If we get these things right, Boris will be vulnerable. In 2008 Labour recorded its worst local election results for 40 years. This time, Tory ministers will be overseeing some of the most savage cuts to public services since Margaret Thatcher's time in office. Boris, meanwhile, will have his own record to defend.
Two years ago Boris was an irreverent figure, cycling to City Hall to announce his candidacy. But every day it becomes clearer he is just another politician. He has developed a reputation for reneging on pledges, indulging in cronyism, and dodging responsibility for issues like policing. He has done nothing to ease London's chronic housing shortage, the Olympics risks running way over budget, and he has wasted money on vanity projects. He seems more interested in replacing Cameron than in his own job.
That's right, Labour have been out of office less than a month and he is already using Labour's failures- the Olympic Budget, lack of housing, and the necessity of cuts- to bash his opponents. For a support of Ken Livingstone to denounce mayoral vanity projects is pretty impressive too given that Livingstone decided that London needed its own foreign policy during his tenure.
7 comments:
Funniest bit of the whole article was where Lammy revealed that he'd thought about standing himself.
He does know that when asked awkward questions, he can't just say 'Pass', doesn't he?
Yeah, it was a bit like when Mike Read announced that he wouldn't stand for the Conservative nomination.
Here's referring to Johnson's failings in London, and he's been in office for two years.
I actually think Johnson's record has been OK, although he clearly does have a rather high opinion of himself and this does translate into some weird things, such as his opinion that he is a better designer of buses than the market.
Out of interest, what tags do you use to close the blockquote?
When I open and close blockquote tags, the following lines always end up single-spaced but in the post above, they are one-and-a-hal line spaced which is much easier to read.
PS, Red Ken was OK, BoJo is OK, I don't see a big difference between them.
If Red Ken got any traction, what would that say about Londoners?
Matthew- Surely it's a bit much to hold Johnson responsible for the shortfall in the Olympic budget when Tessa Jowell was minister for the Games until a few weeks ago?
James- It won't say anything we don't already know.
Mark: I'm not doing anthing but using the block quote button on the blogger dashboard.
"Surely it's a bit much to hold Johnson responsible for the shortfall in the Olympic budget when Tessa Jowell was minister for the Games until a few weeks ago?"
Of course, but Lammy is speaking in the future tense?
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