Labour's drive to make London safer was successful. Boris Johnson's cuts to the capital's police force will reverse all that.
By Ken Livingstone

One of the great lies of British politics is the claim of the right to be the strongest opponents of crime. It is the right, not the left, that has taken every opportunity over the last two decades to cut police numbers in London. It's happened again today.

Read the full article here on Comment is Free.

by Martin Hoscik - Mayorwatch

Firstly the nature of the role of Mayor means it’s always likely to attract people who - as we’ve seen with both Ken and Boris - are sufficiently robust that negative headlines and opposition press releases alone are unlikely to dissuade them from a course of action on which they’ve already decided.

Secondly the Mayor is ‘all powerful’, the London Assembly which - in theory at least - exists to scrutinise the Mayor has virtually no ability to constrain him or her.  Even the mechanism for rejecting the Mayor’s annual budget requires Assembly opponents to muster a two-thirds majority in favour of an alternative proposal rather than requiring the Mayor to build support and consensus for theirs.

When you consider the Mayor’s budget is measured in billions it’s extraordinary that a modern day government should have empowered an individual politician to decide how such large sums of public money should be spent. It’s an area which needs urgent review and I’ll come on to this shortly.

When it comes to making appointments the Mayor generally has a free hand but the departure of several high-profile advisors from Boris Johnson’s administration suggests some meaningful outside scrutiny might be in order here.

Having identified two specific areas of the Assembly’s weakness it’s important not to don’t overstate them, doing so risks aiding the ambitions of those voices who from time to time call for the body to be abolished or reformed in a way which makes it less relevant and more importantly, less accountable, to Londoners.

The Times of India is India’s most important newspaper. India, alongside China, is the world’s most rapidly growing market and therefore vital for the future prosperity of London and Londoners. Last year, for example, the size of India and China’s markets expanded by over $400 billion.

Most London businesses would therefore pay money not to receive the headline Boris Johnson has generated for London in The Times of India today: ‘UK business leaders flay move to close India offices’.  

The story in The Times of India is worth reprinting in full to show how this is damaging London.

The Capitalwoman session heard condemnations of Boris Johnson's slash and burn approach to equality and demands that he honour his much-hyped election promises to fund rape crisis centres in London.

Matty Mitford spoke about why she and others had established the Boris Keep Your Promise campaign in light of Boris Johnson's reneging on his manifesto pledge to fund four rape crisis centres in London. She said that a lot of good work had been done under Ken Livingstone's administration to support victims of rape and sexual assault but that Boris had specifically focussed on the need for funding for rape crisis centres when he was running for election. The specific pledge to cut the media budget and transfer the funds to rape crisis centres was not honoured - although campaigning did result in a partial increase in the funding it was still woefully below the amount Johnson promised. Matty pointed out that there had been a 14.8 per cent increase in reported rapes in the first year of Boris Johnson's Mayorality and this underlined why he was wrong to go back on his promise.

Finn Mackay of the London Feminist Network explained why she and others had revived the Reclaim the Night marches in order to reclaim public space for women and why the support of Ken Livingstone as Mayor had been important.

Lorna Campbell, National Equality Officer of PCS, spoke about the Equality Bill and said that her union believed it could be stronger, and particular had wanted it to include pay audits, but the thought it was still very important it was passed.