07 January 2016
The Glorious Struggle Begins
by J.R.Thomas
Finally the long awaited battle of London has begun; the two Mayoral candidates have at last emerged from the silent shadows, preparing their inspirational manifestos and polishing their searing rhetoric. The gloves are off and the press microphones set up for the opening salvos.
Zak Goldsmith stunned the assembled journo’s by stating, openly and defiantly, that he was not Boris Johnson.
Across town his opponent, Sadiq Khan, grabbed at this bold positioning and responded, with great style and force, that he is not Jeremy Corbyn.
And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, two radical and forceful men who are nailing their colours to the mast, each drawing a line in the Thames mud, and leaving no doubt about the heartfelt principles which they espouse. And that is about it.
Of course, there are more than two competitors in this Mayoral election, there is a Liberal Democrat candidate, a Green candidate, George Galloway for his Respect party (though he is said to be having difficulty raising funding; and at the same time is in negotiations to re-join the Labour Party), a UKIP candidate, and several independents. But so far they have created even less ripples than our bold front runners above, so, if they want press exposure, they need to get out on the streets with their megaphones.
So what is happening, is “not a lot”, as can be seen from the above far from fictional summary of the positions taken this week. Both main candidates are anxious not to get entangled with the mainstream of their party politics; we live in times when people seem to reject the mainstream and want rebels. It can be seen in the American Presidential joustings where what should be a Democrat walkover for Mrs Clinton has turned into a tussle with the rank outsider – not even a Democrat Party member – Bernie Saunders, and on the Republican side the top four runners are all outside the mainstream party structure.
Sadiq Khan should start with a very significant natural advantage – in the May 2015 General Election London was one of Labour’s few success stories, putting them 600,000 votes ahead of the Conservatives in the constituencies that will vote for the Mayor. London may well, with the long term population structural changes that are taking place – the inflow of the young, of minorities, of left leaning voters, and the outflow of the traditional Conservative family voters, – be becoming a natural Labour zone. What is more, Boris Johnson, the retiring Mayor, he with the Trump-like hair arrangement and the witty repartee, is thought to have had a considerable personal vote, which it may well not be easy for Zak Goldsmith to pick up. Sadiq’s problem, if he has one, might be Mr Corbyn. Sadiq is MP for Tooting and was one of the original signatories to Mr Corbyn’s nomination papers; in return Jeremy endorsed him after his selection as Mayoral candidate via a complex party process. All that may do him no harm in the deep heartlands of the Labour Party – especially for instance, when he needs to get party workers out canvassing on the streets, but it may alienate some of the moderate voters whom he will need to win over and not lose to the Greens, or even to the LibDems. That matters more than you might think because London has a supplementary vote system where the winning candidate has to get a clear 50% plus of the votes; if nobody gets that on the first round then the second preferences come into account; and that is why Mr Khan is distancing himself from Mr Corbyn – he does not want the second preferences to be proxy anti-Jezza votes.
The system is a problem for Mr Goldsmith too. He starts with that shortage of votes and has a steep hill to climb to get his clear 50%. He needs to convince floating voters that to let Sadiq in through the front door will let the Corbyn crew in through the back. Zak is a clever personable man, MP for Richmond which he has taken from a Liberal marginal to a pretty safe Tory seat, though again with a strong personal following. The enormous Goldsmith wealth and his family’s radical tradition (Radical Tory that is) has given him a natural independence which has made him an exceptionally popular constituency MP. He has, like all the candidates, been against the extension of Heathrow Airport, but in his case vociferously so, threatening to resign his seat if the airport expansion proceeds.
His reasons for distancing himself from Boris, and to an extent from Tory high command, are not so clear as the reasons for Sadiq’s strategy, but are no doubt partly because he senses the anti-establishment mood in the electorate and feels a need to downplay Toryism so as to capture the middle ground. Perhaps there is also a wish to ensure that the voters expect a style which is clearly different from the one that has rumbustiously presided over London for the last eight years. Zak is more serious than Boris, more interested in the nuts and bolts of governance, less funny but maybe more passionate for London’s causes. And much less inclined to compromise on that airport elephant in the background.
One vote that may not go the Goldsmith way is that from No 10, Downing Street. If Goldsmith wins the Mayoralty he will resign his Richmond parliamentary seat. It looks safe, but, as suggested above, it could be ripe meat for a LibDem revival or even a Green breakthrough – Goldsmith has a lot of green leanings. With Cameron’s narrow majority it will not suit him to lose any seat at this point in the life of this Parliament. It might suit Cameron, or at least his more calculating neighbour George O, to instead lose the mayoralty but keep the seat. After all, if a Labour mayor got to be a nuisance – and what could he realistically be a nuisance about? – Mrs Thatcher showed how to deal with annoying London local government grandstanding.
When all is said and done, one of the features of the London Mayoralty that one should not lose sight of, is that the Mayor cannot actually do much. He is responsible for transport matters, through the ever bloating Transport for London, whose costs any incoming Mayor will need to deal with before they become a major problem. He is the final arbiter on controversial and major planning matters, and also sets the overall planning brief for the region. Assuming the winner does turn out to be Khan or Goldsmith and not a middle candidate sliding through to pick up an unholy alliance of disaffected votes, they are both likely to be far more involved in planning issues than Boris has been, and probably much more focussed on sustainability and housing issues as well.
But that is it; it’s an odd role for two ambitious young politicians each to covet. But then, it has done the present occupant of the office no harm…
