Tag Archives: Susan Hall

London Election Recommendations

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On the 2nd of May we have the elections in London for the Mayor and London Assembly members. Elections will also take place for councils and mayors in England and police and crime commissioners in England and Wales.

In London if you wish to have a postal vote rather than vote in person you need to apply as soon as possible and don’t forget that you will need a photo-id for the first time if you are voting in person.

A poll of 1,019 Londoners by Survation revealed the incumbent Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan may get 44% of the vote, with his Conservative rival, Susan Hall, on 26% – eighteen points behind. The Liberal Democrats’ Rob Blackie, and Zoe Garbett, the Green Party candidate, are level on 7%, with Reform UK’s Howard Cox on 5%. A Savanta poll for the Centre for London put the Labour mayor on 51 per cent and the Tory contender 27 per cent.

It appears that Sadiq Khan is very likely to get re-elected although with almost a month to go to polling day the situation could change. Why is Sadiq Khan doing so well when crime in London has got much worse and his claims on house building are a gross distortion of the truth? Council taxes have also risen because of the Mayor’s precept and the ULEZ scheme has added to motoring costs very substantially. Perhaps because he has promised to cap public transport fare rises and offered free meals to primary school children. His claims that the ULEZ scheme has reduced air pollution in London are false but the public has not seen through his lies.

The May London election for Mayor will be held using the first-past-the-post system for the first time, meaning voters will no longer be able to vote for a second preference candidate. That is most unfortunate. So if you hate Sadiq Khan as I do then the only alternative is some tactical voting – in essence to choose the candidate with reasonable policies and most likely to win.

I have supported both the Conservative and Reform Parties in the past but there seems little chance that Howard Cox of Reform will get enough votes this year. It takes time to build a new party machine in a new region and London is a particularly difficult territory due to the tendency for voters to vote on traditional national party lines or on ethnic prejudices compounded by the fraudulent use of postal votes.

I will therefore likely be voting for Susan Hall unless the picture changes between now and polling day. But I will be voting for Reform candidates in the Assembly Member elections.

You can see the full list of candidates for Mayor here: https://www.londonelects.org.uk/media-centre/london-mayoral-candidates-announced

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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Latest Political News in London and Beech Street Closure

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This is the news that might have some impact on transport and political issues in the capital:

The former Conservative Leader on the Greater London Assembly (GLA), Gareth Bacon, has been elected as a Member of Parliament for Orpington and hence is stepping down from the GLA. He was forceful in challenging the Mayor on his policies. The new Conservative Leader will be Susan Hall who from following her on twitter and meeting with her, I judge should be just as forceful if not better. See  https://www.glaconservatives.co.uk/susan-hall.html for more information.

Because Boris Johnson has opened a new Parliament, he has made changes to some ministerial appointments. Included in that is the appointment of Chris Philp, MP for Croydon South, as Minister for London – that’s in addition to his role at the Ministry of Justice. This is what he had to say in the Evening Standard:

“Londoners are sick of Sadiq blaming others for his failure to deliver — there is no excuse for housing starts in London falling at a time when they have been rising in the rest of the UK and when billions of pounds of public money have been provided for housing.

I am deeply concerned at the delays and cost over-runs on Crossrail and of course we all need to work together to clamp down hard on knife crime, as well as its underlying causes.”

Mr Philp described himself as a “Londoner born and bred” in the article and added: “With more than 300 languages spoken in London alone, it’s bursting with diversity which we must embrace.”

Sadiq Khan has already accused him of having an “aggressively partisan attitude” so that should get him off on the wrong foot with the new Minister which he needs to persuade if his plans are to get anywhere. That includes more money for London which he has been asking for, particularly for transport, when the national Government policy might now be just the opposite with more money going to the North as a reward for voting Conservative. He also wants to grab more power in a number of areas which I doubt the new Government will be keen upon. Sadiq Khan is like a lot of Labour politicians in that he thinks more money is always the answer when in fact mismanagement of his budget is the real problem. More information on Chris Philp is present here: https://www.chrisphilp.com/about-chris/

Now that we have a Conservative Government with the ability to put through legislation without endless debate we might even see a reform of the GLA and the Mayor’s role which are both sorely needed. That would be rather like Mrs Thatcher putting Ken Livingstone out of business by disbanding the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1986. Unfortunately the Labour Party put in the current structure of a directly elected Mayor and the GLA (which is purely a talking shop) in 2000. Reform is sorely needed as the Mayor is unaccountable to anyone and acts like a dictator. His transport policies are destroying London and imposing enormous costs on the public – for example he has just announced a rise in the GLA precept in Londoner’s Council Taxes. Financially his regime is a disaster and crime is totally out of control.

London does not need populist Mayors such as Ken Livingstone or Sadiq Khan who simply seem to want to ensure they get re-elected. We need someone with both management and financial experience, which incidentally Chris Philp certainly has from my contact with him on financial issues. He should be a good Minister for London as he has always appeared to me to be highly intelligent.

Other London news that was widely reported was that the City of London is pushing ahead with a scheme to close Beech Street to all vehicles other than zero emission ones. This would apply for all hours for all days from next April, and to all vehicles with a few exceptions.  Beech Street runs under the Barbican and has very high pollution as it is effectively a tunnel with no ventilation. The City Corporation is also proposing to put in later two zero emission zones around the Barbican estate and north of Fenchurch Street.

One thing the new London Minister might care to look at is stopping London boroughs and the Major or London from introducing regulations and taxes which are contrary to national regulations without his consent. The Beech Street restriction is unnecessary, unreasonable and the minor air pollution problem in that road could have been solved by other means.

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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