The Metropolis

Cuts and run: Mayor Johnson’s independent streak lasts almost all day

Adam Bienkov | Tuesday 2 November, 2010 20:49

The cuts announced last month will make life far harder for many Londoners as benefits are cut, housing waiting lists grow and fares rise.

Yet as thousands lose their jobs, homes and savings, it won’t be David Cameron who will feel the immediate political pinch.

Instead it will be an army of lesser known London politicians “set free” by the government to take a greater share of responsibility and blame for the cuts.
Local authorities will be given huge new powers over spending, but hugely less money to spend. And so by localising the pain, Cameron hopes to avoid centralising the blame.

But the problem with giving away power is that those given it will often use it against you.

The first sign of this came last month when David Cameron had a major public falling out with London’s best-known local politician Boris Johnson.

For months Boris had boasted that he would launch a “Stalingrad-like defence” of London’s budget, but in the end London was given no better a deal than any other region of the UK.

The Mayor had argued that London was the “motor of the UK economy” and yet Cameron cut TfL’s grant by 21% and slashed his development fund by over £400 million.

Shortly afterwards he hit back, warning that government cuts to housing benefit risked a “Kosovo-style social cleansing” in London.

Rather than accept this as the personal view of a devolved politician, Number Ten responded by openly briefing against Boris for the first time.

One paper was told that Cameron was “bristling with anger” and another reported that Boris’s wish to be given more powers over housing “would almost certainly now be rejected” as a result.

This last threat proved to be an effective one and Boris quickly retracted his opposition.

But while the Mayor was left looking both disloyal and weak, Cameron had failed his first as a Prime Minister committed to devolving power.

Because while he had promised a “radical shift in power from the centre” his former PR man’s instinct to control the political message at all times had won the day.
But while this may have suited Cameron in the short term, history has shown that such “control-freakery” will often prove counter productive.

In London many of the seats that Cameron needed to win the general election were fought by candidates from Cameron’s so called “A list”.

Determined to control the party’s image at all levels Cameron sidelined local candidates in favour of his own brand of modern conservatives.

And yet right across the capital Cameron’s “A-list” candidates spectacularly failed to secure the victories that the bookies and pollsters had predicted were theirs.

By losing those seats, Cameron failed to get the kind of overall majority and mandate that Boris himself had received just two years before.

And without that mandate Cameron became vulnerable to exactly the kind of attacks launched by Boris in recent months.

Of course rivalry between Boris and Dave is always to be expected, but it’s the decisions that other locals authorities make that could really put Cameron’s commitment to localism to the test.

Because across London, many councils will make deeply unpopular choices that Cameron will then feel forced to defend.

But in order to successfully exercise power, Cameron must first accept the consequences of giving it away.

And as Cameron passes more of the pain down, he must get used to others passing more of the blame back up as well.

twitter.com/adambienkov

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