Boris Johnson's first year as mayor - right-wing reality emerges

Thursday, 30 April 2009 18:46

News release, 30 April 2008

“Boris Johnson's first year in office has seen the reality of his Thatcherite views emerge from the liberal image he projected in the Mayoral election a year ago," says Progressive London in its assessment of Johnson's first year as Mayor. "If anyone doubted that, the characteristic vigour of his demand for reversal of the new top rate of income tax on salaries exceeding £150,000 a year confirmed that his previous twenty years of right writings were not an aberration but the real Boris Johnson."

Progressive London's report, published on the anniversary of the mayoral election tomorrow, says: "At a time when free market Thatcherism is totally discredited in virtually every country in the world, Boris Johnson was the first British politician to leap to the defence of bankers and demand less not more regulation of bankers. He was the first politician to demand the Tories commit themselves to deep cuts in public spending and reverse the new 50 per cent tax band for those earning more than £150,000 a year."

Progressive London's assessment of Johnson's first year shows:

* a farcical lack of leadership, with the city made an international laughing stock by the decision to shut down the transport system after a night of long-forecast heavy snow; and chaos at the top with more high level enforced resignations in a year under Johnson than eight years under Livingstone.

* a complete failure first to understand that there was an economic crisis; defending the bankers who played such an important role in it and taking measures that will make the situation worse, not better for London, by cutting public investment, with billions cut from transport projects; throwing millions of pounds away by taking Kensington out of the congestion charge zone while putting up fares by more than the rate of inflation this year, and every year, for the foreseeable future.

* rewarding polluters by abandoning plans to tax the worst polluting cars, like Chelsea Tractors, stopping the next phase of the Low Emission Zone for London, increasing road traffic in central London and campaigning for an absurdly expensive new airport in the Thames Estuary.

* at a time when London needs all the support it can get, cutting spending on encouraging tourists and businesses to come to the capital - bringing a rare public criticism from big business in London.

Progressive London is a cross party, cross community forum, initiated by Ken Livingstone, which campaigns for policies to improve London and the quality of life for Londoners.

Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said: "At a time of recession London must be connected up with the most dynamic parts of the world economy and must invest for the future whilst easing the burden on the majority. The opposite is happening. We are already one quarter of the way through a Tory mayoral term and it has been spent vigorously defending bankers, campaigning against the richest contributing a little more to help us all through hard times and running to the aid of the biggest polluters - whilst putting up fares for public transport users, slashing transport investment and making little or no progress on building cheap homes for Londoners. Ratcheting-down on the police budget is placing the fight against crime under severe pressure. Our city has switched into reverse over policies to protect and improve the environment when London was leading the world. The Mayor failed to damp-down tension and the expectation of violence at the G20 demonstrations. And it took a Tory mayoralty to see a real first for London - the complete withdrawal of the bus service and shutting down most of the underground because of snow that had been warned about days in advance. London is now testing ground for Conservative policies that nationally would damage public services, reduce investment and protect the richest not the majority."

"Highlights" of a year of Boris Johnson include:

* Transport service withdrawn - for the first time in living memory Boris Johnson pulled the entire bus fleet off the road and shutting most of the London Underground simply because of a night of unusually heavy snow which had been forecast for many days in advance.

* Fares increased this year by 6 per cent - with some, such as bus journeys, up as much as 11 per cent - will mean that the overall cost of all of his policies for the average London household will be to make them worse off.

* Plans to keep raising fares above the rate of inflation

* While pushing up fares, Johnson has cut £2.4 billion from planned transport spending over the next 10 years, and scrapped: The Croydon Tramlink extension, that would have reduced journey times between Croydon and Crystal Palace to 18 minutes; An extension of the Docklands Light Railway to Dagenham Dock which was to open the way to building 10,000 new homes in one of the parts of London with the most acute housing shortages; The Thames Gateway Bridge, from Newham to Greenwich, which would have largely been funded by the government, and opened up tens of thousands of job opportunities in some of the most deprived parts of London; the Cross River tram from south east London to Camden improving transport services from one of the most deprived parts of London, reducing car traffic and congestion on the Northern line; two modern, fast bus routes: the Greenwich Waterfront Transit, a bus route linking the O2 Arena with bus and Tube stops and East London transit.

* Throwing away £50-70 million a year by taking one of the richest boroughs, Kensington, out of the central London congestion charging zone.

