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With this budget coming up […] if we don’t get a satisfactory deal I think there’s enough members on the Labour back benches who will, with others, block the budget and that will make his position intolerable at that stage.

If the budget were blocked, it would mean the government had lost supply. I believe I’m correct in saying that the last time a sitting government in the UK lost supply (as opposed to confidence) was 1909 when the Tory majority in the Lords (this being prior to the convention that followed the People’s Budget that prevents the Lords from delaying money bills for more than a month) refused to pass David Lloyd George’s budget. The result was a constitutional crisis. While the outcome was positive in the end, it was by no means assured. Mr Field is playing for high stakes indeed. Given that Mr Darling has written to the Treasury Select Committee outlining his proposals to help people adversely affected by scrapping the 10p rate and that detailed proposals are being worked out, it seems that what Mr Field thinks is the ace of trumps may turn out to be the two.

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The key proposals of the bill are

• ensuring that all human embryos outside the body – however they are created - are subject to regulation
• regulation of inter-species embryos created from a combination of human and animal genetic material for research
• a ban on sex selection of offspring for non-medical reasons
• retention of a duty to take account of the welfare of the child in providing fertility treatment, but removal of the reference to ‘the need for a father’
• recognising same-sex couples as legal parents of children conceived through the use of donated sperm, eggs or embryos
• altering the restrictions on the use of data collected by the regulator to make it easier to do follow-up research
• increasing the scope of legitimate embryo research activities, subject to controls.

The Coalition for Choice, set up in part by the Liberal Conspiracy, is campaigning in favour of the Bill without amendment.

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1 - in both the current situation and the proposed amendment, it would be possible under very narrow circumstances for abortions to be performed at any stage; this is rare.

There are five designs being considered for what has already been dubbed ‘the Angel of the South’ and I have a strong preference for one, although I will briefly mention the other four. They are Mark Wallinger, Rachel Whiteread, Richard Deacon, Christopher le Brun, and Daniel Buren.

Rachel Whiteread is, I think, best known for her installation on the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square, Untitled Monument, but her other well-known work, House, is repeated in her submission. The core of the proposed work is a cast of the interior of an otherwise-ordinary house. I like Whiteread’s art for its habit of making us consider and reconsider the spaces we inhabit; like Antony Gormley’s Blind Light, it draws our attention to how constricting walls define space and how our living spaces affect us.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be seen like that. Rather, it will come across as a fitting description of the UK today: welcome to a land of quiet domesticity, tea-drinking and worrying about house-prices. I don’t think that is what is intended and I certainly don’t think it’s the message we want to give visitors to our shores. There is also the problem of scale; while

The gigantic horse proposed by Mark Wallinger has done most to publicise the project. It picks up on a couple of themes - chalk carvings on hillsides and Horsa, a semi-mythical Saxon invader of Kent. The iconicity test fails because it is too easy to achieve on a graphics programme; indeed, that’s already been done a few times. It’d probably end up with other farmyard animals around London and while I am not necessarily averse to a sheep guarding the M3, it’s not the memorable symbol one might want. Equally, a statue remembering an invader-king is possibly not the welcome note we want by the door-mat.

I find Richard Deacon’s proposal for a skeletal cairn cold and soulless; where a cairn was a welcoming sight for travellers, this is a shell that serves neither as a waymarker or a cache of food. I similarly find Daniel Buren’s stacking concrete cubes to be somewhat cold and clinical and, as many estates and tower blocks in London testify, concrete looks good on paper and its physical properties make it attractive to architects and artists, the result, particularly after weathering, is less attractive.

The proposal from Christopher le Brun is altogether the most fitting. Firstly, it has the potential to be an icon of the South East. The test to apply here is ‘which would look best in a photo’; bathed in the orange light of dawn or the rose light of dusk or with a moon behind it, le Brun’s proposal not only wins hands down but is actually a beautiful, distinctive piece of art; in any light, it would be aesthetically pleasing. Moreover, the wing and circle motif echo rather more important themes than, say, the white horse. The disc, for me, refers back to the entrance the Channel Tunnel, particularly when combined with the travelling, to and fro, represented by the wing. It also seems appropriate given that the Ebbsfleet Landmark has already been christened the Angel of the South.

Models of the proposals will be on show from 27th May at Bluewater shopping centre; I intend to go and so expect more thoughts towards the beginning of next month.

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At Old Street station, there is a sign up announcing that alcohol will be banned from the first of June on public transport. The occasional drunken idiot is now more of a threat than smoking, which the World Health Organisation considers to be behind 26% of male deaths and 9% of female deaths in the developed world.

It is gesture politics for three reasons.

Firstly, it is unenforceable. Part of Mr Johnson’s campaign was the reintroduction of bus conductors to prevent anti-social behaviour on buses. Unfortunately, his costings were a little bit out. £92 million out, as it happens. Unless every bus, every tram and every carriage is covered, people are going to chance taking that can of their bag and having a beer while they’re going wherever they’re going. That would be nigh-on impossible, and the 400 extra officers proposed, while undoubtedly welcome, will not be able to enforce it.

