning point for our capital city. It’s an opportunity the Conservatives want to use to show they are fit to run the country, but behind the good PR of the first few weeks London’s Tory mayor is taking decisions that will prove highly damaging for ordinary Londoners.
Conservative Central Office is running the show and have surrounded their mayor with loyal Tory staffers including former think-tank chief Nick Boles and the outgoing Leader of Westminster Council, Sir Simon Milton. Interestingly, and to their dismay, Tory members of the Greater London Assembly have been largely overlooked.
Johnson was quick to announce a ban on drinking on the tube, declared war on knife crime, and has been pictured planting trees across London paid for by scrapping ‘Labour spin’ such as the GLA-funded newspaper The Londoner.
But there’s not much substance behind the PR of the first few weeks. The tube drinking ban addresses a genuine concern but it doesn’t address the real problem of drunks who cause nuisance on the tube because, of course, most people who are drunk on tube trains get that way before they board the train. And although there will be a welcome for the thousand trees funded by the axing of the GLA freesheet, Ken’s team point out there were already plans and funding in place for 4,000 new trees.
On knife crime, Johnson wants to do something but he doesn’t know what. The appointment of the well regarded Ray Lewis as Deputy Mayor responsible for young people is interesting, but Boris’s team, and Conservative Central Office, have not given this issue the kind of thought that Labour councils in the front line like Lambeth and Manchester have. While the Tories were in coalition in Lambeth until 2006 they took no specific action against violent youth crime and left Lambeth’s youth services the worst funded in London. Indeed, it was a Tory government that stopped mandatory expenditure on youth services, leading to a collapse in funding nationally.
When the Tories do make pronouncements they tend to focus on gimmicks rather than on tackling the social problems that drive some young people to join violent gangs. No one who regularly uses London’s overcrowded underground believes Boris’s proposal to erect airport-style metal detectors at tube stations would do anything other than cause massive queues.
Johnson has appointed a team including two Tory borough leaders to comb through the London Development Agency, responsible for millions of pounds of public spending. There are fears they have a political remit to build on the smear stories in the Tory-supporting Evening Standard and will ‘find’ evidence of profligacy and corruption that can be pinned on Labour. Of course, any organisation as big as the LDA will offer scope for efficiency savings. But to put that process under the control of the Tory leaders of Wandsworth and Hammersmith raises concerns that money will be diverted to Tory-supporting areas.
The appointment of Sir Simon Milton as the mayor’s planning adviser is also interesting. Milton was Leader of Westminster Council until this month, and has set his stall out clearly against the former mayor’s tall-buildings policy. The anti-development tone of London’s new administration threatens some of the biggest regeneration projects in the city, such as that proposed for Waterloo. The problem, of course, isn’t about the buildings. It’s about the social regeneration that major projects bring, and the power these have to tackle the issues of poverty and social exclusion that lie behind so many of the problems, including violent youth crime, facing Londoners today.
Then there’s housing. Ken Livingstone made it clear that he would use all the powers at his disposal to insist that half of all new housing in every borough would be affordable. All new developments had to take this into account. Ken aimed to prevent the kind of gerrymandering seen during Shirley Porter’s tenure as Leader of Westminster when she abused housing policy to ship poorer residents, who were more likely to be Labour-supporting, out of marginal wards. Johnson has already announced that boroughs can now choose whatever level of social housing they feel is appropriate.
That means Tory boroughs will choose less, as people in social housing are not only less likely to vote Tory but come with a range of other needs that place costly demands on public services. Unless Labour boroughs pick up the shortfall – and fund the social consequences of a growing number of poorer residents – then poorer people will increasingly find themselves priced out of London or left in the kind of sub-standard housing that breeds inequality and despair.
On transport, Johnson appears to have no policy at all. He’s declared himself opposed to the West London and cross-river tram projects, naively believes he can persuade the transport unions on London Underground to agree a no-strike deal (RMT leader Bob Crowe’s already slapped that one down), opposes plans to extend London-wide free travel for pensioners, and has spoken in favour of limiting free travel for young people. His key proposal for buses is to replace the bendy buses with upgraded Routemaster buses (the old fashioned hop-on-hop-off London buses) that would cost up to £600 million to develop and was described as ‘a promise he could not deliver’ by senior figures in the bus industry.
Our remaining Labour-run boroughs will be working alongside our Labour London Assembly members in holding the Tories to account as they seek to implement their right-wing agenda. We must map out and campaign for a Labour alternative for London that promotes good quality affordable housing right across the capital, celebrates our city’s diversity, supports sustainable regeneration that benefits all Londoners and demands improved public transport.
On violent youth crime, Labour must refuse to let the Tories demonise our young people. We need tougher enforcement against guns and knives on the streets, but just as important is a programme to tackle the poverty and lack of opportunity that drives some young people into gangs in the first place.
Too many voters across Britain have forgotten what Tory rule means. Labour can use Boris Johnson’s London to remind them. It can also serve as a spur to renew ourselves nationally, regain our campaigning zeal and rebuild our connection with mainstream voters so we can prevent the even greater disaster of a Tory government in Britain.