The Joy of Six 1517

"In 2026 our vote share in inner London boroughs was the worst since 1978. We aren’t running any inner London boroughs. We are only even the main opposition party in one, Brent. This isn’t just a London, or a city, problem though. Our 2026 local election vote share of 14 per cent is worse than in the coalition year of 2011 – and our lowest in 8 years." Rob Blackie argues that if the Lib Dems are again to appeal to young voters we must march towards the sound of gunfire.

Jason Cobb says the Starmer project was born in Lambeth and foundered just as Labour lost its grip on that borough.

Sadiq Khan talks to Byline Times: "I think what we have now is an outrage economy. And this outrage economy is built on a division dividend. You can call it 'decline porn', and you have people and companies profiting from poison and division. So I recognise I'm clickbait. I recognise that I’m being monetised. But also London is being monetised in this outrage economy."

"In England and its colonies, no one was burnt at the stake during witch hunts: not at Pendle, not at Salem and not under the campaigns of the 'witchfinder general', Matthew Hopkins. The image of the burning witch is powerful, but in this context, it is largely a myth." But, reveals Stephanie Brown, women were burnt for defying their husbands.

Daniela Rosenow on the efforts to recover the stories of the Egyptians who helped discover the tomb of Tutankhamun.

"Strip away the film’s showy excess, and this is why The Omen is such a compelling tale. A man who lost his only son must choose whether to kill his only son? It’s positively fiendish." Ruth Bushi marks the 50th anniversary of the film's release.

Cardiff Council votes to levy higher parking charges on SUVs

A big Liberal England "well done" to Cardiff Council, which is to to become the first local authority in Britain to require large vehicles to pay more for parking.

The Guardian reports:

Councillors voted on Thursday to approve a new parking plan for the city whereby owners of larger vehicles will be charged more for parking permits because their cars "take up more parking space and are a danger to other road users".

The plan states that vehicles that weigh more than 2,400kg fully laden will be subject to a surcharge "to encourage drivers to switch to smaller vehicles"; this will later be reduced to 2,000kg for non-electric vehicles.

Dan De'Ath, the cabinet member for transport on the Labour-run authority, is quoted by the paper as saying that SUVs (sports utility vehicles) are:

"much larger than your average car, they produce far more wear and tear on our roads, but fundamentally if you hit a child while driving a heavy SUV the chances of that child dying are grossly inflated.

"We don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask people driving those kinds of vehicles to pay a little bit more for road wear and the extra space they take up. We’re not talking about SUV-shaped cars, we’re talking about very heavy American-style vehicles."

No doubt there will be protests, and those protests will be widely reported. But Sadiq Khan's ULEZ (ultra-low emission zones) schene in London, and his refusal to bow to a noisy minority, provides a good model for Cardiff Council to copy.

Two years ago the Conservative Party was convinced that opposition to ULEZ was going to win them the coming general election, Today they never mention them.

Photo by Ryunosuke Kikuno on Unsplash

Laura Kuenssberg has the approach of an ambitious young reporter, but the BBC uses her in senior roles

Later. It has been pointed out by a reader that Chris Mason is now the BBC's political editor. I'm sorry for the error and have changed this post's headline as a result. However, in many ways the problem remains: Laura Kuenssberg has the approach of an ambitious young reporter, but the BBC uses her in senior roles.

This was Laura Kuenssberg last night, talking up the gossip about the London Mayoral contest when not a vote had yet been counted and nothing about the outcome could be "clear".

The story about a Conservative victory seems to have originated from someone who had looked at the turnout figures for the different boroughs, put two and two together and made eleven.

It could have come from Labour talking down expectations, but there's less point in that after the polls have closed.

Or it could have come from Trumpist Conservatives, wondering if they could run with the idea that Sadiq had stolen the election if the Labour victory turned out to be narrower than expected.

Wherever it came from, the BBC's political editor should have been able to see through it. Kuenssberg's is a role that call for reflection and judgement, but she does not appear to possess those qualities.

I recently included an article in one of my The Joy of Six posts that developed this argument most convincingly.