Secondly, it will make matters worse as people will stand outside the tube station or hold up the bus while they neck their alcohol of choice before getting on the vehicle in question. It will also make life a lot harder for the poor sods who have to try to enforce this - TfL staff. As Bob Crow (and it’s not often I agree with him) has pointed out, you’re making staff pick unnecessary fights.

Thirdly, it’s targeting the wrong problem. That problem is too much drinking in general in the UK and is better dealt with through social means - health education and so on. Unfortunately, that takes time, money and lots of work behind the scenes and does not give the lovely, ‘get tough’ headlines.

Don’t get me wrong - I’d rather people didn’t drink on public transport. However, I think there are better ways to tackle the issue and better places to spend the resources committed to this idea. It is, however, an eyecatching headline that every Londonder will at least notice because of the signs going up at every tube station.

I do wonder whether Mayor Johnson thinks the same applies to tubes as planes. In a speech in Parliament on 16th May 2003, he said

Might the Minister reflect on that, thinking whether, if there is to be a total ban on being drunk on a plane at any time, it may be necessary to consider some compensatory measure to bring back smoking sections on aeroplanes? Many people frankly find it difficult to put up with the rigours of a long flight without the sustenance and reassurance of a smoke .

I am sure that many people consider Bank tube station in the morning as bad as a long flight.

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“How? Why?”

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

More seriously, I think Mayor Johnson might have a little work to do on his image beyond these shores if he wants to be a world city leader; not a huge amount, but something that describes his ‘vision’ for London. Beyond that, the reaction was, I found, surprise that people here are worrying so much about second-order elections perhaps two years from a general election.

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The headline news is, of course, the victory of Boris Johnson. It is no secret (at least if you’ve been reading this blog!) that I was and remain a strong supporter of Ken Livingstone and that I have very grave doubts about the Johnson mayoralty. I have tried to draw a comparison between relations between the GLA and the boroughs on transport and on housing. On housing, there is no doubt that some boroughs – particularly Tory boroughs, and particularly Wandsworth (11%) and Westminster (10%) - are doing very little in terms of affordable housing. The figures in brackets refer to the amount of newly-built affordable housing as a fraction of total new build in the boroughs; the requirement is for fifty per cent. Despite the protestations of ‘New Boris’, many Conservatives in the capital will resent interference and instructions from on high and simply do not see affordable housing as a priority. I believe the same problems will occur when it comes to the Freedom Pass and other aspects of transport, such as bus routing. Without co-ordination and, indeed, compulsion from the centre, the boroughs will do what they perceive as best for their patch, rather than what is best for the totality of London. It represents a step back from strategic governance of London.

Staying with transport, Johnson has a pretty good starting point: the Bill authorising Crossrail is working its way through Parliament; London Overground has come on-stream and work to improve it is taking place; the East London line is being extended and plugged into London Overground. There are many challenges, not least of which is Crossrail. Johnson will, likely as not, try to make good on his pledge to scrap or, at least, redeploy the bendy buses in London. This, combined with his rather creaky mathematics on a new Routemaster, could end up in a lot of money being spent in rather inefficient and unproductive ways. If we take as a single example the 507 route that connects Waterloo and Victoria stations, we see the advantages of the bendy buses for some routes; few people are travelling without paying as most have travelcards and the ease and speed of ingress and egress is important on a route that is carrying full busloads of commuters at peak times. I understand that Mr Johnson wants to develop river services. While it sounds like a nice idea, the tidal nature of the Thames means that times will never be the same from day to day. At best, it will remain a minor part of London’s transport mix.

My concern is that much of the good work of the last eight years will be either lost or not used to best effect. Livingstone had a vision for London and a vision for London’s transport that encompassed a variety of modes, saw cycling and walking as part of the mix, and put being able to move about, even if you’re poor, as a high priority. For this reason we saw, for instance, London Overground to facilitate circular (day-to-day living) rather than just radial (in-and-out journeys for work in the centre) journeys and the driving through of the Tube to one of the poorest boroughs, Hackney, that did not have a tube station to call its own. Equally, the ambitious plans for further trams and the Greenwich Riverside Transit bus scheme and the like must lie under a cloud.

There is a particularly dark cloud over the Freedom Pass. Shortly before the election, Mr Johnson announced Brian Cooke, chair of London Travelwatch, as one of his supporters. I wrote about it at some length here, but with an advisor who has panned the Freedom Pass and a light-touch attitude towards making the boroughs fund the Pass, I am doubtful that it will be extended in any meaningful way and concerned for its future as a whole.

Beyond that, I fear that the environment and congestion will worsen in London as Johnson is at best lukewarm about the c-charge and opposed outright to the £25 charge for the most polluting cars. I also remain concerned at the effect of Boris shooting his mouth off at the wrong time.

