Danger to accountability with an 'executive mayor', as explained by Lynne Featherstone in a piece about Ken Livingstone’s decline in office
Ken under pressure
Ken Livingstone lost it completely in the last Mayor's Question Time. Put under what I thought was relatively mild pressure by a very basic question over his plans for the proposed New Year's Eve party Ken lost the plot, then lost his rag - and then lost it altogether.
I was surprised because, apart from having an a tough time during the Congestion Charging scrutiny which I chaired, he has until now consistently kept up the cheeky chappy act, - whether attacking the government over its plans to privatise the tube (quite rightly), planning the demise of pigeons in Trafalgar Square (quite rightly), championing the Euro (quite rightly) or batting away questions at Mayor's Question Time (Assembly must do better at putting him on the spot next time).
Ken's explosion in the Assembly was quickly followed by a strong reluctance to attend an evidence session of my scrutiny of the Mayor's Draft Transport Strategy - the early blueprint for all of transport and traffic plans for London. In the event, he did attend to answer the panel's questions. The nature of this line by line scrutiny is to find the weaknesses so that the Mayor can take on board the advice we give and amend the document, before itgoes out to public consultation in January.
During the session, when questioned over why there were no targets for traffic reduction, the Mayor admitted that there would not be a reduction -there would be a reduction in traffic growth - but still an overall increase. I pointed out to him that in his manifesto he had promised to reduce actual traffic by 15%. And then he said basically that manifestos didn't matter because you made lots of promises in them and they had no legal basis. Well - it's true that they don't have a legal basis - but I do think it's a bit of an expectation between the people and the person that they elect that they will at least make a decent effort to keep their promises. Not surprisingly - that news was all over the front page of the Standard. And I don't suppose Ken was very happy about that!
This was shortly followed by the announcement that the Mayor had cancelled the London Summit (major event) and was cancelling everything to concentrate on the tube/privatisation issue. It's a key issue in London - so I am glad he is going to focus all his energy on that. Labour's plans to privatise our tube system will be a disaster. Sadly, Labour doesn't seem to have learnt anything from the mess the Tories made of privatising our railways – nor does Labour seem willing to head the warnings of tragedies such as the Hatfield crash. The only thing rarer at the moment than a train running ontime is a transport expert who hasn't come out against Labour's privatisation plans. Expert after expert has condemned the plans, but why won't Labour listen?
I also wonder about Ken. The pressure is enormous. Peoples' expectations are enormous. The structure of the Mayor and Assembly is such that whatever he does must face scrutiny. And when he's under close scrutiny, his talents at political spin and good one-liners don't help much. And I think herein lies a difficulty for the Mayor. He is charming and witty and more able than most politicians I have met - but an executive Mayor makes all the decisions and is accountable for those decisions.
And it's proving tougher than he thought.
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