Patrick Howse wrote:

I saw Kuenssberg in action close up when I worked for the BBC in Westminster for a year either side of the 2010 General Election. She was confident, ambitious, and good at her particular job – which at that time was to supply live commentary for the news channel about every development in the Westminster bubble, every day.

She did so fluently and energetically. She loved being on air, she loved being the first to get a story, and she could be trusted to ‘wing it’. In other words, she was a good continuous news reporter, always available to fill airtime.

After a spell at ITV, Kuenssberg was chosen to be the BBC’s political editor, replacing Nick Robinson in the summer of 2015. She was picked because of the qualities that I have outlined above. Unfortunately, these were not the qualities the BBC should have been looking for to fill that post at that time.

What they got was a journalist with access to the upper reaches of the Government, with a determination to get on air and tell everyone the whispers that she had heard from ministers, advisors and officials - before Sky or ITN.

What the BBC needed was someone who could take a step back, away from the scrum, and tell audiences when they were being lied to. That was something neither the BBC nor Kuenssberg has ever come to terms with.

Not that she is alone at the BBC in having been promoted into a job she is not suited for: the corporation's cricket correspondent needs a ghostwriter.

New Labour candidate for Leicester East stands down as a deputy mayor in London

Labour have chosen Rajesh Agrawal, one of Sadiq Khan's deputy mayors in London, to fight Leicester East at the next general election.

This is the seat currently represented by Claudia Webbe as an Independent. She was elected for Labour but removed from the Labour Party after being convicted of harassment.

Both Webbe and Keith Vaz, the Labour MP for Leicester East before her, are thought to be considering standing in the constituency as Independents next time round.

Today comes the inevitable news that Agrawal has stood down as Sadiq Khan's deputy mayor for business.

In the Leicester East selection, Rishi Madlani, a Camden councillor and the only other name on the shortlist, made much of his connections with Leicester. I've not heard any such claims made on Agrawal's behalf.

Luisa Porritt talks to the Ham & High

Tomorrow's Hampstead & Highgate Express has an interview with Luisa Porritt, who is certain to be named as the new Liberal Democrat candidate for the London mayoral election:

The Lib Dem has spent most of her life in London. She was born at the Royal Free Hospital and grew up in Camden. While she will inherit part of the manifesto that Ms Benita was set to run on, she refers to her experiences in London that underpins her initial pitch to voters. 

She hits out at the "kleptocracy" behind empty homes in the capital and says Sadiq Khan hasn’t done enough to protect free travel for under-18s in the recent government bailout of Transport for London. There’s also perhaps a glimpse of a potential campaign slogan, returning to themes that London needs to be "safer, fairer, and greener".

"That encapsulates the key challenge we’re facing," the 33-year-old said. "Whether we’re tackling air pollution or making young people in London feel safe. It is utterly tragic, and I don’t want to keep opening a newspaper and hearing about another young person who has died unnecessarily. Sadiq Khan has a poor record on that."

An unexpected hero: George Osborne at the Evening Standard

Embed from Getty Images

When George Osborne was appointed as editor of the Evening Standard I grumbled that it was like something out of Putin's Russia - a politician from the governing party editing a major newspaper.

Sure, I reasoned, he might have some fun at Theresa May's expense because she had sacked him from the cabinet. But Tories are Tories, and come the next election the Standard would be relentlessly on message.

But things didn't quite turn out like that.

First, Theresa May called an unexpected general election. I am not saying this was done solely to force Osborne out of the Commons - he could not combine editing a London newspaper with being MP for a Cheshire constituency - but it was certainly a welcome bonus for her.

Second, even with the general election, Osborne has proved himself unexpectedly independent.

As Ian Burrell writes:

In the City, business leaders talk of his paper as “the unofficial opposition”. As arguably the best informed critic of a Conservative Prime Minister who he intensely dislikes, he has common cause with Jeremy Corbyn and Sadiq Khan, whose election as London Mayor the pre-Osborne Standard opposed. It is an extraordinary turn of events.

Maybe it is personal spite, maybe it is the strength of Osborne's convictions.

I am still not convinced that Osborne would be in the same party as most Liberal Democrats in a world where the parties were divided on more rational lines.

But he is certainly a welcome presence at the Standard.

Burrell also writes interestingly on the challenges facing the newspaper as a business.

