Over the next few months, as you’d expect, Big Smoke will be taking an in-depth look at the candidates, their parties and what they offer Londoners. We thought it would be useful to begin by looking at the weak points of the four parties currently elected to the Assembly. A bit of unpaid consultancy if you will. We’ll start with the Conservatives.
The Conservatives: Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson.
Last time around all of Boris Johnson’s rivals painted the Mayor-to-be as a disaster in waiting. He was going to be the incompetent, racist, womanising Mayor who’d be off like a shot after one term anyway. Terrible food and such small portions.
While we can haggle over how true any of these accusations were, and to be honest they do seem overblown in hindsight, what is undeniable is that the public perception of Johnson is that he has been none of these things. There has been no significant scandal involving Johnson that’s hit the headlines, nor has he a host of white elephant failed projects that opponents can point to. He’s hardly done anything.
While having large scale riots on your watch is never good, and then being on holiday for almost the entire thing is even worse, I don’t get the sense that Johnson has been particularly damaged by the riots. He certainly missed an opportunity. If he’d have been pictured in front of a burned out bus on the Sunday, and made his presence felt, not only might the riots have been less damaging he’d have had re-election in the bag. Another missed chance for the Boris camp.
Johnson essentially has two weak points and two damaging policy area. The policy areas are cycle safety and fares. Even Tories don’t like seeing people squashed on the roads and are sensitive to things like children’s funerals. They are conscious of this and are likely to try and shore up the damage – but with a growing movement on the issue they have a lot of work to do if they are to satisfy the campaigners enough to quieten them down.
London is getting more expensive to get around by public transport and the public do notice. Not in an abstract, read it in the papers sort of way either. In a “this journey costs a lot of money” sort of way. Few members of the public will scrutinise Ken’s figures when he says reduce the fares – and they do like the message.
One weak point is the Conservative Party. Johnson has done his best to distance himself from the worst aspects of the national party’s policies without alienating Tory voters. Part of that is playing up his colourful, cartoon-like persona. Anyone who wants to beat him has to pin the label “Conservative Mayor” on him, and hard.
His second weak point is that he’s the do nothing Mayor. Aside from the dire cycle superhighway there are no visible signs of Johnson’s presence at all. Even the airport island he bangs on about will never happen. It’s a difficult charge to make stick because people notice someone’s errors more than someone’s absence but it is the key weakness of Johnson’s Mayoralty and he should be held to account for it.
We live in a glorious city but a deeply divided one. Inequality, racism, homophobia and a host of other social problems are not things of the past and we need a real commitment to action. At a time of deep public sector cuts we need a Mayor who’ll protect the public from them. With constant pressure on or green spaces, the quality of our air, and the price of fares we need a Mayor of action and ideas – Boris Johnson is not it.
But can that charge be made to stick?
Ultimately, when you combine these points Boris Johnson’s opponents need to paint him as the grey suited Conservative mayor that he is. And that means never calling him Boris.
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