Lib Dems

The Liberal Democrats fell apart. Brian Paddick was not the man to lead them to a bright new dawn in London. It would appear that Boris Johnson’s victory is due to Lib Dems and UKIPpers supporting Johnson, with their shares of the mayoral vote dropping 5.2 and 5.1% respectively with the Tories’ rising by 14.3%. To be honest, there’s not much more to say than that a resurgent Tory party can take votes from Lib Dems and some former ‘dissatisfied Tories’, which bodes not well for Labour in the next general election.

The Lib Dems on the Assembly now hold the balance of power. There are eleven Tories; the eight Labour AMs and two Green AMs mean that, no matter which way the BNP go, the Lib Dems must choose between red and blue. It will be interesting to see which way they generally go and whether they articulate a coherent vision for London.

The Greens

I make no secret of my positive disposition towards the Green party. I think they will be disappointed not to have achieved another seat, but given that all the traffic was towards Johnson and Labour was going hell for leather to make sure that everyone who might vote Labour did vote Labour. As my friend Aled, who ran for the Greens, says in the comments

“Despite the major party Labour-Tory ’squeeze’ which crushed the Lib Dems, we held onto our 3 seats and weren’t that far off 3. Our vote stayed pretty much the same as last time and our constituency votes rose in most places, meaning we saved all deposits except one.

We were also a clear fourth in Mayoral 1st Preferences and came 3rd on 2nd Preferences (however meaningless that is!).”

The BNP

The BNP have a seat on the assembly. Across the capital, 5.33% of voters chose to vote for them. It behoves all of us to watch Richard Barnbrook like a hawk. The only good thing is that the BNP’s share of the vote barely rose, by one-fifth of one per cent, and that they were unable to win a constituency member even in City & East. There, they did poll 9.62%, which is still pretty worrying.

I am not sure what long-term effects the BNP’s victory will have. It is their first win off a local council, but they had been hoping for two seats. They will seek to capitalise on the publicity and the salary and expenses will be useful; however, their previous elected officials have been woefully inadequate, frequently not turned up to meetings and attracted allegations of sleaze pretty quickly. It will hopefully galvanise people to work against the BNP in east London, much as happened in the West Midlands. In the short term, I am very concerned about what will happen; it is all to easy to see an increase in racially-motivated violence, as happened in Tower Hamlets when the BNP gained a councillor.

The Left

The left don’t matter in London. Despite being able to cast a second preference for Ken, only 16,976 gave their first preferences to Lindsey German and the Left List for the mayoralty. By way of comparison, their 0.68% share of first preferences is less than the 0.91% for UKIP, 1.60% for the Christian Choice and represents slightly less than a quarter of the 2.84% who voted for Richard Barnbrook of the BNP.

There is scarcely more comfort for the left on the Assembly. Respect (George Galloway) only ran in one constituency, City & East, and came third behind the Conservatives. The Left List (the SWP part of Respect) did best in the Enfield & Haringey constituency, where they won 3.5% of the vote.

I would go so far as to say that the only thing achieved by the left parties was to stop the BNP getting a second seat on the Assembly.

One London

UKIP/Veritas/One London have disappeared; I cannot say I am particularly surprised or disappointed. Damian Hockney and Peter Hulme Cross were non-entities on the Assembly. Hockney stood down from the mayoral election after protesting that media attention was all on the large parties; given that Sian Berry received quite a lot of coverage and Lindsay German a fair amount, I think the charge doesn’t stand up. Given that Hockney and Hulme Cross stood as UKIP, ditched them for Veritas and then became One London when Kilroy-Silk’s party fell apart, I’d say that it was pretty obvious that they were going to be kicked off the Assembly.

Labour

It’s bad. Of that, there can be no doubt. It’s not quite time to write Labour off for the next election; not yet, anyway. For many people, myself included, this is the first, major setback at elections in our adult life; I was not old enough to vote in 1997 and a period without the executive of London may prove a salutatory experience.

Labour did, in fact, gain one seat on the Assembly and the vote for Ken was slightly up, by seven-tenths of a percent, on last time round. There is still a viable, progressive coalition in London but against a strong opposition, it is not enough on its own unless every ‘core’ Labour supporter turns out to vote. I suspect that the current state of the national party did not help, but the performance of Ken and the London Labour party against a rubbish overall picture was remarkable.

Three final points

The Evening Standard was cheerleading for Johnson and against Livingstone for some time. I may return to this in future, but the unique position of the paper as the only paid-for, London-wide newspaper (if London Lite and thelondonpaper can even be considered newspapers) gives it a powerful position. I am well aware that it is a private newspaper, but the effect is similar to the BBC campaigning for the Tories. It may be time to launch the Morning Courier.

The London Assembly has been a bit anonymous. This is a subject I will definitely return to as individual AMs and the Assembly as a whole need to be more visible.

Beyond London, the lessons are fewer as the demographics of the capital are very different to the rest of the country. The main issues is that voters are leaving the Lib Dems for the Tories and that, at least when there is no European election, UKIP voters are joining them. I don’t know whether this will impact on the timing of the general election.

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Hosea 8:7

Boris has won. Congratulations to him.

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I’m going to be reviewing an anthology of Imagist Poetry.

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