Lib Dems up, Labour down, in London opinion poll

It's just one opinion poll, but the one commissioned from YouGov by the Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London, has some striking findings.

As the university's press release says:

The poll, carried out by YouGov between 24 and 28 March, finds Labour at 37 per cent, just three points ahead of the Conservatives. 

A year ago the gap between the two parties was 16 points. Labour is now seven percentage points below its share in the 2015 general election. 

Support for the Liberal Democrats has doubled since the last London poll in April 2016, and stands at 14 per cent. The Conservatives have gained four points in London, at 34 per cent. 

Support for Ukip has fallen to nine per cent, from 13 per cent last year.

What should really interest Labour is that, while Sadiq Khan has a net favourability rating of +35, Jeremy Corbyn stands at -44.

To the guillotine, citizens! Corbyn's revolution is following the logic of all revolutions

Embed from Getty Images

The Labour Party has experienced a revolution - and we all know what happens after revolutions.

The philosopher and former Labour and SDP MP Bryan Magee spelt it out in his Confessions of a Philosopher:

There is a situational logic to revolutions. Disparate groups unite to overthrow an existing regime, but once they have succeeded in doing so the cause that brought them together has gone, and they then fight one another to fill the power vacuum that they themselves have created. These internecine struggles, usually savage, among erstwhile allies perpetuate the revolutionary breakdown of society far beyond the overthrow of the old regime, and delay the establishment of a new order. 

The population at large begins to feel threatened by unending social chaos, and in these circumstances a strong man who can bring the warring factions to heel and impose order comes forward and meets with widespread support, or at least acquiescence. Thus a revolution carried out in the name of civil liberties, or equality, or to bring a tyranny to and end, will itself end by putting into power a Cromwell, a Napoleon or a Stalin. 

All revolutions are uncontrollable, and all revolutions are betrayed. It is in their nature that these things should be so.

I suspect that this will be true of Labour's revolution too.

The population at large is already turning to the Theresa May as their strong woman. Maybe the Labour membership will eventually so the same. Step forward Dan Jarvis?

I would add that the failure of the revolution is always blamed on sabotage and the new regime takes brutal action against the supposed culprits. Once they have been eliminated, the people are told, all the promises of a better world that accompanied the revolution will be fulfilled.

This evening a Corbyn rally booed the name of Sadiq Khan, whose victory in London was Labour's greatest triumph in more than a decade.

I suppose the idea is that once saboteurs like him and Owen Smith and the Blairites have been liquidated, the Labour Party will be free to turn its fire on the Tories and win an election. Then we shall we publicly owned railways, a free national education service and world peace by negotiation.

But for the time being, comrades, boo the traitor Khan.

Boris Johnson buried report on air pollution near London schools

Embed from Getty Images

From the Guardian today:

An air quality report that was not published by Boris Johnson while he was mayor of London demonstrates that 433 schools in the capital are located in areas that exceed EU limits for nitrogen dioxide pollution – and that four-fifths of those are in deprived areas. 

The report, Analysing Air Pollution Exposure in London, said that in 2010, 433 of the city’s 1,777 primary schools were in areas where pollution breached the EU limits for NO2. Of those, 83% were considered deprived schools, with more than 40% of pupils on free school meals. 

A spokeswoman for Johnson’s successor, Sadiq Khan, said the new mayor could not understand why the research had not been published when it was completed more than two-and-a-half years ago.

This reminds me of the campaign to end the use of lead in petrol.

I remember once hearing Des Wilson, who spearheaded it, saying that the key to victory was getting the research published. So damning was it that, once it was in the public domain, the battle was effectively over.

It has been argued, incidentally, that the fall in juvenile offending in recent years can be put down to the removal of lead, and its damaging effect on the brain, from the environment.

David Cameron wins Spectator award

The 2005 Threadneedle/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards were held at Claridges hotel this evening, reports the BBC.

The full list of winners:

• Politician of the Year - David Cameron
• Parliamentarian of the Year - Dominic Grieve
• Newcomer of the Year - Sadiq Khan
• Inquisitor of the Year - John Denham
• Peer of the Year - Baroness Scotland of Asthal
• Speech of the Year - Barbara Follett
• Minister to Watch - John Reid