The Metropolis

Too Big to Fail? Johnson needs to defend London from his own party

Adam Bienkov | Thursday 22 July, 2010 20:38

It is always far easier to be in opposition than to govern. In the run up to his election Boris promised lower fares, more police and cleaner politics in City Hall. In every borough there was to be cakes and ale for all, with barely a pet project, protest group or cunning scheme not indulged by the Conservative candidate.

Yet cakes and ale have been in short supply since Boris opened shop, with police numbers falling, fares rising and accusations of cronyism spoiling his cheer. And with the new government now threatening to choke off his supplies, the business of Boris is facing seriously hard times.

The solution is to pose as an independent Mayor fighting the governments “savage” and “crazy” cuts. As a model for his plan, Boris is using his predecessor Ken Livingstone, who long staked out a reputation as an independent critic of his party.
Like Ken, Boris knows that his party need him to succeed in City Hall. A loss for Boris in 2012 would be a huge blow for the Conservatives and Boris’s cakes and ale business is simply too big to fail.

Yet Cameron cannot be seen to give a Tory Mayor too big a favour and his coalition partners are already getting restless.

Last week Liberal Democrat Transport minister Norman Baker warned that “there is a feeling, justified or otherwise, that London gets a very good deal. If we are all going to have to take difficult decisions they have to be fair and not be seen to advantage one part of the country over another.”

Baker’s comments will have rung true with those parts of the country who already receive far less in transport subsidies and consequently pay far more to get around.
Yet as mayor Boris must defend London against this charge, not just because of the damage that it would do to his election chances, but because of the far bigger damage that it would do to the UK economy.

Every pound invested in London gets a far bigger return than elsewhere. And without the promised tube investment, the city will gradually grind to a halt, with TfL estimating that a third of tube stations will regularly have to close just to safely deal with the crowds.

At the current rate of population growth by 2020 ticket gates at some stations would need to be closed every six minutes with delays and temperatures reaching critical point.

And with conditions unbearable underground, more and more Londoners would be forced into their cars with all the added congestion, pollution and misery that would produce.

So whilst cutting off investment in London’s transport system might seem like the most palatable option now, the reality is that big cuts would derail the very motor of the economy that is driving Britain forwards.

Boris can see the danger of this and is trying his hardest to pose as the man who will fight off disaster. Yet for all the headlines it still isn’t clear what the Mayor is actually doing to prevent it.

After a series of stories about the Mayor being “ready to explode”, the Financial Times approached the Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles to see what was actually happening.

The paper was told that there had been “no conversation about funding between Pickles and Johnson” and that there was “no meeting in the diary” either.
Pickles’ team claimed that “the whole exercise seems to have been artificially created to bolster Boris’s credentials.”

Times are hard in government right now. But for a Mayor struggling to be both in government and in opposition, the times must be even harder still.

twitter.com/ adambienkov

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