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Thoughts on the London Mayoralty Print E-mail
Written by Tom Clougherty   
Friday, 09 May 2008

Apparently Boris Johnson had just one glass of champagne at his victory celebration, and spent most of the night with advisers planning his first hundred days. It's good that Johnson knows he has to hit the ground running, because being London Mayor from 2008-2012 is not going to be the simplest job in the world.

The new mayor has two major projects to oversee. The first is preparing for the 2012 London Olympics. The budget has already spiralled from £2.4bn to over £9bn, but officials are said to be working to a £12bn target.* Johnson will need to do everything he can to control spending and ensure that Londoners do not end up shouldering more of the burden than was originally agreed (£300m). He is also going to have to make sure that London's dodgy transport system is ready for the influx of visitors.

The second big project is Crossrail, the long-awaited train line linking Heathrow with the City and the Southeast, for which the Mayor has direct responsibility through Transport for London. Keeping Crossrail on time and on budget is going to be a major challenge.

Apart from good management, voters are going to want Johnson to deliver tangible benefits in their everyday lives. More police on the streets and a reduction in violent crime, so people feel safer. Less delays and disruption on the tube and less congestion on the roads, so people can get around more easily. More housing so that London life becomes a little more affordable.

All of this is possible with the right policies (and Johnson has some good ones) but it won't be easy – especially when the new Mayor's every move is going to be scrutinized by a hostile central government who would love to see him slip up. London is going to be seen as a testing ground for Conservative government, so the stakes are undeniably high.

* Is it too late to send it to Paris?
 

Comments (1)Add Comment
Boris the secret socialist
written by Mark Wadsworth, May 09, 2008
"More housing so that London life becomes a little more affordable"

While at the same time promising to clamp down on 'garden grabbing', i.e. efficient use of available land, in order not to alienate his core vote, the Tories and NIMBYs?

Why not liberalise planning laws and just let the markets provide the extra housing and office space? Or does he plan loads of social housing for key workers and tied workers, with all the unintended consequences that entails?

Does he not realise that it is a moving target - every year hundreds of thousands of people move to London and hundreds of thousands move away again? One thing that makes them move away is the high house prices. If you managed to build more and get prices down (unlikely - they are crashing anyway) so what? More people would move here and fewer would move away so we reach a new equilibrium where prices are just as expensive and London is even more crowded.

After the ban on booze on the Tube I am distinctly underwhelmed and altho' he might be less cronyist than Red Ken, he doesn't seem to understand Logic or Economics. Fair do's, Ken is a leftie and the whole left philosophy assumes that the State knows better than the Markets, but if you judge Boris by his own standards he is a miserable failure already.

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