* Rewarded the worst polluters by abandoning the plan to charge the most polluting vehicles, like Chelsea Tractors and expensive, high powered sports cars, extra to encourage people to shift to less environmentally damaging cars or public transport.

* Will waste money by replacing some bendy buses (including, on two routes, with single-decker buses)

* Wasting time and money on his fantasy of a new airport somewhere in the Thames estuary, costing £40 billion, without any support even from the Conservative Party nationally

* Imposed over £90m of cuts in the police this year and set a stand-still budget that will place pressure on the fight against crime

* Imposing a cut of just over 3 per cent in the Specialist Crime Directorate

* Police Commissioner ousted with no explanation

* Investigation finds his actions "extraordinary and unwise" over the Damian Green affair

* Mishandled G20 demonstrations - denounced demonstrators even before protests had taken place, went to ground in the aftermath

* Shown his inability to bring together an efficient team manage London's government. His own appointments have been nothing short of catastrophic failures, with the loss of: his super-chief executive, Tim Parker, who resigned within months of taking office; his Deputy Chief of Staff after remarks suggesting ethnic minority Londoners who did not like the new Mayor could leave London; his Deputy Mayor for young people after allegations of sexual and financial impropriety; the chair of his much vaunted Mayor's fund, Barclays banker Bob Diamond just six weeks after his appointment; and his Olympics adviser David Ross.

* At the same time he has managed to lose the widely respected Managing Director of the London Underground, Tim O'Toole.

* Imposed a £7m cut in budgets for the promotion of London abroad

* Described criticism of bankers as "neo-socialist claptrap", defended bankers, opposed the 45 per cent top rate of tax and then the 50 per cent top rate of tax

* Attacked public sector pensions as "unsustainable" and "unaffordable"

* Damaging outer London through higher bus fares, higher fares to travel into central London, cutting future transport links like the extensions to the Croydon Tramlink and the DLR to Dagenham Dock, funding the central London cycle hire scheme whilst cutting cycle funding to outer London

* Reneged on his election commitment to fund four rape crisis centres

* Abolished the board that worked to deliver safer travel home at night

* Slashed funding of work against domestic violence by £90,000 and axed five posts from the GLA domestic violence team.

* £12.9m climate change budget underspend at the LDA

* Suspended the next phase of the clean-air Low Emission Zone

* London Cycling Campaign slammed a "triple whammy" that they say will harm cycling in London: cuts to funding cycle networks, letting motorcyclists in bus lanes, abolishing the western half of the congestion charge zone

* The one pledge that Boris Johnson made on cultural policy during the election was that the diverse festivals celebrating London's communities would not be cut back or discontinued. This has been dishonoured by cancelling the annual Rise festival, London's biggest public free festival (and Europe's largest anti-racist festival); cancelling the annual summer Trafalgar Square festival promoting street arts and attracting visitors to the area; cancelling the annual Africa Day festival in Trafalgar Square; with-holding permission for the use of Trafalgar Square from a number of fully-funded external events, such as the Thai festival; reducing the budgets for festivals such as St Patrick's Day, which saw its funding cut in half and the abolition of the annual St Patrick's Day dinner, which was self-financing.

* Fewer people attended the Trafalgar Square St George's Day event under Boris Johnson than under Ken Livingstone

Boris Johnson carefully avoided pledging to do very much at all in his election campaign. Even so he has failed to deliver on many of the few things he did say he would do:

* No sign or news of his idiotic idea that he would negotiate a no-strike deal with Tube unions

* No news of his promise to keep the Tube open for an extra hour on Friday and Saturday nights

* Bring back Routemaster buses with a new 21st century design and conductors? This seems to be nothing more than a PR exercise with press releases, design competitions and bluster but so far no plan to actually deliver the promised result

* No appearance of the promised trial of express bus routes for outer London connecting key rail terminals initially across South London

* Bendy buses are still on the roads in spite his 'top priority' pledge to scrap them - so far only three routes are to lose articulated buses; and in the case of two of these they will be replaced with smaller single-deck buses

* No funding for his promised 10,000 new bicycle parking stands

* Failure to deliver his promise to fully fund four more rape crisis centres

* Dropping his target of building 50,000 new affordable homes

* Suspended the third phase of the Low Emission Zone for London instead of his promised support for the zone

* No sign of the promised transparency in London government and Cabinet for London

* No account-based system making it easier to pay the congestion charge

* No "Payback London" scheme requiring people who abuse their right to free bus travel to earn it back through community service